I’ve got a board where the boxes are a tad high and the mast wobbles no matter how tight. I purchased some stiff Sorbothane but haven’t gotten around to trying… I love it when the screws back off enough that the foil slides to the back of the tracks. It’s pretty amazing how f’d up a set up can be and still work, so I bet a lot of people (including myself) are not getting the most of their gear and using technique to compromise. I wish all manufacturers would be like KD/KT and offer a tuning guide, but I guess then they wouldn’t get the extra income while we buy different stabs and fuses trying make the best set up!
I’d say for prone, an intermediate is someone who can tune their gear, ride all conditions, and can occationally link a few rides. Advanced would be fluid both pumping out and riding in. At my local, I’ve seen one almost pro level who could take off on anything and pump out just as fast as riding in. Was up on foil for over 20 minutes and my mind was blown. He probably doesn’t spend much time reading forums about how to foil!
Gauging skill level is especially frustrating since riding an pumping are two different disciplines and conditions matter. Most of the conditions I’m in are long period swell which requires pumping large distances and hopping white wash. I’m lucky to link 2-3 waves. Linking 10 waves in spots with tight spacing looks simple by comparison.
I have a small front wing (Gong YpraS M, 785cm^2/80cm span/around 8AR) and I really get the feeling of “the ground drops” sometimes when I pump it hard. The slower I go, the easier this drop happens and I have to be very gentle with my pumps, which inevitably ends up in a sudden loss of lift.
I will try to shift my weight back when pumping, but I really felt that shifting my weight forward (with my other way bigger wing) helped A LOT.
A lot of times if you’re pumping through a small front wing is because your stab is too big. The stab is overpowering the setup causing too much of your energy to go into the front. Sizing down that stabilizer is where I would go. Chopping a tail till it works is a great way to make it work
Don’t think of it as shifting your weight back. It’s easier to get your front hip over your front foot (and weight forward) if it is closer to you. You want to glide and pump not seesaw the thing between the front and the back, so feet closer together around the center of lift helps you feel it. Then you’ve got that feedback and you can easily make smaller adjustments that keep the foil going instead of more drastic ones because you can’t feel the foil. I think stiffness helps with that direct feedback into the foil and not the board
Anyways coming from winging I was doing it all wrong had my foot straps set too wide, couldn’t pump for craps, and couldn’t tack. I was dreaming of getting off my old Kujira’s and ride some new better foil. But moving my front foot back was like a revelation tacking, pumping, and winging downwind immediately became doable. I felt like I had been foiling completely wrong for two years. Now I’m trying to apply this to learning to prone.
I feel like pushing through the front foil means you’re slow enough that the downward motion overwhelms the forward motion so it exceeds the critical angle of attack and stalls. When it comes to pumping, a tail that’s easily fast enough for the foil can be too small to generate enough thrust but a tail that’s big enough to easily generate thrust is eventually penalized by drag which keeps the foil from cruising in the zone of efficiency.
This whole thing with tails is confusing me. How do we know when a tail is too big or too small for our setup or rider weight. I always get confused when people discuss using different tails to match their wings. Do you just keep trying different tails till you sense what feels better?
I actually dont mind messing around with tuning. I just would love to know more details about the rear stab I guess. width, cord, what works for pumping, what works with what style wings…. I guess just keep putting different stabs on to see what works.
it feels bad to turn when too big, and good to turn but much less forgiving and skatey when too small, but you can make either work.
Here is an example. I was riding a Code 850s with the 150AR tail which is probably close to their standard setup and very balanced and easy.
I then switched to the biggest tail 188AR with someone, and for my weight, it was a huge adjustment. I had to be so far forward on the board to ride balanced. It pushed too hard and felt unbalanced.
I could get used to it, but was definitely fighting it through turns. But the pump was way easier, and very stable lifty and slow. So for a beginner this is fine, but you’ll fight it to turn as you try to do more aggressive turns.
Then tried the smallest AR tail, and the adjustment was the opposite. Very dialled and loose, very precise.
I could move my feet into a very comfortable balanced spot, and through turns the setup felt very stable and even, but the trade off was that I had to pump more carefully and with a higher cadence, and needed more precise foot placement, and keep the speed through turns (this last part is hard intermediates as it requires lots of wave knowledge)
For my tune on a tail I’m thinking about a few factors when setting up a new foil. Mostly pitch and yaw stability and always in relation to the balance point. The first step is to get the foil balanced then do two things at once to change the feel and keep the foil balanced. Shim and move the foil in the tracks. Change the size (or leverage - fuse length) and shim. Change the size and move the foil in the tracks.
Mast placement - I like my mast in a specific spot for less yaw stability and I will tune more or less downforce on the tail to adjust the balance point to have comfortable take off and weight distribution where I want to be. Mast forward will be way more aggressive turning and twitchier compared to mast back - forward the foil is acting more like a pivot point under your feet and back it’s more like a stabilizing rudder. The mast and front wing are so big a lot of tail tuning is about moving the mast in relation to you.
No tips - I like my foils loose and skatey in Yaw so like having mast forward I like not having as much rudder component (vertical surface) in the tail. This mostly means tips so I’ll chop off any flip in the tail.
Efficiency - this used to be a bigger factor in my tuning but I don’t think about it as much anymore. I built enough foils from scratch or cobbled together production fronts with homebuilt tails I had to figure this out. At 220 lbs I would frequently hop on a setup and it wouldn’t pump the way I wanted. My feeling was the downforce from the tail was added inefficiency and would increase drag at higher speeds making the foil settle in at a lower speed - better for the smaller team riders the foil was built for. As a bigger rider I needed a higher speed so I would shim tail up for efficiency - less downforce so foil forward to compensate. I know this isn’t a great tune I think everything’s gotten better out of the factory so this isn’t a big thought process today but I’m also getting the same result with forward mast placement so maybe I’m just thinking about it through turning (mast forward looser skate) instead of pump (less downforce better glide)
Small HA front pumping through the foil - I see folks are skeptical on this but this is my experience on a few foils - as a certified poor person ive never bought a fresh factory recommended tail to go with my hot new micro front wing. I take it out for a session with my regular front from my 900 or whatever, pump through it a few times, go in and chop it another 20mm on each side with my car sander, then I don’t pump through anymore. I THINK it’s because the tail isn’t as locked into the water column so it puts less force on the front but that’s just my experience.
Crazy, it might be that!
I do have a big stab for a small front wing at the moment. I’m waiting for a package to come with an adapter so I can try a smaller stab i bought, now I’m even MORE impatient haha
Nice example from Adam of how to hit the foam when you are learning
Notice how the foil is below the foam on this very soft little section, and the foil is still in the wave, that is the place to start, and then gradually hit more and more critical
Mike Pedigo has this which I from this list and is a completely different take on foam hits. The idea being to get the foil out the water so that you lose lift and land the board back on the water.
Jack Ho really kills it, this clip has like most of the ideas I’ve been kicking around for turns. There are so many distinct modes that Jack goes through in this one wave
