I was just wondering if any of the kiters on here have tried building a foil? i have found a few basic builds on google and a french forum but that is prity hard to navigate even when translated. I have started a build but going mritty much 100% of what i have seen pics of and making the rest up as i go along.
has any one built one that can share any advice?
I don’t know if this will help as I have not yet built a foil, but am hoping to in the future.
There is a website (www.KiteHydrofoil.com) that has alot of very useful information. One friend of mine did build a few & he used a foam wing from a model airplane that he got from a hobby store as the core of the keel & wrapped in mutiple layers of carbon. I’m not sure how he built the fuselage. Sorry. The front & rear wings were built from multiple layers of carbon ((like a fin build).
Another friend, is trying to build one right now but hasn’t gotten very far. He used a piece of 1/8" plywood as the core of his keel & will wrap in carbon & foil it like a fin. He cut the wings from a sheet of Herrex (similar to divinicell) & glassed them in carbon. I don’t know how he’s making the fuselage.
Hope this little bit of info helps. Good luck.
cheers thanks for that any extra info is helpfull. i have gone with prity much a that looks about right aproach so far so will just have to see what happens, there seams to be some quite contrastind designs out there.
cheers thanks for that any extra info is helpfull. i have gone with prity much a that looks about right aproach so far so will just have to see what happens, there seams to be some quite contrastind designs out there.
i got the foil finnished however we havnt had any wind to try it so i jumped on the cable ski and blow and behold the dam thing worked!
Looks a bit like a typical liquid force or stringfellow type, but I’d love to hear the details, awesome that you got it working and in short order!
That looks great , I have a question because I want to do something similar…What did you do to attach it to the board??
the mast was about 4 layers of 200 uni and 2 lareys 200 plain but layed on the 45deg vac baged over xps. the fuz was a bit of windsurf mast and the foils were burch ply then glassed. i tock a mould of a tuttle box fin and made my own deep tuttle finbox and cast the head onto the mast.
thanks for the info, I will do some more research…
the thing that suprised me a little was how the pice of mast i used for the fuz has alot of twist (athough i realise they are not realy desined to twist( so i would advise perhaps building the fuz a little more solid and allso with some biax. I used no calculations it was all guess work so im sure there are improvements to be made.
I think the thing with the windsurf mast twisting is that the tip of it is not subject to twisting loads, since the mast sleeve/sail rotates around it, so it is not designed to resist them. I would try to fix this by wrapping it in a layer of +/-45 carbon.
lurking
yea i didnt realy think about it at the time i just thought that as it was so beefey (it was a rdm mast) that it would be fairly stiff but thinking now it makes sence. At some point i will probably re build the fuz maybe from plywood and carbon or perhaps make a mould.
just bought a slingshot hoverglide foil, now I need to build a board for it, anyone have any input on strap inserts placement in relation to the foil mast base? since I’m at it I think I would install inserts for both kiteboard and windsurf strap placement.
Charlie, I didn’t know you had access to a cable ski waterpark. If you try those new foils on flat water I’m sure you’ll see just how stable they are.
Can’t wait to hear how it goes !!!
tgray,
Do it strapless. Why limit yourself. Strapless frees you up, its safer, and where everyone goes once they get good. I can’t tell if this embedded video is going to work, so here is a direct link https://vimeo.com/167964165
On the same day this video was shot, I had the local pro level kite foiler take my windsurf foil for a ride with his 8m kite. He had no issues, rode it like it was nothing, strapless. He said my Horue LW foil was the most stable foil he’s ridden and he’s ridden almost everything. His personal foil is the one you just bought. Setup with Slingshots tinest board. Ridden strapless.
windFOILmachines 5.0 session from fishersfort on Vimeo.
strapless? sure, after I’ve passed the beginner’s flailing stage, but for now I’ll happily do everything I can to make learning as painless as possible, and since I need a board ,might as well install inserts before the glass and deck pad goes on,
I can always remove them later, I kite on a strapless surfboard but when the wind and waves get good I prefer riding with straps
After seeing your picture at the cable park I was reminded that we have one in Orlando about an hour away from me. so I went there last weekend with my foil attached to the surfboard that I reinforced a few years ago. The main and advanced cable system was too forcefull at the startup to try it, so I just wakeboarded with my son for a few hours. But I did learn that they have a teaching cable system with full control over the speed that will be ideal, but I need to make a reservation to use it.
But better than that I was offered by a friend of a friend who does a lot of kite foiling to do some testing behind his jetski, and I will also be able to try his foil, so I’m prettty exited about that.
I also learned through my research that Slingshot sells foil parts, including masts of different lengths and mounting brackets so I can just concentrate on foil design.
Yes the cable ski is handy however it’s very shallow and I keeped hitting the cables that hold the sliders in place which was interesting.
That’s why my struts are short so you can foil into the shallows, the other benefit is that the longer the mast/strut the greater the drag leverage from the foil. That would be cool to have a waterpark handy for testing.
