Thanks for that Scot , I didnt have my glasses on. ( silly old bugger)
I think McT’s idea is a corker, its takes a familiar component and gives it a twist, another direction for people to fart arould tuning their boards. FCS can have it as a construction option and introduce a range of speciality fins just for that application.
And the best part is that it looks new but it doesnt actually break new ground so its non threatening to the status quo.
Its brilliant, wish Id thought of it.
I spoke to a pro recently who had helped the company he worked for develop a quad pop-out for production. The pro personally rode thrusters and preferred them. By the time he had finished the quad project, he had pushed the rear fins in off the rail, like in the photo. The board went into production with rear fins farther off the rail than normal. He said it gave more drive, like a thruster setup. Maybe it was closer to his foot size too?
4 ways actually has this in the range (soon to be released) i designed the off-set feature a couple years ago.
moving your fins towards the rail (for more response) or deeper in towards the stringer makes a big difference to the board's performance (w.r.t "Drive") and "Hold"
the fine-tuning of fin positions in my opinion is the way of the future, it will truely allow shapers to maximize their board's performance for their customers...
to fine-tune in only one direction is limiting tho.
i have never tried my quads with the rear quad fins having "negative" splay,
I think i should give that a go this weekend, swell permitting,
i'll let u guys know how it goes, i have 2 quads that i can test in my quiver,
i'll just change the 4 way "inter-discs" and change the splay from it's current 6 deg to 2 deg first and then try my centre foils (which are 90 degrees dead-straight) and use the 4 deg (rotate it around) to get a negative 4 deg to test the feeling i'll get ....
either way, i just have to change the discs to get to this result, and no re-drilling/routering and re-setting of boxes to get this to work...
Splay or 'toe-out' as its also called results in a grabby erratic effect. I remember putting fins in with the tips angled towards the centre and I thought it would make the board turn sharper and faster but it made the board very twitchy and unstable.
Everyone should be inquisitive enough to try all the different ways of assembling each fin system, just in case they discover something amazing.
How many people have gone for a surf with only one side fin or the fins in backwards or two fins in a single box ?
cant say for sure, as the picture is small, but it appears to me to be an fcs-type plug with 3 fin slots. i wouldnt think that it allows for changing the toe only sideways adjustment to the placement of the fin.
This didn’t help either… the difference in toe angle between slots would be small though…
... still I'm not sure a precise accommodation for toe is a part of
the design... you can't accommodate for such changes with out the
board specs. The slots appear to be fixed. But even if the whole
thing sort of swiveled in place once installed, it wouldn't make the right changes, unless the swivel adjusted each slot accordingly. Of course, this doesn't make it a bad product - the thing is what it is. And, admittedly, I don't exactly know what it is for sure -i.e. I'm just guessing here (based on what I read and can see.)
… that is one mother of a plug though, I wonder if the torques will work against it structurally once installed -i.e. when the fin is either in the outer or inner most slot… probably not, these are small distances, but then again, with torques distance is a multiplier (it’s a lever argument.)
