About a year ago I got Fone Rocket Air 125L and a Gravity 1800 foil.

Considering I'm 70kg I wanted to focus on learning fast with a large board and foil. Since then I put about 20h into the sport but I haven't progressed as much.
My board doesn't have rails and has a fixed mount point and I cannot slide the mast.

I finally have enough experience to understand the problem:

When taxing I need to stand back because otherwise the board wants to nose dive as I pick up speed.
When getting on foil I have to drastically move myself forward to counter the lift.

This has been hindering me greatly. I do not have enough experience to understand the movement and it's extremely easy for me to under or over-correct.

I have tried a rented setup and I started foiling instantly without any issues.

Now, I have a choice. Do I swap the board or the foil?

Swapping to a board with rails would help this problem, and I was thinking about getting something like an Armstrong Wing Sup from 2020, however I cannot easily transport a larger board so I would be downsizing to probably something around my weight - which again may be a risk and slow me down in learning as I do not know how much different it will feel with a smaller board.

Another option I was thinking of is a foil with less lift. However that is a risk again due to not knowing which foil to get and maybe end up in a similar or even reverse issue where a smaller foil would be harder to get started lower winds.

Please give any advice you can.

just tune the foil for less lift. thim the angle of the stabalizer so its pointing up (towards the board) more. you can use piece of plastic cut from packaging etc. I the case of a top mount fuse like F one you would add a piece of plastic to the front of the wing to increase the angle. This will move the center of lift and your balance point back.

You could get tracks installed into your board by your local board repair guy.

come on people read the post. Board doesn't have tracks because its the inflatible. Can't move back in the tracks - can't have a local shaper instal tracks (this is a crap idea anyways - tracks installed by a local surfboard shaper would have a lifespan of about 30 min foiling). Just do the tail tune to decrease lift.

Absolutely ditch that board. You need one with real tracks in it so that you can progress to other foils and not constantly be trying to decode the shim needs of every other foil you try. You also don't need to be wasting your time hopping forward and backwards on a board because the foil placement doesn't match the balance point. I've done that too, it sucks.

The gravity is just fine as a first foil. Lots of people learn on it and it gets the job done. You'll outgrow it quickly, but for now, get a real board.

Like one of the other posters said, you need more water time I think. That looks like a short board for the volume so you have given yourself more of a challenge of learning the balance front to back on the water and then the change to accommodate flight. However if you had to change one thing or the other I would say the board needs to change also to give you more flexibility for foil placement. Having said that that board and foil should fly no problem hence the more water time comment.

BWalnut said..
Everyone is different with their ability to balance on different widths.

Now that you mentioned this, before I got my setup I had two different boards during two learning sessions. I remember that one of them was significantly easier even though it had similar or lower volume. I vaguely remember the easier board to balance on was wide but not as long. I think it was maybe even 90l or something like that..