“Skywalka” head-cam

I made this video over two years ago and never got the time to post it on YouTube. St George sailing prezo and Bruce’s efforts to make a class video for it prompted me to do upload it… Interestingly the crash near the bridge is due to rudder vetilation and loss of steerage.

Wings

As suspected the wings were not easy to do. Particularly my front elliptical wing bars which not only required lining up fore/aft and up/down, but also at the right angle of attack. We also had to make front socket tubing so all up I’m not sure I would do it again. The whole procedure made Marty get PMT, so yeah sure they look good, but it probably worked out to be double the amount of work. Anyways they are done now and so are the rear and outer bar sockets.

Interestingly I measured about 6-7 different designs for wing geometry and what we ended up with is something quite similar to the Hungry Tiger. Mach 2 is not too far off this number, however I felt that the BR wings are quite flat and consequently you lose a bit of power. It’s a fine line between making the wings nice and high for foiling, vs low and easy to climb on.

This week will be all about laminating the sockets followed by building some nosecones. The Photoshop-ed photo below shows the plug nosecone with a cut out to allow access to the wand.

Scalpel Update

Few more weeks have gone by and I am starting to see the finish line. Both shells have all internal work done and we bagged the decks on last week. At this stage they are 7.9kg with wing mounts and nosecone still to go on. I think around 10kg will be a realistic painted weight which is just awesome with the amount of framing in there. I am not sure what Mach 2 hulls weigh? Anybody weighed theirs? My last Zero was 10kg, I think the McConaghy Bladerider’s are closer to 11+.

Marty also made a wing jig that proved quite handy with wing geometry set up. I think this is probably the trickiest part of the boat to get right. There are not too many reference points to measure off, however contrary to some beliefs out there the computer model can be quite handy here. We basically know what number we want to get to and just need to replicate that.

I have included a few photos below of my hull after decking with nosecone plug trimed to size. It’s had a bit of a hard life, however the mould itself has turned out nice.

Photo on left: Deck bagging at 1am. Photo on right: Maybe we should be more productive during the day?…

….A must feature for 2010, the crocodile nosecone.