Mast vs wing placement

[SaulOhio]

I am building my own custom fuselage, and it will have room to move the mast forward and back relative to the front wing. The board I am building will also have an adjustable mast box and adjustable footstrap positions. I'd like to make sure I understand this right. The mast farther back will result in much better tracking, and farther forward will be better turning?

[Blackrat]

No , putting the mast directly ontop of the wing results in a foil that doesn't want to turn easily ... I dont have firsthand experience on this , it's just what I've read on the forums.

It would be interesting to hear feedback when you get going

[Peter_Frank]

Blackrat is right, too far forward and you kill the dynamics totally, it glides very odd, sliding and feels wrong, too far aft and it gets an undesired tendency to seek down/inward.

PF

[SaulOhio]

Blackrat is right, too far forward and you kill the dynamics totally, it glides very odd, sliding and feels wrong, too far aft and it gets an undesired tendency to seek down/inward.

PF

What exactly do you mean y "seek down/inward"?

[NorCalNomad]

What exactly do you mean y "seek down/inward"?

I'd guess he means it doesn't want to keep a constant "elevation" in the water.

[Harri]

I have a custom foil and mast position in the fuselage was identical with the LF foilfish: the rear edge of the mast was exactly in the middle of the fuselage. This worked well. Recently i drilled one more hole in the fuselage and mounted the mast 4 cm more frontward (mast's leading edge is now approx.1,5- max. 2 cm behind the frontwing): result > more stability in pitch and yaw and not so agile. I like it more! Only on a spot with some waves i would go back to the old setup to have an agiler pitch in waves.