I have just bought a new takuma Sup foil package, with a v 100 foil and 8ft 5 Sup board, mostly because the price was good . I,m 60 85 kg surfed forever and supped probably 10 years currently on a Naish 88 x 32 which I love, never foiled. The web seems to say the takuma is a good setup and easy to start on relatively speaking.has anyone any experience or opinions. I plan to start behind a boat and figure if it's too hard I could always sell it, but hoping it will be awesome fun and could be used on a smaller prone board potentially as well.

Welcome to the club and yes Takuma is a great set up and easy to learn on

I have a takuma clone. Very easy to foil: behind boat first time, my friend with zero kite foil experience was up and riding immediately, first try.

Also foils easy in the waves, at least as far as I've advance from beginner to "just barely doing it" level. Jury is out on more advanced riding, hope to report back on that by end of upcoming season. :-)

It is heavy, other negative is too many sharp edges. Sliced my 5mm suit! May want to take a file to the pointy bits at back of wings and trailing edge of mast. Personally I wear booties and wetsuit with it for protection, but most of the time wear that anyway here in Canada.

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juandesooka said..
I have a takuma clone. Very easy to foil: behind boat first time, my friend with zero kite foil experience was up and riding immediately, first try.

Also foils easy in the waves, at least as far as I've advance from beginner to "just barely doing it" level. Jury is out on more advanced riding, hope to report back on that by end of upcoming season. :-)

It is heavy, other negative is too many sharp edges. Sliced my 5mm suit! May want to take a file to the pointy bits at back of wings and trailing edge of mast. Personally I wear booties and wetsuit with it for protection, but most of the time wear that anyway here in Canada.

I think you'll find the New Takumas are very different to your Chinese copy.

Was just watching a guy here doing it on his slingshot H2, he was getting heaps of long flights which is encouraging on a pretty average day surfwise

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Piros said..

juandesooka said..
I have a takuma clone. Very easy to foil: behind boat first time, my friend with zero kite foil experience was up and riding immediately, first try.

Also foils easy in the waves, at least as far as I've advance from beginner to "just barely doing it" level. Jury is out on more advanced riding, hope to report back on that by end of upcoming season. :-)

It is heavy, other negative is too many sharp edges. Sliced my 5mm suit! May want to take a file to the pointy bits at back of wings and trailing edge of mast. Personally I wear booties and wetsuit with it for protection, but most of the time wear that anyway here in Canada.

I think you'll find the New Takumas are very different to your Chinese copy.

OP is asking about V100 ... has that changed since its introduction a few years ago?

My question about top end performance largely comes from the lack of videos of people "ripping" compared to other brands -- e.g., no videos of people pumping and getting endless waves, doing hard carves, etc. It could be takuma has no marketing dept / pro riders? Or just less people riding them generally? My concern is that their easy start and stability may come at the cost of higher end. Seems like a lot of the early adopters have moved on to other brands.

Anyways, I hope to find out this season, once the waves arrive again and I can progress past just barely capable stage.

OP: lots of fun ahead for you in learning this new thing. It's addictive. Though a little scary at start....I think it's a good idea to wear a helmet. Also....resist urge to try and correct balance at the beginning... when things being to go sour you are better to jump off and away....your initial instinct leads to weighting the wrong rail and the dreaded jackknife wipeout = foil in face. Finally....it may seem counter intuitive if you are trying to be cautious, but speed is your friend....like riding a bike, going too slow leads to more danger....you need a little speed to get stable. Have fun!

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juandesooka said..
I have a takuma clone. [...]
It is heavy, other negative is too many sharp edges.

The real Takuma foils I saw had no sharp edges. Your "clone" may not be an exact copy...

BTW, beware of the chinese foil "clones". To avoid legal problem they tend to not do an exact copy, they often for instance copy the main wing of a brand and the stab of another. Legally smart, but a disaster on the water.

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juandesooka said..
My concern is that their easy start and stability may come at the cost of higher end.

Since stability is in great part due to the stabilizer (as Beasho found out by radically removing it :-) ) I guess we will see more and more brands offering different sizes of stabilizers, so you can tune your foil to your current level of practice.

Well I have only had 3 or 4 surfs and once behind the boat but yesterday was ideal small waves backing off into deeper water .I caught 4 waves with fairly long flights and no falls, where as the surf before that was bigger and I was almost feeling like giving up after plenty of crashing. Still a bit nervous when the foil gets near the surface but overall it's now feeling much easier and more stable than I was expecting . The takuma 100 certainly feels like a good choice to start on at least . Might try catching a wave from prone just to see how that goes getting up on my feet .

I found mentally accepting 'just write off your first 25-30 sessions' (as some had noted here) enabled me to enjoy the learning curve than my fragile male ego perhaps would have allowed......

Takuma has changed a lot since the early ones. They went from super heavy, to super light.

Good one tomooh! Sounds like you have got it nailed. Yes. The best learning waves are the ones that break with whitewash sliding down the face of the wave & into deep water where the whitewash slowly subsides, leaving you riding just the swell. This is where the learning of turning & pumping comes in.
Big waves at head high are very difficult unless you catch them after they have broken when the whitewash subsides. Usually at the shoulder.
Small & weak waves are frustrating & difficult with small & medium foils too unless you get the foil up & running early as the waves break as well as pointing along the wave face. Otherwise you will just stall or sink.
I spoke to a surfer I know who is good at SUP & prone & has had about 8 to 9 months of foiling said that the hard part of prone foiling in the beginning was obviously the pop up where he found it difficult to keep the nose down when getting up. So maybe hands more forward when getting up.
And with all foiling. Feet positioning is the most critical as you probably know. I am so glad I forced myself to paddle & ride my sup in the surf stance when I started foiling. So comfortable now. My front foot is always positioned over the centre line. The back foot only has to slip back to the tail pad or pad block so my foot is over the mast when catching a wave. Less to think about.

Well i definitely don't have it nailed yet but can pick the waves that will be easier to ride and have an ideal spot just in front of home. Turning is pretty haphazard but luckily I haven't fallen on any sharp bits yet. Seems easier to weight forward and then carefully move my back foot back once feeling ready. Still breach's often and then drops back down and mostly I am going fairly slow under 20 km which is fine and feels safer so far. Keen to keep trying though