Flyfoil board designer Dave Dorn has been making boards for almost as long as he has been riding them.  Here is some excerpts from an interview he did recently. Continue reading “Designer Dave Dorn”

Hello and welcome to shimming your wing. This is a very important part of foil-boarding,  being able to shim your rear wing angle. Okay, so your fuselage here is the connection between the fuselage and the rear wing will give you the angle. Right now this is a zero angle of attack here um that comes as standard in fact it’s probably got maybe one degree of angle, but there’s many times you want to get to three degrees of angle, so we need to build something like a wedge-shaped shim. That’s going to be able to give us that angle that we want there’s a lot of ways to do that. So what you want to do is have something that’s waterproof and that you can work with that is  strong, stiff, not compressible, and you can make it into a shim.

To work with it, you can use a machine. I’ve got a Dremel, or a drill, or sandpaper, or whatever, to get it going. Okay, so just focus on my hands here. So we’re going to try a technique today of making something with a hot glue gun.  We haven’t done this before but we’re going to try that. I’ve got a multi-temperature hot glue gun here and put the multi-temperature glue-sticks here and we’ll just start heating that up. So the idea is to build up something there. I’ve got my heat resistant baking tin here and then I’ve prepared my fuselage with a little bit of tape because i want to be able to get that off,  and I don’t want to necessarily make this this permanent. I’ve poked through the tape, and I’ve made some screw holes.  I’m going to add my screws in because I want holes. These have a little bit of grease on them but i might put a little bit of tape on them as well, because we’re building it with glue, but we don’t want to glue everything together with it. So i’m basically using the glue to create a nice plastic substance. All right, now so I don’t get glue into the threads i’m just going to do a little bit of tape around the threads of these screws, this one is only going to be about you know three four mm thick here.

All my glues should be heating up nicely.

Okay, now sometimes you can have if you have a big job made with hot glue it can sometimes fall apart, so what I’ve got is a little bit of something extra. Here I’ve got some of this kite-fix mesh, that they do kite repairs with. It’s basically a nylon mesh. I’m going to just use that as a base to strengthen it, so i’m actually going to take these screws back out.

This has a sticky-back adhesive, a little bit of adhesive on there. I’m going to go bigger than I need. I’ve never done it like this way before, so let’s try that out

Okay, you can see here I’ve got my tape just so it won’t stick directly to fuselage. I’ll tape it there where I have this substrate. See how that mesh is all right. So the next task is to start laying down glue.

It took a whole stick just to fill that gun up. Just doing the center line first, i’m not deliberately getting any on the threads or anything like that. I also don’t want to create too much excess for myself to cut it off later.

Now I haven’t got anything for the top surface yet. I do know by eyeball approximately what kind of angle i’m going for.  So i’m guessing we’re starting to build that up.

Now this mesh is kind of floating up into the into the material and that’s fine but it means i’m gonna lower temperature so it solidifies faster.

We’ve been using a lot of other things, other than this for shimming. We’ve been using duct tape, dried wood, we’ve tried cardboard, whatever you have on hand because usually it’s done at the last minute.

Okay this is gonna do for our first try here okay we’re gonna unplug this we’re gonna let this harden and come back, but that’s the idea there. Okay, so we’ve got a shim. Basically it’s going to be wedge-shaped. It’s thicker on the front, smaller on the back. We’re actually going for about a three-degree angle, and it’s going to have two screw holes through it. I just need to trim the side, so we’ll wait for that glue to solidify and then we’ll be able to show you the result.

The Flyfoil Transition Plate is a thin  indestructible layer that can be added between the mast and the board. This reduces loading and potential damage to the board caused by point loading. Continue reading “Flyfoil Transition Plate”

Introducing our New foil for SUP-foiling and Wingsurfing. The Glide features a new larger wing set with maximum lift and improved glide. This is a higher aspect shape that allows easier pumping and longer gliding.  The Glide front wing has a high aspect ratio of 4 which is ideal for this style of riding. This model is available in two different constructions. 1)Standard: which features stiff extruded aircraft aluminum Mast, precision CNC aluminum mast-foot and fuselage, Carbon fiber  wings are standard. and 2)Carbon-Plus: Featuring an autoclaved Carbon Fiber Mast, Carbon base-plate, Carbon Fuselage, and Carbon sandwich Foilwings for a stiff and light foil.

Continue reading “New Glide Foil”

We have just opened a new Flyfoil Kite demo center in Vietnam. Located on the world class Mui Ne Kite Beach. We are in partnership with our friends at the newly created Session Sports Kite School. This center is the exclusive ocean sports center located at the Saigon Mui Ne resort. With one of the longest beach frontages in Mui Ne. Talk to any of their instructors about Flyfoil Gear. They ride them and use them in their school. These guys are hard-core freestylers as well as avid foilers too. Test rides on the New Gear is available by appointment. Test Rides (without a rental or lesson) are usually limited to 30 minute rides, and please take care and ride responsibly, because “if you bust it you buy it”.

Introducing the newest addition to the Flyfoil quiver. The New “Mark 3” Stabilizer is a Carbon 3K Wing. Nicknamed “the boomerang”, this stabilizer offers a higher aspect shape and upswept wing tips. The technical name for the shape is Inverted-anhedral. This rear wing is available as an add-on accessory, but may become one of our standard options soon. Supplies are strictly limited so drop us a line asap if you want one. 

Christmas is coming friends, so now is the perfect time to think about getting that special gift for someone you love. Nothing says I love you more than a new Flyfoil board, or Carbon foil set.  Continue reading “Christmas Gifts from Flyfoil”