Usually it will be recommended to point your toes. what that really means is that you'll unload your heels. If you are coming from TT, this is unnatural way to ride and it is tricky at best.AirushV366 wrote:Any suggestions on how to learn to ride flat?
borist wrote:Usually it will be recommended to point your toes. what that really means is that you'll unload your heels. If you are coming from TT, this is unnatural way to ride and it is tricky at best.AirushV366 wrote:Any suggestions on how to learn to ride flat?
I rather recommend to think of this as "hanging off" the kite rather than standing on the board (and then pointing your toes). The kite needs to be at 45 deg or even less, otherwise you will end up too upright. You'll be pushing more sideways on the board rather than down on it. Pushing a lot sideways on Sector is not easy because it has fins that are still too small to resist too much load, so perhaps not quite 100% flat is optimal to get maximum from this board. Below is a capture from a video. Racer closer in view (lime Cabrinha) hangs out aggressively and is able to make the board to go faster and more upwind, racer further (white Bandit) stands too much upright to get the same drive from the board:
MikeBirt wrote:Regarding riding flat...
I had a chat with someone very close to the Sector design team.. really interesting chat on fins and riding flat...
They spent a lot of time playing with fins, apparently very interesting but exhausting.
To put it in perspective, this is what the sectors were armed with in terms of their fins and cant angles - degree of deviation from dead upright to outside cant (fins bending outwards to the rails)
Sector V1 & V2 - 7 Deg Cant
Sector V3 – 5 Deg outside (Vertical Centre)
Monaro V4 – 3.5 Deg (Vertical Centre)
The less cant they had on the fins, the easier it is to ride them flat. Sounded to me like the board will find a natural balance, in terms of the sweet spot, when railed down to windward, based on how much cant you have in each fin. So by the numbers above, Monaro rides the flattest, fastest but is the most demanding, sector V1 and V2 ride much more on the rail and are the easiest. I must admit, when I think about it, this does go some way to explaining how the V1- V3 sectors ride..
And.. as I understand, generally the flatter you ride them, the less stability you have from the rail, but the less drag you have, so the boards are faster. However the less cant you have, the more difficult the boards are to ride in terms of tolerance to burying the windward rail. If the fins are near vertical and you push the windward rail in, the nose of board will tend to head off aggressively downwind, not carve upwind - then you go over the handlebars. So having some cant (and the asymmetrical foils) allows you to belt around without worrying to much about board trim, exactly what you can't do on a Monaro.
Sectors also use asymmetrical foils, which makes them more neutral in terms of fin drive (Think of it as the fins lifting well outwards, but not inwards), so trying to rail the Sectors over to leeward - rail tipped downwind - (Like Monaro) will reduce drive on the leeward fin (downwind fin) and it will lose drive. But flat is good for speed - and as you get better it's possible to experiment with more vertical fins (Even just the back set or using a single fin), up to a point, you start to find the board becomes extremely sensitive to trim. Apparently it eventually reaches the threshold where your possibility blowing up becomes greater than your possibility to continue powering up.. and thus you've past the optimum.
I guess the racers are pushing trim further as their ability improves to control the most aggressive design combinations. For us though, the fun factor is why we go riding on sectors, and the V3 hits the efficiency / ease of use combination squarely on the head.
It's re-assuring to know how much R&D goes into these things, and I sincerely hope that the team keeps up it's enthusiasm!
Westozzy wrote:.... when ya going that fast the rain really stings ya eyes!
was it the Monk? that board has incredible control at speed and the rail never does break, it just starts crabbing and slowing if you push it too far.. A very good kite for boosting + riding fast and a perfect board to match it. Team FS and Switch are my 2 personal fav boards in the airush range. Livewire looks like it may be delayed.. shame - I was looking forward to that..Westozzy wrote:And yeh hit 25 to 27 gusty knots and although I tried I could not break the rail on that shinn, when ya going that fast the rain really stings ya eyes!
This is not something I can really comment on first hand, as I was only talking to the designer, most of the info I picked up from him..Don Lester wrote:So Mike, You talk a lot about the effects of cant and foil shape in trying to ride flat, but what about different lengths and aspect ratios ?
Don Lester wrote:And which fin configuration are you talking about, tri or quad.............