[quote="$1"]
Yep that's all there is to it Hunty--try both kinds yourself....but...if you can't feel the difference, and you're a "kook" as you say, it still won't mean much. Whether or not it makes a difference is for people who can surf to say, innit?
[/quote] i would disagree with that and say that if the product is being marketed to me as performance enhancing yet due to my ability that performance is small enough that i dont get any benefit then you could say that i was somewhat mislead
I don’t have the time to think of a (good) Viagra joke…
but come on.
Would you buy the ones that said they were only for people who had enough ability or whatever to feel the difference?
[quote="$1"]
I don't have the time to think of a (good) Viagra joke...
but come on.
Would you buy the ones that said they were only for people who had enough ability or whatever to feel the difference?
[/quote]
Viagra is probably not the best example as you would know for sure if you needed it.but yeah i know what you are saying.the point i was trying to make is that any surfer of any ability is qualified to make the decision of performance of gear because it is all relative to the individul imo.style of surfing, type of surfing(ie long boarding vs short boarding), ability.it is all pretty subjective to what you are doing.the marketing attitude that the pros should be the bench mark for what constitutes what gear is best and what we should want is not necessarily the best.for example how many Ppl are you there on pro size chips not getting any where surfing wise because they are following what the marketing has influenced them to.we have racing cars built with the help of car companies and the best drivers in the world performing in them but we dont have performance as it relates to them as the main focus for the marketing of cars.in fact its probaly the smallest part of the car market.
Hey kcasey,
No testing with real fins, but boy do I have some ideas. I just played around with the airfoil simulators posted earlier in this thread…
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.html
Check it out. In the simulator, if you do a symetrically foiled fin 4 degrees you get almost the same numbers for lift as an asymetrically foiled fin (flat on one side) at 8 degrees.
What I realized was that if you are going across the wave, a double foiled fin set on the board at 0 degrees would basically have the same hold as your typical asymetrically foiled side fin set at 4 degrees. Keep in mind the board is going accross the wave in my fantasy world, so your 4 degrees of toe is higher in relationships to the force of the water.
The part I didn’t mention, and the big question for me was how do you get that rail/fin combo to stick as well as that toed in fin as you’re bottom turning. I have a feeling the flappy bits on the back of DT’s hatchet fins help keep the fin from cavitating. I landed on a great page about insect wings flexing and creating vortices that got me thinking about flex fins. Maybe by summer I’ll have some real world examples to show.
Ok, so I’ve been thinking a lot about Daniel Thompson’s claims on his blog about his MPH boards using simmons concepts and 0 degree fin toe (to go faster of course!!). To make sense of this concept I went and played around with the foil simulators posted on this thread and started with a single sided foil at 4 degrees. It generated a little under 3000 lbs lift in the simulator. I then tilted it to 8 degrees and made it a double sided foil. The result was pretty close to the same amount of lift. Here’s how I’m interpreting this on a surfboard…
At least in a simulated environment, with an added 4 degrees more AOA (ie. 0 degree toe), the double sided foil with generate a similar amount of lift to a single sided foil with 4 degrees less AOA (ie. 4 degrees fin toe matching water flow direction). If you just think of the side fin in the wave face, when you reduce toe to 0 you get that 4 degree increase in the angle of attack. I would imagine that with a wider camber on a double sided foil, with a short base, and DT’s thinner very release oriented rail it would give similar performance to the standard high performance set up of 4 degrees toe. Certainly on an alaia, concave and a skinny rail creates plenty of lift/hold.
So you actually tested some fins? If so, would you mind giving a little more (actually, make that a lot more) detail. But even if you're just referring to some calculations, more detail would also be nice (diagrams, etc. are always a plus).
Thanks,
kc
they have some toe
Hey Knowaloha,
Thanks for the pic, is it an MPH? If so are the fins foiled 50/50? I’m still stuck on the idea of how to make fins work with 0 toe. Seems like if you can get the fin to hold at a high AOA it would be able to do bottom turns. Maybe I’m really not getting this, but it seems like it would be faster without the drag of adding toe.