dieseagull forum posts in last 60 days

I wish there would be a few colours other than black. I know gong have the yellow shirt which is a good start, but everything else is black (or black and white which isn't much better).

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Piros said..
The new Apple Ultra 3 . Can also use Satellite with no subscription fee pretty dam amazing, This is a life saver. .

Just to add though, the satellite thing is only free for 2 years, and without the satellite it still needs a connection to the mobile network or to a mobile phone.

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marc5 said..
After reading about a Maui outrigger canoe paddler who was rescued two miles offshore because his smart phone allowed his location to be broadcast, I'm thinking it may be time to get a smart watch. I'm in the Android universe, and it needs LTE/cell service. Does anyone have experience with such an Anroid phone. And are they also useful for speed measurements? Thanks

I think there's basically two options:

1) A normal GPS watch for tracking but carrying your phone with you in a waterproof pouch. The watch could connect to your phone via Bluetooth and allow you to use the watch as a speakerphone, and trigger SOS calls via a series of button presses on the watch (will vary between watch to watch). The watch requires connection to your phone for connectivity to the outside world.

2) A watch with its own mobile connectivity, this basically means the watch has its own mobile signal and can make and receive phonecalls or SOS calls without connectivity to your mobile phone. This is probably a better solution but also more expensive: typically you need to pay for mobile connectivity for the watch, on Telstra in Australia this is like $5 per month on top of your existing phone bill, and the watches that support this tend to be more expensive. As an example, a list of garmin models that support this are here www.garmin.com/en-AU/connectivity/

What kind of valves do Armstrong wings use? They look a bit like a boston valve except the pump hose doesn't thread onto the valve.

In any case those are fine but I preferred the SUP-style valves on my NP wings. They're less bulky and have fewer parts to thread together.

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berowne said..
I'm going to swap out the windsurfer ones and get some thin flat straps that are easier to stand on!

My favourite were foam straps that still hold their shape (so easy to get into) but are lighter and less bulky and don't hold water the way padded windsurf straps do. I had a PPC V-strap which broke on me (got a warranty replacement) and it was great apart from the fact that it broke. The Armstrong straps look really good too. Not sure you'd really want to make a habit of standing on them though.

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CJW said..
I also don't really understand why anyone would sacrifice the added control with straps and for what benifit?

Agree with pretty much everything you're saying, but there were a few reasons I removed footstraps (and one big reason to add them that I totally forgot to mention).

My reasons to remove them were to experiment with foot placement over the foil (given a consistent foot position). I've found foot positioning not particularly intuitive in the sense that I can find multiple foot positions that "work" for me but aren't ideal and I'm unwittingly compensating by doing something else e.g. standing too wide or weighting my feet unevenly to compensate for my front foot being too far forward. Getting rid of the straps allows me to play around with this without moving the mast. With toeside riding, I also found that while footstraps initially helped me learn this, what also helped was positioning my front foot further forward and outboard than I do while riding heelside. Not sure exactly why this works for me, and probably related to the first issue, but again removing footstraps has helped me experiment with this.

The other big benefit I totally forgot about is it helps keep the foil away from your body when falling, which is very relevant for windsurfers as we take that for granted but don't have a mast and boom anymore. Earlier on I had one or two nasty taco-type falls where I fell towards the foil, and now that I think about it the original reason I put the footstrap on was so I could have some control over the board's orientation during a fall. Thankfully haven't had any of those falls for a while, but I definitely see myself going back towards front footstraps when I get into riding larger swells where higher speeds and the risk of flipping a board becomes a factor.

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CJW said..
Having straps, the front ones only to start, makes so much of a difference to the control, foot placement and general consistency when wingfoiling I honestly don't know why people would not use them

Speaking for myself, over the last 18 months of wingfoiling, straps helped with some things and made some other things harder. It makes board control easier but it makes it much more sensitive to correct foil placement on the board,and stance over the foil. I've put straps on twice and taken them off twice at various points throughout my progression and I've been riding strapless for about the last 4 months. Might go back to front straps at some point. But I guess my point is from the perspective of an absolute beginner straps aren't all upside.

To me it doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong at all. I think it would be worthwhile talking to the shop about what's happening but my suspicion is there's something about your specific wing that's causing an issue. There have been other comments on here recently about someone with a wing that had a small piece of metal needlepoint stuck in a seam on the inside of the strut that repeatedly popped their strut bladder. Maybe its something along those lines that's causing your problems.

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AndyRG said..
Hi All
Just looking for a bit of advice
I've got a Naish ADX which ive managed to pop the strut twice.Basically used the wing at the lake, brought it home, layed it flat on the concrete in the garage which is nice and clean, inflated the leading edge, then inflated the strut. It made a noise near the valve, then basically popped and deflated instantly.Just was wondering if anyone has any advice on what im doing to cause this?When drying the wing, should I just leave it on the ground deflated?

Thanks

Not that I'm any expert but I don't see why inflating something that's designed to be inflated would be a bad thing to do regardless of why you're doing it. So it shouldn't pop just because you're inflating the wing to dry it and not to use it.

Does Naish provide any recommendations or guidance about what order to inflate the bladders in? I know my old brand (neil pryde) recommended always blowing up the strut before the leading edge. Armstrong doesn't seem to provide such a strong recommendation so I don't know how important it is.

I'm a former windsurfer who did 5-10 sessions of windfoiling before swapping to wingfoiling. I'm now a beginner/intermediate who can gybe and is starting to tack. Lots of great advice here so I'll just say four things.

1) Footstraps: I found putting the front footstraps on the board was quite intuitive for me and provided a bunch of benefits, like getting the board out of the water when pumping, staying on the board when it was choppy, transferring power into forward motion (especially in chop), recovering from touchdowns and when stuffing the nose. It also helped learn toeside riding. Once I cracked that I took the straps off again and have been riding strapless since. I recommend setting up the front straps to be quite long (i.e. the outer holes) so that you can wiggle your foot forward and backward while still in the strap.
2) Toeside riding: I don't think anything in windfoiling transfers to toeside riding. I found that getting up and foiling heelside was pretty intuitive but if I made it around a gybe I wouldn't be able to ride toeside for more than like a second - I'd basically just fall off immediately. It eventually just clicked, but having the front strap on the board helped me control the board even if my front foot is lifting at the heel. You definitely want to learn toeside riding because you can't really gybe without it, so I think it makes sense to really focus on learning it.
3) Footswap: When gybing you probably instinctively want to footswap when coming through the gybe. This isn't gonna work like it does with windsurfing. Stick to riding out toeside and then once you can ride toeside for some time, start learning the footswap.
4) Foil safety: with windfoiling you've got the benefit of the mast & boom which effectively keeps the bottom side of the board i.e. the foil away from you. You don't have this benefit with wingfoiling and you can easily have the board go one way and you go the other way and fall towards the foil. It's pretty scary and I don't really have any advice for solving the problem except just being conscious of it and trying to avoid scenarios where you're falling off the outside of the board.

Enjoy - I think the feeling of foiling with a wing is far more enjoyable than the feeling of foiling with a sail.

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CH3MTR4IL5 said..
a tiger that I hit at speed and snapped my board a fair way offshore at Scarborough

Far out that doesn't sound fun!