tonyk said..
Not sure of your location Mushin.
Best advice I got was to try to ride the same foil as guys I sail together with.
We feed off each other and it helps the learning curve lots.
Don't fall into the trap that it will be much easier if you buy the same foil as the pros use.
High end foils are great but you are splitting hairs in performance until you are pro level.
EG; if others in your area are on IQ Foil that might be the best option.
Cheers
TK
You provide reasonable advice I agree!
However from what I have seen and knowing that these guys are not PWA Pros, probably not even close, even if they are better than me I doubt that it's just their skill and tuning providing the stability of flight.
At the beginning of the season there was one guy with some Patrik foil, probably the Aeon Foil, and it was obvious when you saw him how stable the setup was, it might also have something to do with the Neilpryde Flight Evo Sail and board.
But again I think the main culprit is the foil.
I looked at this video from Nico Prien:
.
Funny thing is even if he says the beginner foil is more stable it seems to me he is struggling a bit more with keeping the ride height constant on the beginner foil than on the race foil.
This reminds me of the video from Mario Kumpel when he talked about the Aeon Foil from Patrik, saying anything from before is not comparable at all to the Aeon foil. Especially in stability. Also stating that the low end beginner foils are not nearly as developed as the best race foils. And basically if you want good stability you have to pay for the top gear.
He said something like this: "Finally a foil that flies and goes fast without the feeling like you are going to die!"
As for my Alpinefoil, I chose them way back in 2018 and stuck with it, I spent time chasing the lightest wind and optimal conditions.
It was probably the best available choice back then but they took a route of developing their own board and this resulted in a very short fuselage initially.
This gave me a lot of trouble as a beginner i just could not take off the setup was not in balance in the winds I tried. Years later i bought the 122cm fuselage from them and now the setup is quite good in very light wind like 6knots-8iknots max. Everything is great if the wind is stable, however controlling it in the gusty Croatian winds is a challenge. I think in the recent years they stopped developing the windfoil range because all the customers are now wingers, wave riders or pump foilers.
They market the wings like compatible for all disciplines but I don't believe you can have everything. So I am starting to consider buying a foil that is finely tuned just for wind-foil.
With the winds i have available here I am on the foil 90% or more so a more expensive foil is acceptable considering I get a lot out of it.
I still have ideas to try out on my gear. In addition you encourage me to try out different combinations of the gear I have.
Today I might have the necessary conditions to do that. Maybe I find a better combination and tuning for the mid range gusty conditions 6-15knots.
