stevet73 said..
......One of the quotes in a Colas thread was "Curved foils are so 2017".....which was quite a chuckle...
Bear in mind that at some time discussions became quite heated, with even some fake accounts thrown in the mix to troll things up, so there has been some exaggerations. I was (over-)reacting to "flat wings don't work" flames at the time.
Basically, a curved wing loses efficiency, but balances on a point that is at the center of the curve: a downwards curved wing will seem to balance on a point under the wing (thus introducing unstability), an upwards curved one will be stabler, as if hooked by strings on a point above. The same for the stabilizer, but reversed, as it wing pulls downwards. Add to the equation that a wider wing is stabler, plus induce strange things in turns (the relative speeds of the tips vary a lot), and the stabilizer geometry adds or remove stability.
The result is that a foil is a compromise on many points. On the stability, you may want more (waves) or less (downwind) of it, and to get there you have many parameters to tweak, one of them being the wing curve. For instance Gong chose to add liveliness by keeping the wingspan relatively narrow rather than using downwards curve. Go foil went the other route with its new huge wings.
"Removing foil after every session to avoid corrosion....seriously!?" yes, if you have aluminum parts. You can reduce the effect by buying 3rd-party titanium screws rather than "simple" A4 stainless steel ones.
For newbies, you want to go in the weakest waves possible for safety (but with at least 8s period), and big wings will be MUCH easier for this. In my experience, foiling in waves powerful enough to have fun with a longSUP are not worth the risks in foiling for the gear and pilot, so better plan to use a foiling setup geared for weak waves or downwinds.
