djdojo said..
Yeah, wind range spacing seems odd.
In my conditions (Port Phillip Bay), if I’m on a smaller para, I’m also on a smaller foil.
To be credible for me, the low end for the 2.7 should be what it takes to get up on a small foil ( in my case 570 UHA), and the low end for the 4.5 would be what it takes to get me up on something big (970). The 3.5, somewhere in between (for me, 770 or 670).
If I’m down on the ocean, there may be big bumps but light wind, so I’ll have a big para with a small foil, but never the other way around.
Actually about a month ago I was out in 30-45 knots on my spitfire 1180 ( 1180 span 1500cm2) that’is my biggest foil. We had the biggest storm we’ve had in a few years in Perth we were on the swan river though so there’s almost no fetch. Downwind only in that wind. Barely able to control my 3m pt skin long enough to get it tucked away but once I did it was a fun surfy run. The big foil was the right size for the still quite slow bumps on the river.
We get plenty of days in Perth winter where the wind is strong and gusty but not a good direction to create bigger bumps so a big foil small para is the best setup.
Anyway thats totally beside the point. It would be great if there was a standard measurement for wind ranges like they have for car mileage but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. A brands stated wind range should be taken as a rough guesstimate only.
What I’m really interested in finding out is can a double skin with the PAL to increase camber create more low end grunt than a single skin? I think there’s a chance that it could. If you take a good solid clean airfoil from the double skin, perhaps there will be very little flutter and it may stay more solid in pumping, then you increase the camber to give it as much low end grunt as possible maybe it does create more power than a single skin. A single skin is more like a parachute using more raw grunt whereas the double skin would be more like a wing creating lift.
It’s an interesting question. I guess we will know the answer for sure in the next couple of months.