I think a better idea is to have a leash plug glassed in to the bottom of the board behind the trackbox with a thin stainless wire drilled through the mast foot. The images & stories I’ve seen with lost foils have been from the track box being pulled out or the Tnuts loose or cracked.
There is this:
Do note why they sell it given their foil mount product that seems sketchy
I’ve done hundreds of kite foil big airs with their glue on foil mount… no issues. Surprisingly insanely reliable
I’ve heard that the PWs can be quite jerky in gusts. Could there be a suspension joint between where the lines meet & the handle. ie. the lines attached to a bar & that bar is attached to another bar in parallel via bungee or spring? Or the lines join to one side of a spring inside a canister & the bar attaches to the other side of the spring? Oh yeah I’m gonna be rich!!
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LEI string wing
it would be clever for someone to design a jetpod that drops into the trench slot of all the trench boards floating around
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propellers are much more efficient than jets. jets are nice in that they won’t maim you. But have many limitations, including that the jet outlet must stay underwater to be useful (not just the inlet). I’m sure this works, but requires a higher power battery and more battery weight for the same kind of use case runtime
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Someone should absolutely sell a kit like this that attaches to whatever board you have lying around. Bonus points for including steering and GPS.
The all in costs of parts of these is pretty trivial. A dual motor setup is dropping towards $1000 and the DIY scene contains plenty of details
Here is @Hadou below who got me into this rabbit hole!
Many good points. At risk of being a bit pedantic, a water jet outlet does not need to be under water. Water jet thrust is:
Mass flow rate out of nozzle x velocity of flow out of nozzle.
Until you get an obstacle in the outlet stream close enough to start modifying any of the two terms above, mass reaction propulsion systems care not about what the mass is being ejected into.
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On the jetboard idea, what about some sort of wind-up device. It just needs to store a few seconds of sprint level energy output. Maybe you could turn a crank for a couple minutes to power each use and get away with a lot less energy storage in the board.
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Love this idea. might even be possible to have parawing lines that retract quickly with a spring to get you going in very light wind
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Perfect product slingshot to invent.
that was what I’ was going for here
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Love this guy steering his tow boogie to film himself
Starboard must be watching this thread
Now have the inflatable portion detachable so it doubles as a pump/kite foil board
Interesting, you effectively lose 4-5 inches of mast but the foot to mast connection is probably a lot better
I feel like it doesn’t really matter if the plate is on the top or the bottom, you’re still limited by the stiffness of the plate and at 1” thick all the carbon in the world wouldn’t make it stiff enough. I’d like to see a thicker plate. Maybe 2” at the tracks and tapering from there. I don’t know maybe I’ll modify mine and see if I can get an appreciable gain out of it.
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I’ve used pumpfoil boards 3cm thick that feel rock solid.
edit: Gong Klüber, looks like they accomplish that by using carbon tracks that double as stringers.
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