Stepping back from some of the AWSI news and F4 hotness this year has me laughing.
What it brings me back to is all the complaints about the “un-sustainability” of F-One’s saddle connection from ~ a year ago. A year back Code was the hotness and everyone was talking up the stiffness and direct feel of the Code set-up on this forum. Pictures of F-One bolts shearing and foils dropping off mid-session show up all over the place and F-One ends up ditching the saddle connection for something similar to Code.
Then this year, F4 is the hottest thing in the foiling world….with essentially the same connection as the Gen 1 F-One saddle connection (with M6 screws!). And it looks like Code is now looking to slim down their fuse/mast connection.
What gives?! Is F4 just focused on the correct application of the saddle connection – i.e. down-winding and speed versus freestyle/jumping? Is Code going to lose some of their magic in the surf by chasing a slimmer fuse?
Are we actually moving forward to better designs? Or just subject to fashion and hype where something is “in” one season and “out” the next like a perpetual cycle of baggy versus skinny jeans?
I’ve had seasons on Takuma, GoFoil, Code, and Axis. Only Code has been flawless. But I’m not racing downwind, just bouncing off rocks, hitting seaweed and kelp, grounding in mud and sand, and most especially, not doing anything preventative or maintenance wise!
There’s also Mike’s Lab who uses a saddle connection and I haven’t heard people complain about it. Then Cabrinha licensed that connection for their current generation of foils.
You could argue that F4 were the hottest thing on the block last year with heaps of the recreational DW foilers swapping from brands like code. It spread fast in most DW scenes. The PW explosion has kicked F4 along for a second wind, along with the race successes this year. Code was the hottest 2 years ago.
The tuttle type connection of brands like Code and Axis has resulted in plenty of cracking and failures in and around the connection. I still think the saddle is still the best engineering solution if dimensioned correctly.
Is F4 hard to seat the foil? TBH that’s what I think was likely a larger problem for F-One. Every foil I tried from them required me using the bolts to force the foil down into the saddle and I know from experience with other brands with socket joints that when it is too tight, I might think it’s seated, but it’s not. The socket however protects the joint from bending over and snapping once you get going. If the F4, Mikes Lab, Cabrinha, etc are just loose enough to ensure the bolts are always properly tightened I imagine it wouldn’t be an issue.
I feel another obsession with thinness coming on (as with masts over the last year or so)…rather than minimizing system drag, which is what we are really after…all else equal.
On that note…I’ll again draw some attention to Hydrocraft, as one of their strategies was to make front wings that are rather stable, so that they could get away with shorter fuses (that are also thin) to reduce system drag…
then add in monoblock/fewer fasteners as another piece…
will we be looking at how smooth the joints are next?
Can someone knowledgeable on the topic provide an estimated breakdown of frontal area drag vs skin drag for a foil system? My understanding is that frontal drag is a much bigger piece of total system drag vs skin drag at the speeds we are talking about. Is fuselage diameter actually impacting frontal drag significantly (assuming the fuse to wing connection is optimized from a hydrodynamic perspective)? My guess is that reducing fuse diameter is more a function of reducing skin drag (maybe I’m wrong)? If we look at total skin drag of the foil system, the skin drag attributed specifically to the fuse seems like a really small percentage of that. Which leads me to believe that the gains to be had in terms of system drag are pretty small. Maybe its more a matter of “feel” than drag?
Im certainly not an expert here. Putting out this stream of thought so that someone who is an expert can correct me or expand upon these thoughts.
<<EDIT: AI says I’m kind of wrong here, but I’m not sure I trust it>>
I think Greg from Omen discusses this in one of his Agent videos? Chris from Flex tails discussed it too. My takeaway as that the drag is more of an impact when pumping or when nearing stall speed and the angle of the fuse changes. When you are well powered and not trying to pump or grave dig though, the difference is quite small. That was just my elementary understanding tho.
I canʻt comment about small fuses, but I agree with this when weʻre talking total system drag. I mainly prone, and if I wasnʻt pumpng around so much trying to stay on foil as long as possible, drag isnʻt that big a deal. Iʻd like to have enough speed/glide to ride the wave comfortably, but most foils setups check this box. I could happily ride a ton of foil setups from the last few years and not really care if I was just wave riding.
Now throw in pumping efficiency and grave digging and Iʻm trying to squeeze all I can out of the system. The skinny mast change made a noticeable improvement, so at least with that, it makes a difference. If I was wind powered I could probably care less about some of these advancements and keep riding whatever from three years ago.
Check out the mast video around 3 minutes in for fuselage thoughts, and in the Agent video 6 minutes in for the a visual breakdown of system components at various speeds (shows viscous drag and induced drag). Very interesting!
Is F4 using bigger screws than F one? I went with Code over F one because of the chunky fuse setup. I certainly won’t be changing brands again for a slimmer fuse.
With cracks in tuttle boxes i can only imagine that it happens with forces that come from the front, so that the narrow side at the back is driven backwards. Probably you are right that a saddle is much stronger. Maybe i’ll build my own tuttle verion, like a crossover between radix and tuttle, so that the tuttle mast can be adjusted front/back, with the screws inside the box, not in the waterflow, and with a broad sidegroove very high up in the box for attachment. Radix seems good, but with abuse over the years i can not imagine it to keep the microscopic tolerances that it needs for tight fit, in my opinion it needs to be set deeper inside the board to be able to stay strong for sideways forces.
