Tips for tuning foils

I’m riding the takuma 1210 mostly with the KD 13.5” on the JS black eagle. Any tips for tuning?

Just listened to the Adam Bennets Nov 2021 interview and he mentioned something that resonated - the most irritating thing for him was nose diving when linking into a wave, and the solution is front foot pressure.

I’m also interested in understanding how to best tune for front foot pressure. I find that if I have shim to lift the front, then the pumping is less efficient and more of the nose bouncing up and down

I’m running zero shim on most setups now with the mast super far forward. My boxes are forward compared to most boards and I’ve drilled holes in the mast plate to move another inch. New batch of boards going even farther.

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Hey Erik, How far from the rear of the board do you think the boxes will be on the new boards?

I was used to ride mfc and love 0 shim with the kd 13.
I found that for some board a shim plate was a good way to arrange foot pressure onmy wing board especially on strongwind.

Now i m riding HA from allurefoil very efficient front wing mast and fuselage but tuning on stabs necessary for surfing. .
With the kd 13 stab and some other stab protos.
But nowi m trying to find the best tunings between stab dimension, stab angle and fuse lenght.
I tried a 140cm2 custom stab 12 inch ws 8mm thick 0 angle . Pumping flat was insane on flat water and grip in curve was good . But mushy wave make me andrestand i had not enought back stability. Came back to kd13 with 2 degrees of angle in the same session Was perfect for a mushy shore runner.
Now ineed to dig out
-is it better with lower angle or longer fuse.
And maybe less angle with mast more in front theboxes
Are thinner profile are better or is angle more important for gliding
I needto try kd13r
If anyone have feedbacks, cause it take long time totest all ofthese option tomake it perfect.

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The 13R is really nice with the Takuma 1210, but I don’t have any of his other tails to compare with. I’ve only had them both for less than a week, but I’ve tried a -1 degree and -0.5 degree tail shim (less AOA). More negative shim angle made the foil feel really loose, but pitch became harder to control since I’m not used to controlling pitch with my rear foot. Also, with the negative shims, I felt the need to adjust my feet position with speed. Without the shim, it’s probably the easiest, most intuitive setup I’ve tried, but the looseness from the negative shimming provides gives the foil a fun lively feel. So I’ll probably try -0.25 degrees next, and maybe go with more negative shimming as I get better.

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I built a few foil setups and did alot of mixing and matching front foils and tails and learned my tuning that way. Also, as a bigger rider its a way to tweak the foil to your weight which i found to be the difference between able to ride and not able to ride.

For me its almost all about efficiency necessary to keep on foil at my weight and desired “twichy” responsiveness which, for me, came from the same place. I always found myself on a new setup feeling a little anemic and slow, having trouble keeping it in that efficient glide range at my weight. Being heavy i have a higher stall speed for a given wing and the stock angles on the tail were inducing drag too close to that range. Less tail down meant less induced drag and moved the speed range higher giving me a bigger sweet spot at the top end.

The more or less lift with the tail position is irrevalent as, inevitably you fix with foil placement.
What results is:

More tail down = more drag, more mast back (less twitchy response)

More tail up = less drag, more mast forward (more twitchy response)

If your falling off foil you need speed, so more tail up, mast forward.

As an alternative you can think of tail up as “less tail down” so you can accomplish the same tuning by chopping the tail. This is only tricky because you can’t go backwards but it works great on fixed tail foils that you want to go “FASTER”.

Simple guide to tuning. Slam the mast to the front, shim it till its rideable!

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Balancing the foil and the board is getting big in downwinding again now. People who have had their foils slammed to the front of the box have been finding out the board is more efficient balanced perfectly, which may mean moving the mast back in the tracks oddly enough.

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Any of you guys used the Takuma 1210 front wing and the Kujira 178 back wing combo?

Yeah. Great combo! I ride it flat.

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