I’m enjoying my progression setup for winging on inland lakes/reservoirs:
175/200 front, med carbon fuse, 14.5 prog tail
Thinking about going a bit faster/looser and wondering about chopping the 14.5 (which I see a lot of recommendations for), vs getting a 13.5.
Wondering what the Uni brain trust has to say about that choice…
I never chop my tails because I feel like they’re instantly worthless. Then if I don’t like it, now you have nothing.
I would just buy whatever tail you want
Everytime you change part of your kit you learn something. Always valuable getting a more well rounded understanding of variables. Not sure what the current used market is like for a Progression tail, compared to performance difference of cutting off the winglets… Likely not much money and not much difference in feel.
My trial and error in tail chopping and making from scratch, cord length and foil shape are what will give you the efficiency and looseness you’re looking for.
Pretty interesting to me to hear Erik and Pedigo on the latest podcast talk about chopping the progression tails and their finding that a simple straight cut (parallel to fuse) gives the most efficient result, and that trying to blend in a leading edge curve is a losing strategy (if I understand the discussion).
Also interesting to hear that the reason for the improvement is in part because they got the angle on the tips just slightly off for max efficiency (based on subsequent modeling).
Might need to just get an extra and chop…
Definitely… great podcast, Mike was way overdue!!
I also thought that that point was super interesting. Can anyone confirm the line that a straight edge cut is efficient?. I guess the point was that for the specific design, a straight cut is more efficient (and they mentioned that the tips weren’t designed with CFD so once they analysed it they discovered this). Really enjoying the Mike episode btw!
Relevant stab:
Mike gives his reason for a straight cut here - maintaining the profile of the LE. Think he is referring to foil section. He says 45deg but probably meant 90deg. Performance Hydrofoils on Instagram: "HOW and WHY to chop your tail with @flyline_productions"
Makes sense, but I’d want to try different angles to account for outward flow. Too many ideas, too few tails to chop..
I recently chopped my brand new 14.5 progression tail and I’m loving it. Very loose and skatey but maintains the pump of the 13.5. I did a straight cut and left a small amount of winglet flip at the ends. I’m riding it with a prog 125, evo 115 and evo 135, 0.5 deg shim. Works great on all of them.
Also cut my two progression tails and was surprised how much I preferred them chopped.
Really went nuts on the 13.5 (which was already cut) bringing that down to 11”. Paired with the evo 175, it’s a blast on micro days — feels like a carver skateboard…
the chopped 14.5 will be the go-to tail now. very cool of them to share this info, opposed to just rolling out new tails that do the same thing.
Hi Tavis. What size fuse are you using on those setups?
So that was more of a tip sand down to loosen the yaw than a area reducing chop.
I’m using the standard short fuse (not the super short one).
There was def. a chop involved but mostly just got rid of the up turned tips. When I did the same for the 13.5 the loss of area was very noticeable with less pump reaction.
I did a similar chop to Tavis with the 14 shiv, shunt, shank. Strangely the shank is now my go to for surf with same wings: Prog 125, Evo 115, 135. I lightly sanded the trailing edge of the shank also, using a +1 shim. Out of the box it was my least favorite stabilizer. I thought I would never use it as is, so decided to chop it to see what would happen. Now my favorite.
