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segler said..
That Delta video talks about shimming the FRONT wing to effectively move the center of lift fore or aft, in order to balance foot pressure. Watch it carefully all the way through to see what he is saying.
Shimming the stab to change the down angle is another kettle of fish altogether.
No its not, its about shimming the fuselage. In my opinion the guy in the video is genious, but his explanation is missing something.
Shimming the fuselage instead of the mast is brilliant. This is effectively the same as changing mastrake, although with mastrake you change the position of the wings fore-aft by about 3cm per degree aswell. Shimming the fuselage like so allows you to trim the noseheight of your board effectively without changing the wing position relative to the straps at all.
Thats why I wouldnt use this method to trim your power fore aft much. The nose of windfoilboards are too long and the rocker radius of our boards is too small for just adjusting the angle of the fuselage, especially if you occasionally touch the water! Riding fuselage nose up/board nose down as in his example kills gliding through when you accidentally touch the water and leads to catapults.
Both shimming the mast (so raking your mast) and the fuselage would move balance without changing angle of attack (mast +1 degree in the board and -1 degree in the fuse and the fuse is at 0 degrees again but shifted back 3cm, -1/+1 its 3cm forward). This would be a very viable option, but then you could also just move your straps or ride your foilmast back/forth in the tracks or angle the stab etc.etc.etc.
I like the idea of trimming the fuselage angle of attack independently from the mast to adjust noseheight in fleight, but my race mast-fuselage is onepiece (fixed), and my freeride setup is perfect as it is hahahah.