I've been tuning my gofoil setup pretty agressively vs stock and wanted to share my observations.

Riding prone, 100kg, gutless conditions. Coming from a Kujira 1210 which was fantastic but kept falling apart. Going to gofoil mostly for durability once I saw that an acceptable wing (RS) was on the way.

Got a NL160 and a PNL 185, 26.5 mast, short pedestal, homemade g10 rear 13"

First observation - everything felt slow and low lift out the gate. I felt like i was constantly struggling for speed. As a huge rider this is normal for me. Being bigger my stall speed is goning to be higher than average which means "stock" tuning is going to be keeping me in a speed range thats a little low. Gofoil was on the extreme low end of this tuning, its set up with alot of down in the tail, moving the center of lift forward, so mast is back. This makes sense since bigger conditions, drawn out turns, staying in the picking are what it was designed and tested around. My focus is skately and loose, small conditions, speed generation(speed is currency).

To counter this i took that downforce out of the tail, less angle in the tail means less indced drag, more speed. Keeping the comfortable speed range higher related to stall. Also, this means more mast forward to get that lift back which loosenes it up from that locked in down the line gofoil vibe. Cut atlast 3 degrees out of the pedestal(cutting the angle in is super clean once youve played with the shims and know what you want)

Noticably looser, faster. Still a little locked in skating the foil around on the top. I remembered how great the tip chop was on the kujira, also gofoil just decided they were unnecessary so who am i to argue. Chopped the tips and it definately helped loosen it up, Slight loss of low end but that PNL is such a monster who cares.

Last thing i did was just fair a bunch of stuff, snading +fairing coumpoun. I, again, like a skatey setup so all that rudder in the pedestal adding stability kind of got shaped out on the sander, being really careful not to touch the inside of the mortise where it attaches to the fuse.

There's so much thick, fantastic, prepreg carbon on the gofoil stuff you can sander tune most of it all day and not worry about messing it up. Also the removable pedestal is almost asking for it.

Honestly the NL160 still feels like kind of a dog if its a session where i'm pumping around even a little. We've got a tiny point break that lights up thigh to waist and its good on that where i can just sit in the pocket and throw turns for a min and walk back up but its not a wing i want to take hunting on the outside and thats alot of what we do.

Because am I right in saying you can't just shim the go foil tail right ? Asking because these foils intrigue me at the moment.

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eppo said..
Because am I right in saying you can't just shim the go foil tail right ? Asking because these foils intrigue me at the moment.

You can't shim the FTS or FTL but all the pedestal mount tails can shim. Personally I run a cut down 18flat tail most of the time and just bolt it on, no shim and feels good to me. I suspect that due to the fact that all the go foils are designed by Alex to ride balanced on Tuttle mount, there isn't a need to shim and move mast positions between different front foils. I have various GL, NL and the pnl and find the mast position can be consistent across the range, I don't fell the need to change up the tail either.

Eppo the new FT range of tails are plug and play. No ability to shim. Since swapping to them I haven't actually wanted to either.
the pedestals and older GF tails are easy to tune. Also very easy to alter fuse length via a sander, drill bit and M6 helicoils.
Rich

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TooMuchEpoxy said..
I've been tuning my gofoil setup pretty agressively vs stock and wanted to share my observations.

Riding prone, 100kg, gutless conditions. Coming from a Kujira 1210 which was fantastic but kept falling apart. Going to gofoil mostly for durability once I saw that an acceptable wing (RS) was on the way.

Got a NL160 and a PNL 185, 26.5 mast, short pedestal, homemade g10 rear 13"

First observation - everything felt slow and low lift out the gate. I felt like i was constantly struggling for speed. As a huge rider this is normal for me. Being bigger my stall speed is goning to be higher than average which means "stock" tuning is going to be keeping me in a speed range thats a little low. Gofoil was on the extreme low end of this tuning, its set up with alot of down in the tail, moving the center of lift forward, so mast is back. This makes sense since bigger conditions, drawn out turns, staying in the picking are what it was designed and tested around. My focus is skately and loose, small conditions, speed generation(speed is currency).

To counter this i took that downforce out of the tail, less angle in the tail means less indced drag, more speed. Keeping the comfortable speed range higher related to stall. Also, this means more mast forward to get that lift back which loosenes it up from that locked in down the line gofoil vibe. Cut atlast 3 degrees out of the pedestal(cutting the angle in is super clean once youve played with the shims and know what you want)

Noticably looser, faster. Still a little locked in skating the foil around on the top. I remembered how great the tip chop was on the kujira, also gofoil just decided they were unnecessary so who am i to argue. Chopped the tips and it definately helped loosen it up, Slight loss of low end but that PNL is such a monster who cares.

Last thing i did was just fair a bunch of stuff, snading +fairing coumpoun. I, again, like a skatey setup so all that rudder in the pedestal adding stability kind of got shaped out on the sander, being really careful not to touch the inside of the mortise where it attaches to the fuse.

There's so much thick, fantastic, prepreg carbon on the gofoil stuff you can sander tune most of it all day and not worry about messing it up. Also the removable pedestal is almost asking for it.

Honestly the NL160 still feels like kind of a dog if its a session where i'm pumping around even a little. We've got a tiny point break that lights up thigh to waist and its good on that where i can just sit in the pocket and throw turns for a min and walk back up but its not a wing i want to take hunting on the outside and thats alot of what we do.

Have you tried NL190? Maybe you are under foiled on the 160.the 160 feels pretty good for me and I'm only 70kg

Are you really riding a 26.5 mast? For me that sounds short, 32.5 is what I recommend to all my friends, this let's you put much more energy into your pump. The pro level guys who are really dialled are on 36 inch to get extra lean in the turn. Might be worth a try if you can get your hands on this stuff rather than chopping stuff up.

Of course I have no idea of your skills but maybe try to slow the pump cadance, once I tried this I could generate a lot more speed. In my experience 160 can be a super fast foil, not sure if this is a GPS glitch but I have clocked myself at 45 km/hr on a racey wave face section. The NLs have the max camber further back and a more pointy nose, both good traits for a fast foil (at the expense of a bit of low end)

I dont feel your observation that these foils are tail down (ie nose up) out of the box because of tail shim angle, I think it's because the distance between front foil and mast is a bit more than some other brands. If I'm correct then taking angle out of the tail will just make it feel unstable but not really faster which is what you are chasing (right?).
BTW I'm a bit of a foiling hack and no expert, just like thinking about gear and technique :)

You can tell if a foil is tail down just let looking at pictures of riders. Mast back = tail down. Also, have u see the 6.5 pedestal? The tail is LITERALLY pointing down, it has so much angle you can see it holding the part.
The 160 is already the biggest, slowest foil I've ridden in years. I'd rather cut off my foot than ride the 190! I mean it's better than the gl stuff for sure, but it's just really lifty and hard to
generate speed compared to the kujira for instance.

again, powerful point break where I don't need to make power(like what it was designed for), nl160 is fine. If I want to pump loops 5+ In gutless beach break it's just too inefficient, even after squeezing every drop of efficiency and speed from the tune.

As for bigger mast, I've been on shorter masts for quick whip in turns and better stiffness response after riding 30 in masts for a few years in the middle days. My ideal would have been 28 but I'd rather be on the short side of that than 29.5

RS 1000 on the way

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Ju_foil said..

TooMuchEpoxy said..
I've been tuning my gofoil setup pretty agressively vs stock and wanted to share my observations.

Riding prone, 100kg, gutless conditions. Coming from a Kujira 1210 which was fantastic but kept falling apart. Going to gofoil mostly for durability once I saw that an acceptable wing (RS) was on the way.

Got a NL160 and a PNL 185, 26.5 mast, short pedestal, homemade g10 rear 13"

First observation - everything felt slow and low lift out the gate. I felt like i was constantly struggling for speed. As a huge rider this is normal for me. Being bigger my stall speed is goning to be higher than average which means "stock" tuning is going to be keeping me in a speed range thats a little low. Gofoil was on the extreme low end of this tuning, its set up with alot of down in the tail, moving the center of lift forward, so mast is back. This makes sense since bigger conditions, drawn out turns, staying in the picking are what it was designed and tested around. My focus is skately and loose, small conditions, speed generation(speed is currency).

To counter this i took that downforce out of the tail, less angle in the tail means less indced drag, more speed. Keeping the comfortable speed range higher related to stall. Also, this means more mast forward to get that lift back which loosenes it up from that locked in down the line gofoil vibe. Cut atlast 3 degrees out of the pedestal(cutting the angle in is super clean once youve played with the shims and know what you want)

Noticably looser, faster. Still a little locked in skating the foil around on the top. I remembered how great the tip chop was on the kujira, also gofoil just decided they were unnecessary so who am i to argue. Chopped the tips and it definately helped loosen it up, Slight loss of low end but that PNL is such a monster who cares.

Last thing i did was just fair a bunch of stuff, snading +fairing coumpoun. I, again, like a skatey setup so all that rudder in the pedestal adding stability kind of got shaped out on the sander, being really careful not to touch the inside of the mortise where it attaches to the fuse.

There's so much thick, fantastic, prepreg carbon on the gofoil stuff you can sander tune most of it all day and not worry about messing it up. Also the removable pedestal is almost asking for it.

Honestly the NL160 still feels like kind of a dog if its a session where i'm pumping around even a little. We've got a tiny point break that lights up thigh to waist and its good on that where i can just sit in the pocket and throw turns for a min and walk back up but its not a wing i want to take hunting on the outside and thats alot of what we do.

Have you tried NL190? Maybe you are under foiled on the 160.the 160 feels pretty good for me and I'm only 70kg

Are you really riding a 26.5 mast? For me that sounds short, 32.5 is what I recommend to all my friends, this let's you put much more energy into your pump. The pro level guys who are really dialled are on 36 inch to get extra lean in the turn. Might be worth a try if you can get your hands on this stuff rather than chopping stuff up.

Of course I have no idea of your skills but maybe try to slow the pump cadance, once I tried this I could generate a lot more speed. In my experience 160 can be a super fast foil, not sure if this is a GPS glitch but I have clocked myself at 45 km/hr on a racey wave face section. The NLs have the max camber further back and a more pointy nose, both good traits for a fast foil (at the expense of a bit of low end)

I dont feel your observation that these foils are tail down (ie nose up) out of the box because of tail shim angle, I think it's because the distance between front foil and mast is a bit more than some other brands. If I'm correct then taking angle out of the tail will just make it feel unstable but not really faster which is what you are chasing (right?).
BTW I'm a bit of a foiling hack and no expert, just like thinking about gear and technique :)

I've been riding rs1150 and GT 1250 w fts coming off Kujira and video shows a bit nose up first sessions. I used takuma baseplate shim and it's worked better. Faster and better pump. Pretty comparable to Kujira now but w shorter fuse I think it turns tighter. Def digging on 1250especialy in micro surf but will be switching out to try both as we have bigger waves coming this wee
RS faster w more glide. GT turns and pumps great. Still keeping takuma set up for sure. Both are fantastic. Go foil feels smoother and a bit sturdier at speed. RS might be faster than Kujira 1210. GT just a great all rounder!

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TooMuchEpoxy said..
You can tell if a foil is tail down just let looking at pictures of riders. Mast back = tail down. Also, have u see the 6.5 pedestal? The tail is LITERALLY pointing down, it has so much angle you can see it holding the part.
The 160 is already the biggest, slowest foil I've ridden in years. I'd rather cut off my foot than ride the 190! I mean it's better than the gl stuff for sure, but it's just really lifty and hard to
generate speed compared to the kujira for instance.

again, powerful point break where I don't need to make power(like what it was designed for), nl160 is fine. If I want to pump loops 5+ In gutless beach break it's just too inefficient, even after squeezing every drop of efficiency and speed from the tune.

As for bigger mast, I've been on shorter masts for quick whip in turns and better stiffness response after riding 30 in masts for a few years in the middle days. My ideal would have been 28 but I'd rather be on the short side of that than 29.5

RS 1000 on the way

mast position is also a function of the offset, the center of lift will be roughly 1/3 of the chord.

Pic shows what I mean, so the Lift120 would need to be about 3 inches further forward in the box to put its lift center in the same place as the NL160. The go foils carry their area forward so the mast needs to be further back in the box compared to others.

if you don't get this right maybe your foil won't be balanced and you are then fighting to find a good balance point with tail shim which would be inefficient and might not give you the efficiency you are seeking

Yeah, what your missing is more tail downforce moves the center of lift forward. This is why center of lift is actually in front of the front wing(how else would a wing generate front foot pressure all the way up there?) This is why all
the gofoil stuff is so mast back and so slow.

Lots to unpack here.
I would have said that if the boxes in the board are parallel to the deck of the board then the GoFoil is set correctly will be neutral. Kd recommends trying to balance the whole setup for COG. The NL's balance point was just behind the wingtip I found.
I found the NL's damn fast but pitchy so I shimmed to make them slower. FT tails worked much better than the flip tips or flat tails I tried and really loosened it all up.
Not sure I could claim that all go foil are mast back and slow, in my boards they are mast forward and fast but I might just be me.
Whilst I haven't ridden them, the lift foils are very cambered. Unless you really like back foot pressure shimming the mast or tail (not stock tail) would probably be needed. There is a reason a 775cm wing has such a broad application.

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TooMuchEpoxy said..
I've been tuning my gofoil setup pretty agressively vs stock and wanted to share my observations.

Riding prone, 100kg, gutless conditions. Coming from a Kujira 1210 which was fantastic but kept falling apart. Going to gofoil mostly for durability once I saw that an acceptable wing (RS) was on the way.

Got a NL160 and a PNL 185, 26.5 mast, short pedestal, homemade g10 rear 13"

First observation - everything felt slow and low lift out the gate. I felt like i was constantly struggling for speed. As a huge rider this is normal for me. Being bigger my stall speed is goning to be higher than average which means "stock" tuning is going to be keeping me in a speed range thats a little low. Gofoil was on the extreme low end of this tuning, its set up with alot of down in the tail, moving the center of lift forward, so mast is back. This makes sense since bigger conditions, drawn out turns, staying in the picking are what it was designed and tested around. My focus is skately and loose, small conditions, speed generation(speed is currency).

To counter this i took that downforce out of the tail, less angle in the tail means less indced drag, more speed. Keeping the comfortable speed range higher related to stall. Also, this means more mast forward to get that lift back which loosenes it up from that locked in down the line gofoil vibe. Cut atlast 3 degrees out of the pedestal(cutting the angle in is super clean once youve played with the shims and know what you want)

Noticably looser, faster. Still a little locked in skating the foil around on the top. I remembered how great the tip chop was on the kujira, also gofoil just decided they were unnecessary so who am i to argue. Chopped the tips and it definately helped loosen it up, Slight loss of low end but that PNL is such a monster who cares.

Last thing i did was just fair a bunch of stuff, snading +fairing coumpoun. I, again, like a skatey setup so all that rudder in the pedestal adding stability kind of got shaped out on the sander, being really careful not to touch the inside of the mortise where it attaches to the fuse.

There's so much thick, fantastic, prepreg carbon on the gofoil stuff you can sander tune most of it all day and not worry about messing it up. Also the removable pedestal is almost asking for it.

Honestly the NL160 still feels like kind of a dog if its a session where i'm pumping around even a little. We've got a tiny point break that lights up thigh to waist and its good on that where i can just sit in the pocket and throw turns for a min and walk back up but its not a wing i want to take hunting on the outside and thats alot of what we do.

So did you remove from the front of the pedestal to remove negative angle and increase positive angle for less drag? Then moved it forward in the box to make up for less lift?

Select to expand quote

db541 said..

TooMuchEpoxy said..
I've been tuning my gofoil setup pretty agressively vs stock and wanted to share my observations.

Riding prone, 100kg, gutless conditions. Coming from a Kujira 1210 which was fantastic but kept falling apart. Going to gofoil mostly for durability once I saw that an acceptable wing (RS) was on the way.

Got a NL160 and a PNL 185, 26.5 mast, short pedestal, homemade g10 rear 13"

First observation - everything felt slow and low lift out the gate. I felt like i was constantly struggling for speed. As a huge rider this is normal for me. Being bigger my stall speed is goning to be higher than average which means "stock" tuning is going to be keeping me in a speed range thats a little low. Gofoil was on the extreme low end of this tuning, its set up with alot of down in the tail, moving the center of lift forward, so mast is back. This makes sense since bigger conditions, drawn out turns, staying in the picking are what it was designed and tested around. My focus is skately and loose, small conditions, speed generation(speed is currency).

To counter this i took that downforce out of the tail, less angle in the tail means less indced drag, more speed. Keeping the comfortable speed range higher related to stall. Also, this means more mast forward to get that lift back which loosenes it up from that locked in down the line gofoil vibe. Cut atlast 3 degrees out of the pedestal(cutting the angle in is super clean once youve played with the shims and know what you want)

Noticably looser, faster. Still a little locked in skating the foil around on the top. I remembered how great the tip chop was on the kujira, also gofoil just decided they were unnecessary so who am i to argue. Chopped the tips and it definately helped loosen it up, Slight loss of low end but that PNL is such a monster who cares.

Last thing i did was just fair a bunch of stuff, snading +fairing coumpoun. I, again, like a skatey setup so all that rudder in the pedestal adding stability kind of got shaped out on the sander, being really careful not to touch the inside of the mortise where it attaches to the fuse.

There's so much thick, fantastic, prepreg carbon on the gofoil stuff you can sander tune most of it all day and not worry about messing it up. Also the removable pedestal is almost asking for it.

Honestly the NL160 still feels like kind of a dog if its a session where i'm pumping around even a little. We've got a tiny point break that lights up thigh to waist and its good on that where i can just sit in the pocket and throw turns for a min and walk back up but its not a wing i want to take hunting on the outside and thats alot of what we do.

So did you remove from the front of the pedestal to remove negative angle and increase positive angle for less drag? Then moved it forward in the box to make up for less lift?

Exactly