Wing Foil interview: Adrian Roper with Axis Foils on the Blue Planet Show
Aloha friends! It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show, which I produce right here in my home office, in the garage. In today's interview, I speak with Adrian Roper, the man behind AXIS foils. We get into some tips for beginners, and then we talk in detail about foil design, how to set up the foil properly, how different things affect different things on the foil.
New designs he is working on, the mast, importance of stiffness, the fuselage, the angles of the foil. So many cool technical things. I learned a lot from this show. I hope you do as well. I wanted to apologize in advance. The auto focus on my camera keeps going in and out focus, and it's very frustrating for me, but I didn't wanna stop the flow of the interview. I hope you can just overlook that and focus on the technical details in the interview.
You can watch this interview right here on YouTube, or you can listen to it on your favorite podcast app. So I hope you enjoy this show and as always, please give it a thumbs up if you like it, subscribe to the blue planet surf YouTube channel, and without further do here is Adrian:
Okay. Adrian Roper. Welcome to the Blue Planet show. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you doing today? Good, thanks. Yep. Beautiful sunny day. And it's pretty glassy out there. So it might be a good day to go fishing. Nice. And you're for you. It's like the middle of winter right now, like for us it's summer, but you're on the other side, so it's pretty nice.
Is it pretty cold or how cold is it? It's cold, like compared to Hawaii it's cold, but still went foiling yesterday and had quite a good session. Excellent. I didn't have a full on thick suit on either, so it's not too bad. Okay. Yeah. All right. So this season that I'm trying to start a little bit with beginner tips right away in the beginning.
Last year, I always did that as an afterthought at the very end, but I want to start with some good tips for people that are new to wing foiling. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about your background and and get more into. The equipment side of things and technique and so on.
So let's start with that. What are some tips you have for people that are new to wining foing same look, we have quite a few learners around us and I guess one of the biggest things is when you're learning, you don't know how to pump properly and getting up on the coil is the biggest.
Just getting up and going. So having a little bit bigger hydrofoil than you might normally think, is a good idea, cuz it helps you get up and also having a slightly bigger wing as you improve with your skills, you don't need quite so much having an easy writing foil makes a difference. And like with the access stuff the BSC range that we came out with, the bigger ones, the 1 0 6 oh and the nine 70, they were particularly good and they are particularly good for people to learn on.
And then we've also introduced the recently the SES, which is like a complete package and that comes in 1 0 4 oh and nine 40 and it's basic and simple. But it works really well. And it's a great entry into the whole access platform. You can, upgrade it as you want bits and pieces wise.
But it they're both the BSC range and the SES are particularly good for learners. You can stand in slightly the wrong place, you get away with a murder with them and they just, they still ride along quite nicely easy to carve, nice to ride. Okay. So using a. Big foil and a big wing.
That makes a lot of sense. And then, yeah, so you have that super easy start package now where I guess it's made particularly with beginners in mind. Yeah. Yep. Same base plate, same mask. The fuselage is slightly different, but it's similar to our normal red fuselage. The front wing was based on a BSC wing.
But we've rounded the ends off more so that you can't stab yourself so easily. And we also, because we're, it's a different construction, we've made it out of colonial wood. So it's a solid wood core with a fiberglass laminate. And that makes a strong wing, that's a bit more affordable. And we thin the profile out a little bit on it which is actually quite a good thing.
It runs quite nicely and it's a fun setup to use. Okay. And then right now you have it in two sizes. So basically one for the the bigger riders with almost 2000 square centimeters and then one for li right. Lighter riders with 1668 square centimeters. So both of those should have plenty of lift, right?
Yeah. I think a lot of people, when you're getting into foiling, they walk into a store and there's just so many foils and it's also confusing and they just, I don't even know where to start. This breaks it down to AO over 80 kg or less than 80 kg. This is the one that'll work for you, and it makes it a lot easier.
And they can go away, get started, have fun and work it out from. Okay. And then obviously you're also using a floaty stable board, especially when you're starting out. Definitely makes it easier, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Some of our learner boards are, have ridiculous amounts of volume in them. We work with a school in Auckland here and we've got a board there.
That's I think it's six foot eight and it's, I dunno, 160 liters or something. It's crazy volume. They've used that with the 1 0 4 oh SES package and it just gets people up and going. It's not you don't necessarily ride it too many times cuz it's such a big board, but no matter, someone can stand on it, wobble around, easy to get up and going.
You've gotta make it easy. I think for beginners, it's not it's not an easy, not a super easy sport to learn at the start, so you've gotta make it so that everything lines up easy and not too hard to get into. Yeah. I would say though, like you progress pretty quickly past that beginner board stage there very quickly.
So I would recommend, instead of buying one, maybe either borrowing a big board or using a big standup foil board or just renting one, or taking in a lesson and then if you have a school me, that's the best thing is to take a lesson from a school and they can, work you through a couple of boards so that the, by the time you buy a board, it's something you're actually gonna hang on to for a little bit, because you do move down.
You're right. You do move down very quickly through the boards. And then in terms of like that, I mean that those are good tips for equipment, but what about technique or Conditions and so on. What kind, what are some other things selecting? Selecting good conditions are really important. Like finding somewhere that's not too choppy.
And if there's waves and stuff, it's hard work to swim out through waves and try and, get up and going while there's waves around. So if you can find a sheltered Harbor or lake situation to learn, that makes it a lot easier and finding wind, like I said before, getting up and going is the difficult thing.
So if you can still learn the lessons of standing up and holding the wing and getting things in five knots. But you are unlikely to get up and going. So when you are ready to get up and going, you need 15, 18 knots to get up and going. Really. It makes it easier if there's a bit of breeze, bit of power.
Yep. Agreed that. Yeah. Ideally you want about a little bit 15 to 20 knots maybe and smooth water if possible. And then. Also a place where you can if you end up drifting down wind where it's easy to get back up wind or, where you don't end up getting blown offshore or something like that.
Yeah. Our local beach manly here is really good for learning. You start at the top end, you go out, you make a couple passes and if you get going good, if you don't, you slowly drift down the beach and end up on the beach and just walk back up the beach again and have another go. It's, you don't wanna be in an offshore situation where without other people around where you're gonna get blown away, for sure.
Okay, great. Yeah. Those are some good tips, I think for people starting out. And so let's talk a little bit about you your background, like where, where did you grow up and how did you get into water sports? How did you get into the foiling industry or, water sports industry I was actually born in America.
I was born in chapel hill, in North Carolina. My father was going to university there and I lived there till I was about two. And then I moved back to New Zealand and to Auckland New Zealand and grew up here. I spent time in my father, did a sabbatical leave from university and I lived a year in Bristol when I was about, I don't know, maybe 10 or something.
And then, but I basically grew up at the beach in Ross bay, in Auckland. I had a peak class at little sailing dinghy, and I learnt to sail yachts. As a young kid had a boat and did lots of fishing and stuff Ming around from there. And some of my mates started getting wind surfers and it was the early, early, early days of windsurfing.
And I wanted to windsurfer as well. And my parents wouldn't buy me one. I was 14 or something, I think at the time. And my mother offered to help me build one. So I did lawn mining rounds and got the money for it. And I actually found a recipe for a windsurfer and a French magazine, and I had to learn French so that I could translate it.
You didn't have internet back then, so it was a bit more tricky. And I built the windsurf for myself from scratch in the back room. It was Paula Styron. So there's bubbles everywhere in the back living room of the house. And it was plywood skinned and I made the sail and the mast and the boom and all the various bits of it.
And my mother helped me with that. , I. They were trying to just help me learn to do things for myself. And they had ideas of me going to university and everything, but I just got so struck by windsurfing and building things that I got into that. And I've done that ever since.
I got a job at a windsurfing shop when I was about 18 years old and I learned to laminate and I also worked in sales in the shop. And then when I was, where was this? Was this's in, in Aland. In Aland. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And then when I was 19 20. I decided to move to Hawaii and I actually came to Oahu, cuz I thought that was the spot to go to.
And I was in Lana, Kai, what's the spot there. I worked for windsurfing Hawaii for okay Kai. Yeah. Yeah, Kai bay. And I went surf there for a bit. But after a month or so everyone kept coming back from Maui raving about Maui. So I thought, oh, I better go to Maui. So I rang a mate of mine, used to work for a.
And and Mai SALs Maori. So I rang SALs Maori and asked if they had any work. And they said, oh, maybe try the factory. So I rang the factory and I got hold of some guy called Jimmy Lewis. And he said, what do you do? And I said I'll laminate. And he said I'll laminate her left yesterday.
How soon can you get here? So I flew over and Jimmy gave me a job at Sal woods Maui, and that was run by Mike Walt and Fred Haywood and Jimmy. And it was in the old cannery. And that, so I worked there for a year or so and did that and that it was great fun. And I went back and forths between Hawaii and and and New Zealand.
And when I came back to New Zealand I started shaping boards. Jimmy had given me a few ideas about shaping. So I learned to shape boards in New Zealand and built wind surface. I had many. Sorry, the time in you are in Mai, when was that? Like in the eighties or 83 or something like, that was one of those.
Okay. Okay. It was pretty early on right a year or so since Mike Wal had discovered who keeper as a windsurfing destination. So it was great. That's when they just like, started using foot straps and like tiny boards and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't that long after harnesses, even it was early.
Things developed quite quickly there and over the trips I worked for various people, I worked for Angulo as a fiberglas for years. And then I ended up getting a job working for Peter Toman, who was the F two shaper. And he built all Bjorn, dunker, Beck, and Brit dunker, Beck's race boards and most of the world cup teams.
So I did all a board building for them, and there was another guy did the Sandy and finishing, and Peter did all the shaping and learned. So much there, Peter was really great and very analytical with the way he did things. And it was a pretty good situation too, because they had, it was the heyday of windsurfing.
And there was plenty of money for things. So we could try anything and, anything we'd tried, it didn't necessarily have to be sold to make money. It worked, it didn't work. We learned something from it, move on, it was so we learned a lot about construction quite quickly and had a lot of fun with that.
So I did board building with that forever. And in my time when I was coming back and forwards, I started a company in New Zealand called underground and it was underground windsurfers at the time. And I built underground windsurfers for years. And I built them in Auckland originally and then built them in, I, one of the times I came back from ma I ended up being in Christchurch.
So I built a factory in Christchurch and built windsurfers there. I'd windsurf at that stage for a lot of years and I was a little bit bored with it. Especially if it wasn't decent waves or whatever, and the local conditions, weren't that exciting. And then we saw videos of kite surfing and, from Maui and some of the early stuff and thought that looks cool.
So thought we'd get into that. So we started building boards and found a. And Ash Burton, Pete, Peter Lynn and he was building kites and he was selling them in Europe. So we ended up hooking up with him and building kite boards. And, we started just doing Peter Lynn, kite boards, but then we did more and more underground kite boards and we sold those all around the world.
And that for years built the factory up, had a lot of guys working full time and it was pretty full on. And then one day we had a fire and everything got burnt, gone overnight. So we lost the factory. The retail store sail loft, everything was gone and had to rebuild from scratch.
And that was an absolute mission. And by the time I'd redone that I'd started to lose a lot of, a bit of enthusiasm for that. I just needed a break. And a guy in China offered to. My label underground and the whole setup and that their construction system. So sold that and moved that to China. And I went back and forth and learned to work in China basically.
And that didn't go so well for them for various other reasons of things that happened in China at the time. And the underground label went bankrupt and there was a bit of a sad time, but it wasn't my baby anymore, but it was still something I'd created. So it was a bit sad.
And at that stage Evan who I worked with in the states he had been selling my underground boards in San Francisco for years. And he was one, he was the first to sell my underground boards there. And he said, look, what you had was too good, let's start something new. So we came up.
With the name access. And originally we were building kit boards and we did that. And then Evan got hooked on foiling and tricked me into getting hooked into foiling and started with kite foiling and then learned to sub foil and did sub foiling for quite a long time. And then when winging came along, got into that.
And did you come up with the name access? I'm curious. We had a lot of different, there was a struggle and we had a lot of different names. One of the problems with underground was always fitting it on the board. It such a long name. It always became a little skinny ribbon on the bottom of the board.
So we figured it had to be something about three or four letters long. And, it took a long time, but what we liked about access was it, with kite surfing, it was rotating around an axis. So a lot of the kite loops were spinning around an axis, jumps off axis. Axis is a pivotal moment as well.
It just, it, I don't know, it made sense and I like it and okay. You never know where a name you start with something and it changes to what the sport changes and it doesn't fit anymore. But I think access is a good name. I like it. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so then you got, so you got into kite foiling, keep going kite foiling, and then start foiling and did that in Christchurch a lot and developed stuff foils to a point we started doing that and we started using our original mask that we had back in the day.
And it was an OEM mask. It was only 15 mill thick aluminum, and it was pretty wobbly. And our first wings that we built were, nine, 20 sort of span. And we pretty quickly realized that mask just wasn't gonna work. While a lot of other companies were jumping onto. Sport and building product, we were desperate keen to build product, but we felt like everything needed to be redesigned.
And so starting with that mask, we worked out that for kite foiling, it was okay at about seven 50, but at 900, it was just a noodle and it was impossible to use. So we worked out that it needed to be 224% stiff. To be the same feel at 900. So that was our target figure. And we actually came up with our original 19 mil aluminum mass, which we still build now.
And that was, it was 224% stiffer than the original. And it was only an 8% weight gain. So when you build a, an aluminum extrusion, you can draw it up on the computer and you can analyze the bending moment of it and change. See the stiffness. You can work out how long a masks gonna be, how much it's gonna weigh, how stiff it's gonna be and analyze all that way before you even build it.
So we went through that and did that and came up with a 19 mill mast. Originally it was designed for sub foiling and relatively slow speeds. And it's absolutely fine for that. It's actually fine for winging as well, but as the sport has evolved and things have got going a lot faster 19 mills is thick and it's not perfect for high speed to foiling for example, but the stiffness we felt is really important.
And that's something that we've always run with our foils from day one. Yeah, I mean that the stiffness of the whole setup, not just the mass, but also the way the fuselage connects to the front wing and all that's what sold me on access and why I started using it.
And and also of course the many different wing designs you have available and always evolving with more and more. Yeah, so we'll get into the gear, but so then basically just wanted to finish the story of like how you got into this. So then from the making foils for standup paddling yeah.
So then what was the evolution from there? We also, as a sideline back then we built a foil for windsurf foiling and it was a 900 span. And I can't even remember how narrow the cord was, but was quite a narrow high aspect wing at the time. It was completely different to anything else.
And we ended up using it for surfing a lot and for prone and for for supp as well. And that was a turning point as of discovering that wings don't have to be these low aspect, big fat piggy things. So . Yeah. And that was the first wing that I used for the 900 was the first wing that I used when I went wing.
Okay. Okay. And then it's, it seemed like when you first started access, it was more focused on board building and so on. And now it seems like you're more focused on foils. What's your percentage of like foil sales versus board sales, what approximately? I don't know exactly without looking at a thing, but I we, I've spent a lifetime building boards and I feel like I've tried just about everything that you can try.
And very quickly I can say, yep, that works, doesn't work. And I know that, cause I know it inside out and then foiling came along and I didn't really know how to build hydrofoils. And just the way that I work, like I questioned everything, there was other foils on the market and, they were doing, Everything that like, for example, some of the early fours, the front wing was set at the same angle as the fuselage.
And I said why is that? And everyone said, oh, it's just how it is. And it's had been, the first people did that. And then everyone just copied that. And I tried to question everything that we did. And try and work out. I think if you can understand the reason for something, it makes it a lot easier to nut out what, how you're gonna build it better.
I try and do that with customers as well. When I'm talking to people, I probably give 'em too much information, but I try and educate them so that they can actually understand it and then they can make a sensible decision. Cause it kind makes sense. But that, that front wing fitting on there, for example, we, every foil that we analyzed has a, an angle of attack where like obviously more angle of attack you generate more lift a flatter angle of attack.
You generate less lift, but it can go faster. Every foil section has a different sort of sweet spot and you can analyze that. And our original wings, we set at about two degrees to the fuselage and now the modern a R T HBS they're set at one, one degree to the fuselage, the idea being that the fuselage is running.
For the most part through the water in a straight line, like an arrow, not dragging like this, not, up or down, just straight through that foil angle changes as you go faster and slower, but generally for most of you, you are riding it. It's running straight. Yeah. And I guess I like, and I know a lot of people shim their their plate Mount between, between the board and the plate Mount.
And that kind of, I guess if the board has, it seems if the board has a little bit of tail rocker, then the board you can lift up on the foil, but it's, I guess if the, I noticed that if the boy, if the foil is angled up too much, then when you're flying at high speeds, you end up flying with the nose slightly pointed downward, and then that's like catastrophic if you touch down because you're basically wipe out right away.
And it seems like it's easier, definitely easier to control the foil once it's up. If the nose is, if any, if anything, a little bit higher flying a little bit high than, or flat, but definitely not pointed downwards, right? Yep. I think with your board, when it, my fingers don't go straight anymore, but when a board touches down if it touches down tail first like that it's gonna crash pretty badly.
If it touches down those first, obviously that's complete disaster. You want it to touch about where the base plate is or just in front and it just pop back up again. So right. That the angle that you need to set your board at, and , generally when I build an access foil and an access board, everything works together with no need for any shim on the base plate, but right off using an access foil with some other board.
And there's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes you need to adjust the angle that the board flies on a little bit with a shim. Yeah, yeah. Cuz yeah, basically if you add more angle to the front wing that, that angle of attack it's a little bit easier to take off. Like the takeoff speed is lower a little bit, but then at the same time sometimes it's harder to control it at high, higher speeds.
I've not, I've noticed if it have too has too much angle, but yeah. So ideally if it's tuned you want it to be easy to lift off, but also easy to control at higher speed. So it should just run along without too much, lifting up or dropping down. It should just run along nicely.
I've actually just, I got pissed off with the whole shimming thing because it seems to be a complete and utter confusion for most people. And a couple of three days ago, I just wrote it, wrote, I sat down and explained it all and wrote it all down properly and we're actually adding it to our brochure and it will be in there.
And it explains shimming of the rear wing and also base blade shimming and. Like I said before, if you explain it to people, it's pretty basic. And once it's explained, it's a lot easier to understand happy to go through that a little bit and explain that the shim rear wing the shimming, the rear wing.
Yeah. Let's get into that. Yeah. I find that my, on my axis wings that I've used, I've been able to just use 'em without any shims not necessary, but I guess, yeah, I have tried adding the shim in the tail in the back, but I didn't really, how much do you weigh? Sorry, go ahead. Oh, how much do you weigh?
I'm like like 1 95 pound hundred 95 pounds. Which is I think around 90 or around, yeah. Around 90 kilos. So you're, you are the correct weight if you are the correct weight, same as me. Then everything should run smoothly. If you're outside that weight range, if you're really light or if you're really heavy, then adding some shims helps a little bit.
Okay. Just, I've got some bits here to try and explain it. There's your fuselage and there's your front wing and that bolts on that front wing there, this is an a R T 7 99. Access always does their wings by span, and I can go into that later as well, but that, that front wing is set at one degrees to, to diff fuselage the more angle of attack the more lift, the less angle of attack the faster it goes.
. I'll try and explain this as, as well at the moment now. So the angle that this wing flies at you can't trick the wing into riding at a different angle that rides at the angle that it wants to ride at. And more angle of attack is more lift and then less angle of attack is less lift. It happens.
I'll quit that stupid mail in, yeah, my mail app too. go ahead. When you are riding along it, if you are riding it too much of an angle of attack, the foiler will come up and will jump out of the water and you'll crash. If you're riding it too lower, an angle of attack, the foyer will drop down and your board will hit the water.
So you don't actually have to think about it, your wing automatically, you automatically set the angle of that wing so that it's about right for this. And the angle of that wing rides at is dependent on your weight and how fast you're going. So I generally set it all up for winging and around 85 kg.
So if you are, most of the wings will run straight, no gyms, no need for anything at if you are around about that weight now. So the front wings angled up slightly, one degree the rear.
This is a 3, 2, 5 that's actually angled downwards slightly. So the front one's angled up. The rear one's angled down. The reason that's angled down is it actually, and the foil sections upside down. So it's actually pushing downwards. That downward force actually pro provides a lifting force, which balances a against your front foot.
When you are foiling, you have a front foot pressure and back foot pressure. And you're basically standing around that wing and, trying to balance nicely on that. The size of this rear wing the bigger it is, the more force it, it gives you. And when you are learning and you are more clumsy, you need more force to actually balance against, but as you get better, you can use smaller and smaller wings and you need less to balance against.
So that back wing as stock on the fuselage. The progressive wings, that's angled downwards at one and a half degrees. So the most important thing about shimming is the angle between the front wing and the back wing. So if that front wing is angled up at one degrees, the back wing is angled down at one and a half degrees.
The difference between the two is two and a half degrees. So that number two and a half degrees, that's it. That's the one that actually matters. And that's the one that counts. Everything else is hoo-ha, the angle to a tree over there or whatever, it doesn't make any difference. This is the one and a half degrees.
This one degree here, two and a half degrees difference. Now the shim that we have, the stock ones that you can download and get is the that's a positive shim, and that is a negative shim. Now the reason for the naming convention on that, which here's the biggest confusion is because a lot of companies use something different on that now to get more front foot pressure, if you are heavier and you need a bit you want this rear wing to be more active, you need to angle it down a bit more.
That makes it do its job a little bit more so that if you add a degree of angle down this rear, Wing's now on two and a half degrees. So you've got one plus two and a half. You've got three. So I describe that as positive shimming. Because it's in addition to what the original one was three and a half, you mean?
Yeah, three and a half, three and a half. With the if you flatten it off, if you're lightweight or can cope with a flatter angle on the rear the wing, the foyer will run faster. But it'll be a bit more twitchy and a bit harder to balance unless you're smaller and then it'll be perfectly comfortable for you.
So if you reduce the angle of that rear, you've got one degree at the front, let's say you've reduced this one degree at the back. This is only now half a degree. So you've got a difference of one and a half degrees. So I call that a negative shin because the number is smaller than the stock. Does that make sense?
Yes. Okay. Much easier if you can talk about it in those terms, because the moment everyone talks to each other and says, oh yep. I've done negative Shing. Is that negative? Or is it not negative? No, there's no established terminology as to why it would be negative or positive.
I've seen some videos of some guys trying to explain it and I've sat through the whole thing. And at the end of it, I had no idea what they're talking about. how's the customer supposed to actually look at? I like how you, yeah. I like how you explain it as a difference between the front and the back. Do you have anybody that's shimming the front angle, the wing the angle of the front wing at all, or not really not re not really.
You can on an axis wing, you could actually put a packer in here. Yeah. And we have done that. And so the wing has got more angle of attack at the front. Yeah. But all that's gonna do is like I said before this wing finds its own way. So what are you really adjusting is the angle of the fuselage, right?
This is unchanged. Yeah. Yeah. No, makes sense. Yeah. Cause but basically you want the fuselage to be flying more or less parallel to the to the water surface. You don't want that to be dragging either direction. Yeah. Yeah. That's the end. But in with that in mind as when you take off, when you first take off, you actually have a slightly more angle of attack and then as you go faster and faster, you flatten that off.
So the angle of the fuselage is it's not absolutely always gonna be parallel to the water, but we said, so that when you're at your average sort of speed, it's generally going dead, flat parallel to the water. Load dry. Makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Adrian, I'm gonna, I'm going since we're talking about equipment and stuff, I'm gonna get into some questions here.
I got these questions from guys in New Zealand from Dan, our distributor, like he collected some questions for you from his friends. So the first question was regarding weight that, saying the access gear is heavy compared to other foils, any thoughts on developing a lighter high modus, mass and carbon fuselage?
And what effect does weight really have? When under the water. So can you talk a bit about the effect of the weight? Yep. As far as I I wouldn't say axis is heavy. I would say it's actually, like I said before, the stiffness of the mask, like the stiffness of everything, like the front wing, the way it joins to here is really important.
That joint is really important. The joint from the fuselage to the ma is critical. The stiffness of the mask is critical and the stiffness of the whole thing, if you've got wobble or play or anything, you, you lack control of that front wing, you are only riding that front wing. That's basically what you're writing.
So anything that compromises that attachment to the front wing is not gonna make writing better. It's gonna make it more difficult cuz it's wobbling round and not connected to you. I actually think. Access is a realistic weight. And I think that some of the ones that you might be comparing it to the mask is not sufficiently stable.
The joints are not sufficiently stable and if you were selecting foils and you would looking at the important things. The weight might be questioned number 234. And by the time you get to that question, everything else is eliminated anyway. So I don't agree. That is a heavy setup.
I think some of the other ones are actually too soft altogether. Yeah. And I would agree with that. That's in my opinion, like the act like the, yeah, the rigidity comes first and then the weight is in my opinion, like a secondary concern after rigidity and also the foil, because the foil is underwater.
And the, has the, basically a lower center of gravity than the board and everything above the water. It I think the weight on the foil seems to matter less than the weight of what's above the water. And I've, I've had an, a prototype early on that was CNC CNC out of a solid block of G 10 fiberglass.
And the front wing was like a, a heavy, beginner wing. And it was super heavy. And I thought it'd be impossible to use because it's so heavy, it was really heavy to carry to the water and stuff like that. But then in the water, it felt really solid. Like it had a very basically a low center of gravity.
It's like a keel. And even when I was flying it, it felt very very stable. So the, I guess the weight is not in, in a foiler and the fus slides is not always a bad thing. I would say. We've used G 10 to prototype quite a few of our rear wings. And it's, it's good for testing out.
It's not, ideally it's not really stiff enough. And as the wings become more high aspect, like the, that 7 99 that I had there before something that's long and skinny like that you build that in G 10, it's gonna be too floppy to even use. It's just not gonna be stiff enough. Yeah the rigidity is really important.
I, one of my favorite wings that I'm writing at the moment, it's I think it's a 1100 span. And it's got a mean average cord of about 89. So it's, and it's quite thin. But we built it in several different constructions. And one of the constructions, just as a test, we built it out of solid carbon all the way through the wing itself is about two and a half kilograms.
You give it to people and it's just, you just about drop it. It's really heavy. Ride's fine. I can't even feel any difference to it. I don't think weight is as important as a lot of people think. I do think there is a change to that, and that is if you are riding with your foil in the water.
So if you're toe foiling, if you are surfing, if you are winging, most of the things like if the foil is in the water, most of the time, no problem at all. But if you're doing freestyle, if you're doing jumps and spins and tricks, having a lighter weight mast and foil so that you can do your freestyle stuff, that would for sure be better, but yeah.
Also rotations and things. It's a massive compromise. It's a massive compromise for when you're falling along on a straight line, because you just lost that connection for. Yeah. Agreed. So then the next question was regarding foil design, are we fast approaching a point of peak performance for foils where we can't get much better and where to go from there?
No. I think we're just getting started. That's the fun part. Yeah. I agree. I think there's still so much R and D to do and things. It seems every time something new comes out, it's like a big jump forward. I don't think we'll that we're anywhere close to being at the point of peak performance.
I should poke that in there at this time. Yes. That's the new mass. So yeah we talked about this earlier, but you said you're just getting ready to release this. And I guess by the time I'm posting the interview, this is gonna be available, right. Yep. It's actually we're doing the release, but we don't necessarily have stock ready to send out.
We were trying, we normally, when we do a release, we actually have stock built and it's already to go. But in this case here, it's, taking time to build a decent amount of stock and there's too many people have seen this mask already. And they're asking questions and we can't really answer questions because, it's not officially released.
So we've had to just say let's do it. This is a seven 50 version of the axis power carbon mask. Now the power carbon ma comes in a high modules and it comes in a standard modules. Construction. Our previous carbon masks that we've done, they, they were not as stiff as our 19 mill menu mast.
But they were thinner like a 19 millimeter. Mast is an extrusion. So it's 19 mills top to bottom. So that means you're pushing 19 mills through the water, perfectly fine for a learner for SAP, for a lot of things. It's absolutely fine for dock start pump where the rigidity of the ma is really important, fantastic mask for that.
But with the advent of more high aspect wings and running faster it, 19 mills is just too thick. The new power carbon mask, the bottom section of the ma here, where it goes into the fuselage, the bottom 300 mils is about 15 mils thick, and then it gets thicker and thicker and a hundred mils down.
It's still 20 mils thick. When you Like when you design anything on computer, you can use finite element analysis and you can actually bend that mast and see where the stress in it is. And when you bend it, all of the stress is concentrated around this area here on a mast.
And you know that from all of the masks that have, failed in the shop, they always kink at the base plate or break there. So one of the most important things, if you wanna try to build a decent mask is that it's one piece, the fibers from here run all the way down and right through and into the base plate.
Any sort of a join in here to me seems like way too much of a compromise. This is the most important part of building a stiff mask. Back to the stiffness of this ma like the two versions the standard carbon one is 25% stiffer than the 19 aluminum. And the high medulous is 35% stiff.
Now that's a massive amount. And the first time I rode this ma I was using the 1 0 9, 9 wing. So sorry to interrupt you. But in terms of that, the, how do you measure the stiffness? Is it like torsional stiffness or side bending or like how do you define that? What I do is I bolt that ma to a wall and then at this end here, I hang 25 kilograms off these two bolts, and I measure the deflection at the sharp edge of the back of the mast.
So it's the sideways bending, yeah, sideways bending, but what about the torsional stiffness cuz that's really important as well, right? The twisting. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's one way of bending. So I isolate the both. So that purely then is only bending testing for sideways bend.
Yes. The other bend we do is we put a fuselage on there. We use a a standard fuselage because it's got the longest tail section on it. And I put a pivot point here to the ground, to a concrete floor so that the mask can no longer be in sideways at all. And then off the rear. Screw. I hang 25 kilograms and I measure the deflection of the fuselage at the end.
So that's measuring the twist force of the mask only. Okay. Poor little mask with 25 kg hanging off the back of the fuselage. It gets quite a twist in it. Yeah. And so that extra 25 or 35% stiffer, is that the case in both directions or cuz I know depending on how you lay up the carbon inside the carbon layer, the direction of the carbon makes a big difference on the, that torsional those stiffness, for sure. You can do it a lot with that. But the truth is to get a master stiff as the 19 mil aluminum ma it would need to be 19 mil stick all the way through. And you can't do that because of the, this is 15 mil, so it's lower drag down here. The torsional rigidity is about the same as the aluminum ma, but the sideways bend is a lot more.
Okay. Yeah. And yeah. When you write it the first ride I ever had on the high ulus mask, when we finally built one I was on the 1 0 9 9 and the mask was 900 length. The other thing is the length obviously is a big change. So if you're comparing the bend from one mass to another, you have to compare a seven 50 to a seven 50 or a, an eight 20 to an eight 20, or a 900 to a 900, as it gets longer, the movement at the end is gonna be longer just nature of how it is.
My first go was on a 1 0 9, 9 front wing a 900 power carbon, high modules. And it was the first time ever that I'd felt that connection to the front wing. I felt totally connected so I could carve and do whatever. You're talking about weight before this mask is not really any lighter than the 19 mil aluminum with a base plate and a do that in it.
But the stiffness in the field, the connection is just through the roof and it there's quite a big price difference too. They is, it cost by like almost 10 times as much as a aluminum mass. That's expensive. Yeah. Yeah. And so one thing I wanted to mention for that, those of you who are interested in getting a stiffer mass, is that what really makes a difference too is like you said, the length of the mass, obviously if you have a longer mass, you need, it needs to be stiffer, basically.
So if you're lightweight using a narrow WK span, smaller foil, Or yeah, or, and, or a shorter mass, you can get away with using a more flexible mask. And also in the surf, sometimes having a little bit of flex, you get used to it, but if you're heavier rider, if you're going fast and using a wider WPA, a bigger wingspan foil and you're yeah.
And you're going faster than in all those situations, I think that you really notice the mass flex, like it really affects the performance, even when you're doing down winters and just taking off with a big foil. If there's some mass flex, the whole setup feels very unstable and bouncy, you're always gonna have mass flex that's just the nature of it.
You've got, 900 mil away from your board. You've got a big foil. It's a long dangly thing. There's gonna be some movement. It's never I don't think you can get too stiff. With that in mind, we had a team rider in Australia and he's light, he's about 70 kg and he pumps for an hour, from wave to wave connecting.
And I sent him an eight 20 that's the lengthy rides of the. High mods and the normal medulous carbon. And he rode both and he was amazed, at how stiff the normal carbon was. But after writing both, he said, why wouldn't you have the extra stiffness, the stiffness it's more expensive.
And I think it's better. But like you said, if you are. A lighter weight person, if you're riding a smaller foil and a shorter mast, you'd probably, the other one's fine. But the high ulus is the stiffest good point about the stiffness? I think it's yeah. And for most people's stiffer is just gonna work better and I want to apologize, my camera's going crazy up here.
I don't know what's wrong with it. Check the settings, but I can't really do it right now, but anyways so another question here is what is now considered the fastest foil combo, in the fo in your range and what is the recommended access track positioning set up on a new boot planet?
Wingmaster fusing straps. I don't, that's something I can answer, but I guess you can answer the first part about the fastest foil combo. I guess the fastest at the moment would be the 7 99. And paired with either a a three 80 or a the high aspect three 80 rear or the like a 3, 2, 5 or a 300 rear would be considered the fastest setup we've got at the moment.
I guess the a R T range. What we've tried to do with that is make something that's really GLI and easy to use and fun to use. It was never intended to be the fastest wing in the world. It actually goes pretty fast, but the GLI is perhaps the most amazing thing with it. We are working a lot on more race stuff now for for down winding and we will have stuff we're doing a lot of stuff with James Casey, cuz he wants to, have race gear for down winding.
I should say while we're talking about that ma there like when we came out with that stiffer mast, loved it, amazing, huge difference, massive leap forward. But we also noticed that all of a sudden, we could feel flex in the front wing, the narrow high spec front wings. We could feel differences in that.
You could never feel that with a soft Damas because everything was just moving. But now with a stiffer mask, you can isolate that. So we've actually gone back and analyzed the flex and the wings and done all sorts of different constructions in the front wings to to stiffen them up and change the way that is.
And so construction is becoming far more, an important part of wing building. If you think back to the early days with the nine 20 with a massive cord and huge thick wing, The thing didn't flex much anyway, if at all. But some of the wings now, like there's a prototype I've been writing at the moment it's 1200 wide and it's got a mean average cord of 87.
It's 13.4 aspect ratio and it, wow. To get that to hold together is quite some trick. And again, a wing like that, there's just no way you could have used it on the old mast or even the aluminum cuz it runs too fast for that. This new mast for me is a huge breakthrough and it means that we can actually advance all sorts of things from here.
Okay. Like you also have that high performance speed range, but you're saying actually the a R T range or the a R T 7 99 is actually faster than the the high performance speed range. It has less cord it, it came before the its higher aspect. Yeah. Yeah, I describe any, when I describe any wing at all my, my way of analyzing it too is a bit different to a lot of other wings.
So the first thing I look at is the span, how wide is the wing? The next thing I look at is the mean average cord, the mean average cord is the different distance from the back of the wing to the front of the wing. The mean average cord is what's the average of the whole entire wing.
And then I look at the foil section that's been used inside to, to create that foil. And every foil section has a certain amount of Canberra in it. Canberra is the amount, it's a line that's halfway between the there's the top of the wing. There's the bottom of the wing. There's a line that's midway halfway in between that's the CAMBA line and that's curved upwards.
And if you compare that to a dead straight line, the cord line you look at it as a percentage. So every foil has a certain amount of camber. And generally it's between, one or two up to 4% or four and a half percent camber the higher, the camber, the higher lift at lower speeds generally.
And the flatter, the caner, the faster, the. Goes that wing. You've got there. That's the a, I T they're all a a two and half percent can in them. And it's relatively low drag. And what I like about this, the whole RT range is the glide. It just keeps on running and it's easy to use. I like the glide.
They are pretty fast because they've got quite a narrow cord. But if you want to go faster than that, you need a faster foil section and with a FA faster foil section, you also get other compromises in the performance. They're harder to get going. That don't work necessarily through such a wide range.
So you become wings that are very specific for certain tasks. The HPS, the BSC HPS, and a R T they're all a fairly general purpose foil section, which I would say is easy to use, relatively fast for what they are and fun and easy to drive to go beyond that, to really fast stuff is gonna take different portal sections and they won't be so user friendly.
Yeah. So I want to share a little bit my own experience. I was using for a long time using this one here that BSC seven 40, and this is a really nice wing. I really enjoy this for surfing it's like a nice all round kind of wing that carve well and so on. And then you recommended that I try this one here, the a R T 8 99, and it has a bigger wing span.
So it's wider. Move back a little bit, but it also but it has actually about the same surface area, I think, pretty close to the same surface area and what I noticed that yeah, it has amazing glide. Like it it just keeps keeps going once you it just has less drag, less it's more efficient.
So when you're coming or going through attack or something like that, it just keeps going a little bit longer. Like it, it just flies,
it just keeps going, running less drag, I'm also using the smaller tailing and then the short. This is the 3 23 25 tailing. Yep. And then the ultra short fuselage. And I've only used this a couple times. So the first time I used it I also was using a shorter mass.
So kind of everything, a little bit different. And the, first time I had to definitely get used to the different feel of it. But now I noticed I can get it going in about the same amount of wind. It seems like it needs slightly little bit tiny, little bit more wind to get going than this one.
This one has really nice, low end. Like you can fly really slow and also take off pretty easily for considering how small it is. But yeah, once you're going, it feels very efficient. You can go upwind. I can go upwind, I think at a steeper angle. And so on. And then, yeah, compared I also have this one here, the 700 that this one is the I guess that, is that the high speed or whatever it's called HPS.
Yep. HPS. Yeah, the 700. So this one has I think a thinner profile it's a really fast foil, but. It takes also takes more speed to get it going. And it stalls a little bit sooner than, also because it's a small foil. So this one I, I found for winging, it's only really good and really high wind.
When you have enough, plenty of wind to get it going. Yeah, you, this one, I think, is gonna be a good wing for me in any kinda conditions, not just strong win. I kinda, I'm kind the kind person that once I find something I like, I'm not. Changed it around a lot, just gonna get used to it. And then unless I have someone like you telling me to try something new I don't really, I just kind different.
And every that's the beauty of avoiding is you find what set up works for you. And everyone's got a slightly different idea of what they want to do. I hardly ever ride that 8 99 cuz for me, I like BLI. I like to drop my wing and just coast along surfing, near invisible swell. So I need a bigger span for that.
So I ride generally wings that are a thousand or 1100 span. But probably no more cord than that one. The span, the wider, the span, the more glide the bigger, the cord, the more hand. That's on. If you cut the cord down, it just cuts the drag and it just keeps on rolling. And that that lower drag you'll find on that 8 99, you'll sail through a gas and you're in a lull and the thing will just keep running.
It won't actually stop. Whereas if you're on your older thicker bigger, a bigger cord foil, there's more drag on it. And it wants to run down and slow down. Whereas that one, there just, it just keeps on going. There isn't much drag. So that's why they're so good for down winding as well, because they just don't once you're up, they don't slide slow down, little bit tricky to get up.
And you would've felt that the first time you had a go of it, you can't really use angle of. To actually get up. You need to almost, when you feel a lift coming, you almost need to hold it down and just do two much bumps to get up to speed, and then it just comes up and you're away. Yeah. If you pop it up too early, it just wants to stall or we install it up down.
Yeah, exactly. But that's pretty much normal with a high, little bit more high aspect flow. I noticed the other thing I wanted to mention is I switched from the black series, short fuselage to the advanced fuselage ultra short. And I noticed right away that holding them up against each other.
If you match the same mass, the mass in the same place, it's quite a bit longer in the front. Like this is the short versus the ultra short or yeah. And then in the back it's about the same difference in the back as in the front. So the diff it's. It's shorter in the front and the back by almost the same diff same amount.
It is exactly the same. So the ultra short is exactly the same length fus overall, but the, so are they both ultra short? No, no one is short and one is ultra short, but I noticed, yeah. The, yeah, so there, so the advance is a new one that we've just come out with and basically what it is like the ultra short is the same.
This is a good, this is a good chance to explain something here. So when we first started when we first started building four, this is back in the nine 20, the original first wing we ever did. We we actually put the mast directly on top of the front wing. And our theory was that from an engineering point of view, that was the strongest point to attach it.
And we went and forwarded it. It forwarded fine. But it didn't steer, like you'd try and turn and you'd just fall off the side. It didn't actually turn. And we thought perhaps the wing had too much turned down on the tips. So we started making some new tips for it. And the rearing was also doing some crazy stuff as well.
So we started experimenting with the rearing to try and change that. And in as, as well as that, we also built a fuselage with the mask further in a more sort of standard position in the fuselage and straight away we found that's it actually worked fine. After that, we actually built a whole series of fuselage with the mast in different positions.
Further forward and further back, the further back you have it, obviously the more challeng it is to the mast, torsionally it actually tries to twist the mask more. You can imagine if you had to fuselage at the rear wing you'd have no control over your front wing. There'd be just too much flex and movement.
So we found a spot that was a sweet spot and it worked pretty well. And since then from the thickest point of the front wing to the mast has remained the same distance. We've done everything that we've designed has been the same. Whether it's a red fuselage or a black fuselage, whatever wing, the thickest point is about the same distance from the mast.
And we've just run with that and that's worked pretty good. But a while back, we thought it's probably with the super high aspect wings we're doing as the cord gets narrow and narrow the distance between the ma and the front wing starts to look quite great. So we thought it was a good time to revisit that.
And so we built a bunch of black fuselage and we did them with again with a master all various positions. So the advanced fuselage is 40 mil further forward. So when you use it, you have to move the base plate 40 mils further forward as well, so that the wings are in the same place. When you're foiling your front wing, your sorry, your front foot and your back foot is balanced over your front wing.
Yeah. So that's exactly what I just wanted to mention, cuz that was part of the question too. Like when I was using the BSC with the short fuselage the mat, the basically the wing is a little bit more forward. So I had to move the plate pretty much all the way back. You can see the marking like from the rubber on the board, but this was the back of my plate Mount.
And then with the ultra short, there's like maybe like a difference where the foil is slightly further back. So I had to move everything up by, about that same close to that same amount. That fuselage is shorter in the front, basically. Ah, for me, that's what kind of how it worked out.
The advanced Fu lies definitely needs moving forward, but it is slightly complicated and that is the, a RT also because it's such a straight across wing. If you consider the BSC the thickest point of the front wing actually has some curvature as it goes out. Your average lift, if you like for that front wing is slightly further back with thet.
They're relatively straight across cause the pips are quite far forward. And that means that when you go from, if without changing the fusel loads, take the fuselage change outta the equation. When you change from the BSC to the a I T the a, I T probably needs to go back about 20, 30 mil in the box to get the center of lift in about the same position.
But then, so I guess it's a combination of the fuselage being being closer or like the fuselage being shorter between the mass and the front. And also the, I guess the thickest part of the foil is a little bit further back on this wing than on this one. It's a little bit further forward, right? Is that what you're saying?
The thickest point's sort of, not that different in those two wings, the thickness is very different and there's a lot of other things that are different, but the percentage point of the thickest point is about the same in those two foils. Okay. I should explain more about that. So that, that what I, yeah, what I'm saying is cause the cord is smaller.
So then if you look at the thickest point, like you said, it's about a third back or whatever. So it's about here versus the, if you have a wing that has a thicker wider cord than that center of the thickest part of the foil is a little bit further back, right? Wouldn't no. So that the thickest the thickest point of the BSC.
The thickest point of that front wing is about the same as the thickest point of the a R T. Okay. They're about the same, but obviously, because it's got bigger cord, the front of the wing goes further forward. The back of the w goes further back, but the thickest point we've always done about the same.
That's how we've done it. We've set them all up with the thickest point of the wing about the same from when to wing,
but the fuselage you were mentioning there,
that's an advanced fuselage compared to a normal one. So the normal ones here, the advance is 40 mils further forward, and simply what they done. And another difference too, is that it has thicker sidewalls, right? Like I it's a little bit more beefy, right?
That's they're about the same. I'm trying to look at them there. There's not a lot of difference in it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I thought it looked a little bit thicker. Like the sidewalls were a little bit more beefed up. I thought it's about the same design, but it's just further forward. So the position of that mask, so you're writing your front wing and your feet are balanced around that front wing.
So when you go for an advanced fus, large, you move the base plate 40 miles further forward. So your wings are in the same place and your feet are in the same place nothing's changed. But the only thing that's changed is the position of the mast for forward and backwards. Relative to everything.
Now that mast is a bit like your fin position in a surfboard. If you move AFIN forward in a surfboard, it makes it looser. If you move it further back, it makes it more stable. And at a faster speed . So the position of that ma is it affects the way it rides. So the advanced fuselage moving the mask 40 mil further forward, hence the name advance.
The reason for that is for a more surfing situation. So if you're riding prone or ORs, or even if you're winging, but you are primarily trying to ride waves, the advanced fuselage is a, it does the job better and feels a lot better for that. There's some negative effects for it as well.
Our normal fuse with the mass further back is a lot more stable at winging speeds. When you're going faster. Also when you're trying to go up wind you can drive against that mast and it goes up wind a lot better on our standard fuselage. So for most people, probably the standard fuselage is just perfect and there's no need to change anything.
The advance is more for people that are dedicated, trying to surf and in a surfing situation. It seems to go from, we say rail to rail, you've got your wing in the water. So it goes from side to side in a smoother way, you don't get a power spike with a mass further back, you tend to turn and then it gets a bit of a power spike.
The same with you turn, when you go the other way with a mask further forward, it just seems to smooth it out. And it feels more like a surfboard turning. Yeah. So one thing I was surprised by with the the a R T range was that it, it feels really actually pretty easy to carve from rail to rail. As compared to other high aspect flow that I've tried that have more of a stiffer feel.
So how did you achieve that? So if we grab that it's pretty hard to try and show it in there. This is an a R T 7 99. So as this wing goes out, the tip is actually twisted off this way. Okay. It's lifted up. And the idea of that is that it's supposed to give the wing more range. I told you before that you are, you have your angle of attack that you're riding on.
And as you go faster, that gets lower and lower, that gets flatter and flatter. If you think of that tip, which is lifted up, as you get flatter, the tip might actually be pointing downwards and creating negative lift. And with that in mind, the very last fall section and the tip of that wings actually symmetrical fo section.
So it's neither lifting, it's just a foil section, a parallel foil section. So we put that in there really just to give the foil more range, which it does do, but a weird side effect of that is when you tip it over to turn, the blade is twisted like a helicopter blade or a, a propel blade.
And it just pivots around that. And some of these wings, they're very straight across and it's not what you'd imagine a surfing wing should look like. But they surf unreal. They turn really good. And some of our prototype stuff, we've taken that to even more of an extreme. And, you historically, we always thought that you needed sweep in the outline of the wing to make it surf, but I don't believe that.
So some of the wings that I've had that are just the straightest ugliest straight across wings ever ridden if you can get the twist right in it, you tip them over and they just turn beautifully. Interesting. Okay. So a little bit of a twist in the wing and change, and basically, so they have a different profile in the center versus the tip is symmetrical and the center is more.
It's the same foil section all the way out. Yeah. But just the very last foil section that we've put in thet is a symmetrical foil section. I see. We should talk about the tip of that. W too, like people say, why isn't that to a point with a wing that with the Reynolds number of water, as you get to a smaller point the if it came out really skinny here, there's a bit where it just becomes drag.
It's not actually doing any beneficial lift or anything. So we thought just to chop it off and it, what it does is it makes the wing more E. So this is a 7 99 wing. It actually behaves like a slightly wider wing. It's almost got that Phantom tip on there, still this but you don't have the drag of that.
Yeah. It's interesting. It's also better if you hit the bottom yeah, it's better if you stick it into yourself, it's not quite so gnarly. That's true too. Yeah. Okay. Here I have another question. Can us older 55 year old guys go as fast as the young guns for that one? I would say watched last, the last interview with Alan Cade on Mau he's yeah, he's 60 and he just beat everyone in the race, including yeah.
Guys like Kilen and stuff. So definitely you can still go fast at any age, I would say. Yep. And then can the HPS wing be pushed as hard? Go as fast as a R T wings, if they are similar sides. Not really, they have more cord, so they're never gonna go fast as an a R T I think I describe wings a little bit differently.
Like I'd ID, I'd primarily look at the span. That's the most important thing to me. And then I said after that, the mean average cord, and then I'd analyze the foil section that was used, how much can it's got. And then after that I might go to the color of the. Whether it's blue or red or black or carbon or whatever.
And then after that, I might consider area. So I guess what I'm saying is area is something that I just don't even take any notice of whatsoever. I might look at volume before I look at area. A lot of wings are described by area, which, is a bit of a nonsense to me. The span is the most imp
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