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Hot day, no wind, or a rat's fart worth anyways.

UPS man (santiclaus) delivers new speed 10

WTF, too much work and no play, might as well go see if it

can fly in a rat's you-know-the-rest wind.

Ya right, I'm out on my boat, all dressed to kill, 15 extra pounds of 7mm wetsuit, fins, helmut, booties, harness, extra tampons, equals= 90 kg or around 195pds.

heavy, in other words. Too heavy for a ten meter kite and 8-10 knots of wind.

A few caps here and there.

If I had my old Psycho2-21 I MIGHT be able to stay upwind but it'd be touch-and-go.

Throw it in the water, drifts away slowlyyyyyyyyy because there was hardly enough to inflate it in the first place.

Lines get tight, bang. The god damn thing pops out of the water like nothing at all.

And then it justs sits at zenith looking at me like a well trained dog asking me "what would you like next, master?" To go upwind and have a right fucking time, that's what dickhead but there's no tension on the lines that I know about.

And guess what, I did. Go upwind, very much so during the gusts in fact.

Now I have to ask myself, what if I had the 17 speed instead of the 10?

hmmmmmmmm, guess my jumps would have been 20 feet instead of 10.

you know the rest......................................

Whaddya mean formerly Litewave 181?

You chopped it?

Yeah - forget the Speed, tell us about the board. That sounds much more interesting.

the board's an '02 or '03 181 litewave that I chopped the ends off of to be 146 long. That took out a lot of the banana but I wanted it flatter still so I clamped the shit out of it adding more concavity and stuck it all in a big cardboard box with a space heater @220 degrees F for a couple of hours. Worked great, has retained it's shape for a year.

I work with sheet metal for a living so I SLIGHTLY domed a circle, welded another circle on the other side, cut it in half and welded 1/4" nuts inside the fins and then filled them with foam to keep them dry.

It was Eric H's idea to make them assymetrical but being stainless, they are REALLY bulletproof. Just as light as fiberglass too. I've been on this board in 17 knots with a Psycho2-21 and had no problem holding an edge. I think it might have something to do with the fins.

'And the Recycling Award goes to....'

Sweet.

Brilliant.

What are the chances this could work for me? I've got a LiteWave 169 that I sorta like and ride in the light wind - but I'm wondering if I'd love it if it was 150 or 155 cm instead.

Worth the hassle?

It's all that rocker that messes with your board speed. Forgiving and good for bad chop with strong wind but not the chef's special
for easy planing in light winds. Heat that thing up to 220 F with a pile of bricks on it for a couple of hours in a big box and burn down your house no I mean flatten your board and voila, new world.