Thought I'd get around to posting a couple of pictures of the thing I built around 18 months ago following the the suggestions from this forum. Absolute minimum effort project:-
- Deck is a scrap of wood ~ 1.2 m long.
- Skate trucks are off an ancient skateboard since re-juvenated with new "rubbers" purchased for $10.00 from a skate shop.
- Wheels, axle, etc are from a pair of cheap trolleys (the type almost all hardware stores now sell for ~ $25.00).
- Axels were not cut down at all from the trolley and are connected to the skate axles using a pair of U bolts AND a pair of pipe clamps (jubilee clips).
I have used the thing quite a bit in a carpark, on the beach and on a football oval - pretty much always in light winds. Would have to say the fun per effort return has been great. It works way better than what I thought it would. To add a couple of points to stuff already posted:-
- Apart from obviously tightening the trucks, a technique thing you can do avoid the speed wobbles is to unweight the board by hanging off the boom. This transfers your weight to the mast base and hence the centre of the board. You may want to be a little careful if you have the mastbase mounted foward of the front axle.
- My board is just big enough for me to use a 5.3 with. Any larger and the centre of effort of the sail is too far back. IF you do a liitle geometry you will work out the turning radius is proportional to the board length. A 2m length board won't be much good for tooling around the carpark with so this is a compromise.
- The next deck I make will be slighly longer with the mastbase further back so there is room to get around the front of the board like a normal windsurfer tack.
I have got a litte video I'll see about posting.
Cheers
Marlon