Monday, December 10, 2007

There is a continuing debate on Sailing Anarchy with the Phoil Phanatic Doug Lord about foils, wands, and flying. I recently posted this list of things we did in camp Stevo while trying to make moths foil:

"Here is a list of at least some of the experimental foil setups Andrew and I tried up to about 2005:
* Bow rudder and foil plus main foil, no wand,
* Manual incidence control of bow foil.
* Bow and stern ruders with centreboard, foils on bow and board.
* Bow and stern rudders with foils and no centreboard at all.
* Foils on CB and rudder, no flap no wand,
* Foils on CB and rudder, trailing edge wand on both,main foil with dihedral to induce righting moment with leeway.
* Manual adjustment of main foil incidence,
* High rate manual rudder flap adj, via tiller ext for reaction to waves.

We were the only people in the Sydney Moth scene trying anything at this time. There was not a lot of sucess from these experiments and only a few ideas are worth saving for the future.

We then went to the Melb Moth 2005 WC and saw how well the Ilett system worked, talked to John who was very generous and helpfull, and came home and started doing it his way.

With the exception of Andrew's tilt rudder system adopted by the Bladerider all of our subsequent work on moths has been in learning how to make the foils as strong and as light as the professionals.

We have tried and will develop some more ideas to try WRT to general moth layout but for now we are content to make only subtle development changes to the foil system. "

Sunday, December 2, 2007

The new main foil has been sailed with sucess. It seems to take off earlier than the old one and it weigh about half as much. It floats nicely, certainly in the ball park with the factory jobs.


The race was 3/4 drift with the last lap getting enough wind to fly. I was with Dave when the wind came in and seemed to get out of the water as easilly as he did. But he has heaps more speed and sailed away to win. Then Grant caught me too.


Some rig develoment to do when I get back from the Canoe WC, but I am looking forward to trying to get the moth up to speed. It should be a lot easier than it used to be with 10 boats and a lot more knowledge amongst the sailors who are all willing to share.


This is the new foil with the No-Gap hinge. It seems to make a difference.


Now it has proven to work I can paint it nice and shiney.