For those who both prone and FD, I wondered if anyone alters mast placement or shim (if their setup permits this) between unassisted prone and FD with the same board and foil? I just move my feet once up and riding until everything feels balanced and “right”, but I assume the weight of the FD unit and battery will be adding an element of back foot weight behind the foils centre of lift - so just wondered if moving the mast or changing shim would give the same balance whilst keeping feet in the same position as normal.
This is very much whilst up and riding, not whilst motoring on the prop.
When I prone, I setup the mast based on where to board paddles and catches waves well and move my feet as necessary.
With the Foil Drive, I am moved as close forward to the prone position as I can be. But because of the way the Foil Drive creates more nose lift at takeoff, its usually moved back around 1.5” to make up the difference.
Depending on board, this changes.
1 Like
I use a trench board and Slickpod to reduce drag with FD. And a prone board to paddle. FD is so much drag and weight, you need to get your set up dialled so you don’t have to move your feet battery on and off. For example, a FD pod is so much drag, that as you gain speed on a steep wave and need to get the foil deeper, the pod will pull your nose down even if you are reverse hang ten. The Slick pod helps a lot as does a shorter cable as does a trench board.
Even though there is very little adjustment of the battery housing, I’ve found that shoving it forward or backward the 1 cm makes a big difference. So if you had to share one board, I’d have marks for where to place the mast prone and I bet it would be more forward than FD, but more so for an easy pump. Having an FD too far back is always stomping on rear foot on a wave, and too far forward, would probably make you have to keep moving your back foot forward on throttle.
I move the base unit forward until I find the position where I don’t need to move my feet powered or unpowered on a wave. Not unusual that once my feet are positioned I can run the whole session without moving them if I don’t fall.