I was a hardcore FD addict. Used it daily for almost a year. Now, I’m hoping that I’ll never need to use it again. Having a tow is 100x better than FD. Reasons being, if you are at a long-ish wave, and there is some windy chop 10-15kn AND you need a wave in order to pop-up. Your battery will only last 3 waves or so before you need to head back to the boat to do a battery swap, this is using it at 60% taxiing on your belly and 100% while you are up and going. I found it hard to maintain e-foil flight on the 899, the 999 was fine up to 10kn (with 2 props at 85kg). The placement of the battery is key. I’ve chosen to put it in the center of my board, which means I am lying on the battery, and just barely able to swing my front leg over to the front. Putting the battery anywhere else on the board really throws everything off as all the weight is on one rail.
Its good for flatwater pump, but wave-riding, its not the same feeling as a normal board. When the pod enters the water, even when its at the closest to board position, you will experience alot of braking. Sky rama has a new mod that fixes this, but currently its absolutely an issue that interrupts your flow as an advanced wave rider, it wont matter to beginners tho. Also, the pop-up catcing waves process especially on larger waves, and if youre not 100% sure of what to do, makes it 100x more dangerous than a prone pop-up. Reason being, the spinning props, if you do something stupid like keep the prop spinning as youve caught the wave, yet you dig the nose and you fly forward. The board will keep going for 0.4 seconds because the board is underwater and hasnt received the stop signal from your controller. Ive only been hit by the front of the mast leaving a bruise, but it could have been much worse. When youre on a wave, you will be tempted to engage the prop instead of pumping, and you run the risk of nose diving forward and getting run over after especially if you are not experienced.
That being said, I feel like the FD is really the best thing for your first year of foiling, where you can learn to pump, wake thieve, ride some waves and mix in some pumping. It also allows you to do all of this in somewhat crowded lineups where you cant get a jetski, the key is to do it all the way in front or all the way in the back where there are no surfers. But if you’ve gotten through the beginner stage of things. For carving, it is not good because of the pod dipping into the water, will totally mess up your line and require a ton more pumps to recover. The additional risk of the motor cutting you up as it doesnt turn off even if you want it to when its underwater after a wipeout. Pumping, its actually only making it 33% harder to pump if you place your battery correctly, so that’s the least of the issues. In absolute ideal conditions, 1-2ft, zero wind, no crowd, then this foil drive can be quite cool to catch a ton of waves and efoil around for 45min, all on one battery. But having a tow-assist or boat would be way better experience. In case thats not available and you dont want to pump alot, then the foil drive still has its place. Im partially biased because I am at the point where Ive just moved on from using FD daily and loving the freedom from not having FD and thats helped me progress heaps.
