Continue reading »]]> You’ll have to watch this entire video, you’ll see James Walker working on the ollie oop repeatedly and the reason is that he has this trick in his mind and he’s trying to work it out. He lands an indecision, another wakesurf trick that James Walker brought to wakesurfing last year, and then the repeated ollie 3′s. At the end you’ll see it, it’s an ollie oop to a backside switch revert shuv (to backside switch?). James didn’t land that in this video but something occurred to us.

The development of new wakesurf tricks isn’t dependent upon what scoring system is employed, instead it’s at a personal level. Is this where the progression of wakesurf tricks are headed? Maybe not and really wakesurf tricks should be a reflection of the discipline studied by a particular rider and not something that is forced upon riders.

Old school is cool, but not the ONLY option. New-age-never-seen-before is so amazing, but again, not the only avenue. It used to be this battle of surf and skim, but maybe now the battle becomes allowing a rider to choose and execute their own discipline and still be considered competitive? You can see the path that James is taking, he has brought several new tricks to surf style wakesurfing the Blender, the Indecision, the air 180 to backside switch 540, 720′s, a 1080 and this Ollie oop to backside switch revert shuv (to backside switch?). Certainly non-traditional and composed of combinations of individual wakesurf tricks. Is that the future? You know it should be, BUT and we can’t emphasize this enough, it shouldn’t be the ONLY future. If tricks like this become the only thing that’s competitive then that’s biased, but it’s JUST as biased if they aren’t considered at all or are marginalized. NOR should a rider be required to do them all. They can if they want, but not FORCED to wakesurfs. Maybe World Peace would be an easier task?

Thanks for following along and we appreciate you taking time out of your day.

As James would say: God Bless America!

Technorati Tags: wakesurf tricks, wakesurfs

Continue reading »]]> We’re going to be doing some testing of new combinations of materials and also revealing a few secrets about how we are working on our new Flyboy Wakesurf boards. We test things ALOT. We have tons of ideas and there are so many new advances in composite technology on an almost daily basis, it’s hard to keep on top of them all.

One of the things that isn’t visible in the various veneer boards James Walker has been riding the last year or so, is this concept of cassetting. Not like your old tape cassette, but in terms of a perimeter frame. The original Flyboy Wakesurf boards had a small perimeter framework that did a few things, one was to add perimeter weighting, another was to add stiffness around the outline and finally, there is some ding resistance with a higher density foam out along the perimeter.

That framework, though, could be any number of things. The Gen 2 original flyboy’s have basswood, the newer Gen 3 Flyboy’s have built up layers of high density foam and carbon fiber. It’s possible to use just about any material in there, bamboo and wood veneer, actual wood like balsa or basswood or even hight density foam. All of those can be sandwiched together with reinforcement materials like carbon fiber. So there are LOTS of options, but also that means lots of testing. Trying to find the optimal combination is a rather daunting task. WE have some general idea of what works and what doesn’t but even things like what layer should go next “might” effect the performance of the wakesurfs. That might sound trite, but realize we are out at the rails, which are shaped, so the closer to the outline, the thinner the material will be.

One of the masters of this layering technique is Josh Dowling, but his designs are divinycell and paulowina, alternating. We love that look, but wonder if there isn’t a better combination that can give us better more response wakesurfs. The folks at Airbaze are using built up balsa wood and we really enjoyed that also, when we were building those several years ago, but finding consistent pieces of balsa wood always proved difficult, they are using a factory in Thailand and have access to a huge supply of Balsa, so we’re sure that will help them. We’d like to experiment with combinations of wood, carbon fiber, bamboo and high density foam. We recognize that it’s a crazy complicated build and the likelihood anything like that would reach production is slim to none, but we are theorizing the rails and the framework around them can be tailored in such a way as to achieve higher levels of performance in our wakesurfs.

So that’s the basis for this next build and we’re glad you’ve taken a moment to follow along.

We’ll start the process by cutting out our blank from a huge billet of one pound foam, you can see the markings this billet is a 4′ x 8′ section, 3″ thick.

It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but we divide the billet into three pieces. Two that are 2′ x 5′ and the last, or remainder is a 3′ x 4′ section at the end. Here you can see that we’ve cut the 3′ x 4′ section off and what’s left is the two 2′ x 5′ sections, which we’ll cut now.

…and there you have the basic core of this surf style wakesurfer. We’ll hotwire the rocker next and then work on the outline. We’ll also be laying up our test panels that should approximate what we’d like to see in our framework. That discussion will prove to be interesting, if not very conclusive. We think the eterminiation will be in the ride itself, but hopefully we can get an idea from the test panels. We should take a moment and explain this part also. We strive to build the best, most technically advanced wakesurfs for you our loyal customer base. That typically dictates ground-breaking materials and designs. BUT getting there also takes tons of effort. Sure we could use an off the shelf blank like some of the other folks, but is that technologically advanced? No, it’s just following what someone else has done. In fact that just becomes a commodity, doesn’t it? Like buying flour at the market, it’s all been done before, so just buy the cheapest one. That’s not Flyboy Wakesurf.

We won’t bring you someone elses tech or ladle on the ridiculous hype that permeates this industry. We’ll show you failures and please understand that when we do things like the test panels, if we do 6, 5 of them will technically be a failure! The one that we use, hopefully will show some promise. We aren’t afraid of showing you those testing failures because we know you’re expecting them. You want to see the process and gain the knowledge that will help YOU make better buying decisions, even if it’s not a Flyboy Wakesurf board. We believe that showing you those failures makes us your most reliable source for information and that will eventually lead you to become a faithful Flyboy wakesurf customer.

Thanks so much for following along, we REALLY appreciate that you take time out of your busy day.

Technorati Tags: surf style, wakesurfer, wakesurfs

Continue reading »]]> Hey! Congratulations to our first drawing Jamie Crawford from Idaho. Jamie is taking home the cool Inland Surfer Desert Camo wakesurf board bag. Thanks to everyone that answered the question and remember, we have have lots more cool stuff to give away, so stay tuned for your chance to win! Also, we’ll be giving away the grand prize, Inland Surfer Flyboy Division James Walker signature model in time for your summer riding enjoyment!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming, hopefully you saw the first video of James Walker landing the first ever surf style Backside Big Spin, or at least we think it was! It was definately exploited a bunch. We thought we’d document James Walker landing another on on his surf style Flyboy Wakesurf board. The fin depth on most surf style boards is a multiple of most skim style boards which changes things when doing tricks like this. The depth of the fin prevents the rotation from starting as early as on a skim style board, so the entry and execution of the trick is delayed somewhat, as the fins clear the lip. The timing is crucial and if you look, you can see that the entry looks like a common ollie 3, but take note of two unique things. First, James front foot is already off the board. So he leads into the trick pulling up his front foot, but has to pull hus front foot off the board to initiate the 3 shuv while still going vertical. Also, if you look carefull at James rear foot, it’s loading up to kick the tail around, the timing of this is crucial.

Now in the second frame you can see the board has started it’s totation and James Walker is still in the air with his leg extended from kicking the board around. It’s really had to see in the picture, but the fins are free of the water and that’s what causes the delay in starting the rotation. Also, the orientation of the board gets a bit odd, clearing the fins really requires that the board have that more vertical orientation, which when the wakesurf board comes around, causes the nose to be pointed DOWN. You can see that if the orientation isn’t vertical enough, the fins will grab as the board goes around and if the orientation is TOO vertical, the wakesurf board is going to pearl when James Walker lands. It’s a very precise trick on the a surf style board.

You can see in the picture below James Walker is completing the varial rotation as the board comes around. That will put him on the wakesurf board backside switch when it lands and he comes down the wake. We should clarify the the backside in the backside big spin refers to the orientation of the rotation, like in wakeboarding. Sometimes in wakesurfing we use backside to refer to whether the rider is riding toes to the wake or heels to the wake.

We wanted to share those few pictures with you, you can see the difficulty involved and also how a surf style board requires a different approach to completing the trick than does a skim style board.

Here is the video of James Walker doing that back big. The video is unedited and shows how James walked out of the backside switch! Probably not a viable trick to get out of riding backside switch in a contest, but fun to watch.

Also we want to thank everyone that entered the Flyboy Wakesurf Surf Style giveaway contest, we’ll announce the winner later on today! Stay tuned for more prizes all leading up to the GRAND PRIZE the Inland Surfer Flyboy Division James Walker signature wakesurf board!

While we’re at it, we should take a moment and thank all of James’ sponsor, who help the progression of the sport. Whether or not you like this trick, isn’t the point. This is where James sees his riding going and his sponsor facilitate that growth. Organizers and governance may take surf style wakesurfing in a completely different direction, but the support of James’ sponsors don’t involve that bias, they just give James the freedom to ride.

Thanks to Inland Surfer, Ski Supreme Boats, Towanza.com, Exile Audio, Liquid Trends and Hydroturf traction.  Please take a moment to visit them and tell them James Walker and Flyboy Wakesurf sent ‘ya!

Technorati Tags: flyboy wakesurf, James Walker, surf style

Continue reading »]]> It’s true, the Flyboy Wakesurf contest is finally taking off. Are you ready? Now is there any better way to start your work week off that with winning something? No way! Well, unless you’re stinking rich and don’t have to work. So the first of our lead in prizes is the Inland Surfer small desert camo bag, this will cover any wakesurf board less than 5 feet in length. It’ll be perfect for your Inland Surfer Flyboy Division James Walker Signature model wakesurf when you win that! This bag has a fin pouch and is fully lined with a heat reflective material perfect for protecting your investment.

Here are some pictures and you can always click on the link above that will take you to the Inland Surfer website, who is one of the sponsors of this contest. All free, just fine folks supporting the sport!

This is what the bag looks like

This is the zippered fin pouch, as you can see it’s lined.

This is a picture of the inside of the board bag which is double zippered.

Ok are you ready for the question? The Inland Surfer Flyboy division James Walker signature model wakesurf board is one of the premiere SURF STYLE wakesurf boards currently available. Surf style boards, like the James Walker signature model have soft rails towards the nose that gradually blend into very sharp or hard rails at the tail. This is oppossed to a typical skim style board that has hard or sharp rails all around the outline. Now while the Inland Surfer Flyboy division James Walker signature model wakesurf board has typical surf style rails, it has a very unique reinforcement material that is used and wraps the rails nose to tail.

For your chance to win this killer board bag from Inland Surfer, a $90 value, name the reinforcement material used on the Inland Surfer Flyboy divsvion wakesurf board that bears James Walker name!

Remember you can find the answer here on the Flyboy Wakesurf site, on just about any retailer that sells the board and a host of other places. You can post your answer in email, text message, as a comment on the blog, on facebook just about anywhere we can find it!

Good luck and thanks for playing the Flyboy Wakesurf Surf Style give away in all it’s wonderfulness!

Technorati Tags: flyboy wakesurf, Wakesurf

Continue reading »]]> We had fun installing that single trailing fin in the super thick wakesurfer and it reminded us of a project we wanted to test. We were doing some work on a hollow carbon fiber wakesurf board and in our work we ran up against a weight issue so we’ve put that project on the back burner. One of the things we had thought about was how to install the fin boxes in the hollow wakesurf board without any foam to sink them in. Our thought was we’d somehow mold “cups” that the fin boxes would get epoxied into. That idea lead us to another idea! Way WAY back in the day we had done a lot of work with perimeter stringers and also what is called parabolic stringered rails. These are concepts where a stringer of sorts is moved out towards the rails. One of the things we really liked with the perimeter stringers was that we could grab the fin boxes with the stringers and it sort of gave the fins more life. Now this was back in early 2008, so we are talking a LONG time ago.

We currently use composite sandwich construction and there isn’t really a stringer involved in the wakesurf board. However, we do have a layer or two of carbon fiber on the rails. So we wondered if putting a layer of carbon fiber UNDER the fin box and connecting it to the layer of carbon fiber on the rails would somehow duplicate that feeling of being more alive with the fins? This concept borrows heavily from Dave Vernor’s suspension system.  Dave owns Vernor surfboards and he makes surfboards and a wakesurf board or two or thousand. That system connects the three fins of a thruster and also the four fins of a quad. Instead we will be connecting the fin boxes to a perimeter stringer, so the fin boxes themselves will not connect to each other, instead to the closest rail.

So we grabbed some scrap carbon fiber and a plastic bag and set about seeing if we could talk a piece of carbon fiber into a routed out fin box in some foam.

Now we are going to be using a vacuum bag, that will be the only way we can keep the fin box installed into the foam while the epoxy cures, the underlayerment of the carbon fiber will want to push the fin box back out. We didn’t want to us a wakesurf board sized vacuum bag, because it’s just too large and so we opted for a household food storage bag. We installed a connection to allow the vacuum to evacuate all the air from inside the bag and slapped in some breather material to allow all of the air to be pulled out.

We mix up a small amount of epoxy that we’ll use to wet out the carbon fiber and also paint into the routed hole in the foam.

We’ve already cut and test fitted the carbon fiber patch. It’s mostly just rough, not attempting for it to be production quality, mostly an effort to see if we can even do this! So you’ll see in the picture below the ends are sort of rounded and we have quite a bit of epoxy on the carbon fiber! We use a small section of used nylon vacuum bag material, waste not, want not, and a squeegee to apply the epoxy.

We’ve already routed the hole for the fin box in some scrap EPS foam and we also sanded a small groove along the side of the foam, trying to simulate what would be a channel on the rails of a wakesurf board if we implemented this concept. We want the carbon fiber to seat in the routed hole and then lap over the edge on the rail to allow any rail material to be glued to the carbon fiber. We lay the wet out carbon fiber into the cavity and sort of manage it into the cavity with finger pressure and then set the futures box into it.

Next we slide the whole piece into the small sealable food bag and reseal that so that we can pull a vacuum. We got a little sloppy here as there wasn’t much room inside this 1 gallon bag. A full sized vacuum bag that would accept a wakesurf board will resolve that issue.

You can see some of the runners on the top of the fin box, but the box is seated pretty well in the cavity and the carbon fiber is conforming to the shape of the box, so for the most part we’ve been successful in that part of the test. We’re not sure if this will duplicate the feeling we are after, but we are at least on the right track towards being able to build a composite connection to the rail stringers!

Thanks so much for following along, we appreciate it. Are you ready for the contest to begin? Well your wait is almost over, first question and prize to be awarded starts next week! Are you studying the blog? All the answers can be found here!

Technorati Tags: Wakesurf, wakesurf board

Continue reading »]]> We don’t think that folks mean any harm when they talk about thinks like “float” and “push”, they are simplistic definitions that attempt to describe the sensation being felt. The concept of wave propogation and not linear travel just sort of muddies the issue and isn’t helpful in describing the forces that are being felt. BUT they can also really confuse consumers attempting to narrow down their selection of wakesurf board choices.  If float were the overriding concern, we’d all be opting for a large thick wakesurf board. If push were the overriding force, we’d all be on a really short finned wakesurf board that reduced drag.  There is a function of hydrostatic bouyancy that most wakesurf boards possess but it isn’t float and there are almost no wakesurf boards that will “float” you. Huge longboards can, in the 10 to 11 foot range, but at 5 feet, most likely not, unless you’re a grom and a light weight one at that. This concept of push also really confuses some consumers and it’s continued use is harmful when you’re looking at purchasing a wakesurfer.

We want to go back to our fin select, but also work that around this concept of push vs lift. Fins on the bottom of the wakesurfer are designed to impact control of the wakesurf board, by the introduction of drag. If you’ve ever been on a finless board you know that they can slide wildly out of control, but a finned board feels more stable less likely to spin wildly out of control. Add more fins and that feeling of stability increases.

We want to talk about how fins can help capture lifting forces and why the concept of drag is really only marginally a concern. You might hear folks talk about super deep fins on surf style boards as adding lots of drag, but from observation, that never seems to be the case, right? I mean you never see a high end board with deep fins dragging simply because of the fins. Like putting in smaller fins speeds the board up. That would be the logic, right? If fins ONLY added drag, smaller ones would make a board faster. Have you ever felt that? When you swapped out deep fins for smaller fins and ytour board just raced away from you with ridiculous speed? LIAR! It doesn’t happen, but most of us have felt adding fins that had a significant cant and more depth create LIFT. Like the board was floating higher. It’s not, but what that phenomenon is, is the fins capturing more of the lifting forces on the wake.

Our wakes are pretty puny when compared to an ocean wave and most of our fins come from ocean manufacturers where the force of the wave can be multiples higher than what we experience. We need everything we can get to grab the forces of the water flow that we can. Push? Not so much, Lift? You’re darn tooting. If you want to FEEL it for yourself and dispell the whole push nonsense, swap your favorite fin for one with a ton of cant. Futures fin box users, grab the 3/2/1 template or Scimitar. FCS users grab an older H2 template and you’ll feel the effects of grabbing more of the lifting forces immediately.

So that’s why we chose NOT to install rail fins We could have increased the specified performance of this wakesurf board with the installation of the rail fins, but what we wanted to demonstrate was how changing the design elements of concave, rocker and thickness would result in the performance object of increase the size of the sweet spot of the wake. The translation there is that the easiest way to surf more of the wake is with a wakesurf board designed for that purpose. Also, that while length is one way, thickness and concave and rocker changes can also provide the same improvement in performance related to increasing the size of the sweet spot.

The other thing we want to point out is that the sweet spot of a wake is mostly dependent upon the capabilities of the wakesurf board design and some with the riders skill level. Capturing more of the lifting forces, improves the hydrodynamic planing capabilities of your wakesurf board. Also the sweet spot of our wakes are strongest up at the front of the wake and then gradually decline moving further away from the boat. Which would make sense as the boat plowing through the wake is the source of the wake propogation, closer to the source, the greater the forces. But also, the sweet spot is related to the hydrodynamic planing ability of the board. When you fall out the back, your and your board have simply gone beyond the threshold where the lifting forces of your wake can provide hydrodynamic planing based upon your wakesurf board orientation. So all of our wakes possess lifting forces through their entire length, but they may not be adequate to allow you and your board to plane.

So there you have it. The single fin, doesn’t capture any of the lifting forces, or at least significantly less than canted rail fins and so the extension of the sweet spot in this demonstration is associated MOSTLY with changes in the design elements of the board. That’s why we opted for it!

Thanks so much for follwoing along and we hope we gave you some useful information for when you are out looking for new wakesurf boards, or are working with your shaper!

Technorati Tags: wakesurf board, Wakesurf boards, wakesurfer

Continue reading »]]> TERMS and CONDITIONS

Ok, Ok, Ok, we know you’ve been waiting anxiously for the contest to begin, but hey we’re lazy! But here are the Terms and Conditions, if you don’t chuckle you can’t enter, we will be testing you later, so here we go!

1) You have to have fun, if you give us any grief, at all, over color, sizes, day of the week or anything else, you LOSE! Automatically. No not really, but we’re a tiny little itty bitty division of Inland, we have no budget, thanks for the understanding!

2) You can do whatever you want with the prize, it’s yours. Sell it, use it, whatever. We think you’ll love the prizes, but realize you may be 350 pounds, so you probably won’t find the Inland Surfer Flyboy Division James Walker signature board all that useful. Sell it and use the cash to go to Vegas!

3) Send in a picture! With a big smile and we’ll post it on the blog and FB for all your friends to marvel at! Especially if you go to Vegas!

4) No doubt there will be multiple right answers for some questions, we’ll draw the winner from a hat, so to speak. The winners won’t be announced until the next business day and entries for that days question will close at 5 pm Pacific Time. Questions will be posted about 4:30 am Pacific Time at random intervals. Or maybe later, you know 4:30 am is freakin’ early!

5) Once you’ve won one of the great lead in prizes, you aren’t eligible for any of the other lead in prizes, BUT you are still eligble for the GRAND PRIZE the Inland Surfer Flyboy Division James Walker signature wakesurf board with a retail value in excess of $850!

6) The lead in prizes are T-shirts, board bags, all sorts of wonderful stuff! The difficulty of the question will be commensurate with the wonderfulness of the prize. Right? The more wonderfulness the harder the question, we determine the wonderfulness factor not YOU! So there. )

7) The grand prize is a barnd new Inland Surfer Flyboy Division James Walker ignature board, fresh from the factory in the factory box. Retail value in xcess of $850! Are you kidding me?! That’ll make your house payment. Also, there is only one of these to be awarded. What?! Do you think we’re made of money like the folks at Towanza.com?

If you’re a competitor and you send in a derogatory response, we WILL publicly humilate you as being of low IQ. If you intentionally reference it and put in a dead link, omit US or any other stupid stuff, we’ll do the same. It is one of the rules! In fact we’ll extend the contest to come up with the best description of your arrogance. Hahahahaha!

9) Jeff Page can’t enter, he’s always trying to get free stuff! No one in the entire Flyboy food chain can enter, well I guess you can but you can’t win anything, c’mon you already have most of this stuff anyway! Let other folks have a chance.

10) You can send in your answer to win a prize, on the Flyboy Wakesurf Facebook page, or by email at flyboywakesurf@yahoo.com or jwalker@jwcpa.com or you can use the contact tab on the flyboywakesurf.com website. Heck if you know us, you can even send a text! Just make sure we can identify you in your answer.

Stay tuned for the first offical question and we’ll be awarding prizes as we go. All questions will have come from the Flyboy Wakesurf Boards website http://flyboywakesurf.com Read it, study it, visit it everyday! Oh and if you haven’t already, Like us on Facebook! What are you waiting for!

Good luck!

Technorati Tags: flyboy wakesurf boards

Continue reading »]]> So in the picture below, that is our normal pocket. We have a 2011 Supreme V226 and it’s NOT weighted illegally, that is just 2,000 pounds of people AND water ballast. There is no extra weight in the front and we didn’t change the trim tab. Speed is at 10.8. This is just our normal, everyday wake. We’re sure there are longer ones and taller ones, but the point being that normally there isn’t any wakesurfing that far back. This is James Walker and his normal wakesurfer is about 4’6″ long and 2″ thick, so this wakesurfer is about 5 inches longer and a good 1″ thicker. It’s not a lot more board, but there is a pretty significant increase in the amount of foam that is present in the wakesurfer. If we think about increasing volume of an object, adding length or width is pretty limited. Let’s assume the dimensions of a rectangle, we know it’s sooooo not a wakesurfer but the math is easier!

Ok so for our example lets assume a rectangle that is 2 x 4, it can be any units, it’s just the dimensions we want for this example. So the original area is 8 sq whatevers, if we add 1 to the 2 side we’ll get 3 and the area is now 12, so almost a 50% increase in area. Now lets go back to the original dimensions, add 1 to the 4 side and we have a rectangle of 2 x 5 and the area is 10 so an increase of 2 just at 25%. We know logically that by adding to the width, it adds area to the entire length and so that’s why we have so much more area in that first calculation.

But we want to talk about volume here and we’ll come back to this calculation in a bit. Volume would include the third dimension of thickness. Before we go there we want to talk briefly about hydrostatic bouyancy.

Hydrostatic bouyancy is that force that causes something to float on or in a fluid. When your boat is just floating, not under power it’s floating partially under water but mostly above the water. That’s hydrostatic bouyancy. Our boats are heavy, 2 tons is typical, but they float because the same volume of water actually weighs more, say 3 tons. What happens is that as the boat slides off the trailer the water is displaced until the amount of water that is displaced weighs MORE than the boat and it starts floating. Now for our wakesurfer when we are wakesurfing does the wakesurfer ever float semi-submerged? No. When there is no movement, the wakesurfer is always underwater. The rider and wakesurf board unit has some hydrostatic bouyancy and there very well could be a difference in the level at which the rider floats semi-submerged, but the wakesurfer is always under water.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t any hydrostatic bouyancy, just that with the level of weight added by the rider, is so large that it completely submerges the wakesurfer. The board and rider unit though is much like the boat, part submerged and part above the water line.

Let’s look at hydrodynamic planing. If we know that at rest the wakesurf board is submerged, there has to be something else that allows the wakesurf board to ride on the surface. That other “something” is hydrodynamic planing. It’s where the water flow is capture by the board and allows it to skim on the surface of the fluid that is moving. In our wakes, it’s lift, in a car the water is normally not moving by the car is and so when our tires hit a puddle, the speed of the vehicle causes the car to hydroplane, or the tires actually. Anyway, it’s movement or a force acting on at least one of the bodies involved. Hydrodynamic planing mostly comes from wetted surface area. The large that area, like the formula above, the easier the object planes, if weight or shape aren’t an issue. Think about skipping a rock across the surface of the lake. Large flatter rocks skip easier and father, but if the rock weighs 27 pounds you probably can’t throw it fast enough for it to skip at all.

Do rocks have any hydrostatic bouyancy? No. Well maybe if the lake was 4,000 mile deep, but within our relative range of water we know that rocks will always sink to the bottom, but with enough speed, they will skip across the surface. What happens as the speed of the rock skipping across the surface decreases? It eventually loses that hydrodynamic planing ability and siks like…well like a rock!

That same scenario is working in our wakesurf wakes. The further back away from the boat you try and surf, there more diminsihed the lifting forces from the wake itself. At the very back of the wakem typically, we can catch that roller where the face id perpendicular to the travel of the boat, but the wave propogation is parallel to the boats travel. That too is a lifting force and capturing that, can provide enough force for the wakesurf board and wakesurfer to achieve hydrodynamic planing.

With our Supreme V226, it’s very efficient, like we said, 2,000 pounds of total ballast. ANY boat can be loaded crazy heavy and generate lots of lifting forces, no matter how inefficient the hull design. Drop in 2 tons and viola a surf boat! That formula will work with everything from a barge to a Vdrive. So what can you do if you just want to surf your existing set up and you don’t want to lose the ability to thrash the wake some? That’s also efficiency isn’t it? We want a shorter board that allows the rider to ride more of the wake, or that increases the sweet spot.

Hydrostatic bouyancy is a function of volume. The more volume, the more bouyancy. Time for another example. Which is easier to submerge under water, a basketbell or a tennis ball? The tennis ball because in relative comparison, the basketball has way more volume and that volume is all air which wants to float. The same is true with the wakesurf board. A thicker wakesurf board has more volume and will also have more bouyancy.

Now back to the formula. We saw increases in area of 25% and 50% when adjusting the length and width. Lets assume that the thickness in those examples was 1 and didn’t change. Then the increase in volume would be equal to the increase in area. What happens if we leave the length and width dimensions the same and increase the thickness from 1 to 2? The volume now becomes 2 x 4 x 2 or 16. That’s a 100% increase in volume. Wow! In effect, we know that by doubling the thickness we’ve also effectively increased the hydrostatic bouyancy, probably by double also.

As the wakesurf board is moving between hydrostatic bouyancy and hydrodynamic planing, that is to say going from sinking to riding a greater bouyancy factor will delay that transition. More bouyant, takes longer to fall off of that planing. Or in other words, we don’t need as much lifting forces for the wakesurfer to remain in that realm of hydrodynamic planing.

Cool huh? Lots of interaction in there, but what we’d like to make you aware of is that thickness in a board is a much more efficeient way to gain that bouyancy and give you more range on your wake than length. There are trade offs and the thickness only works in a relative range. You couldn’t effectively surf a wakesurfer that was 2 feet thick, it would tip over and be impossible to carve, but going from 2 inches to 3 inches is certainly doable.

Ok, so pictures! We talked about them above and never showed it!

That’s James Walker on the super thick demonstration wakesurf board. Super long pocket and in fact, james isn’t really on the wake anymore, it’s the secondary roller that he is capturing. We don’t know, is that wakesurfing? We guess so, it’s still sort of capturing the lifting forces but the wake itself is nothing but wash. The tail of the board is buried in it, much like we’d see a long board. The design of this wakesurfer, where we are making an effort to capture more of the lifting forces and the increased volume so that we can extend that hydrodynamic planing life cycle. The result is the expansion of the sweet spot that can be ridden.

Not quite as good in terms of perspective, here is a short unedited clip so you can see James is riding the super thick wakesurfer so that you can see he extended the pocket and was able to ride the board significantly further back and out and away from the wake itself. Again, we’re not saying our wake is the biggest, badest or any other superlative, just that wakesurf board design can easily allow you to increase the range of the viable area for wakesurfing, should you feel that is a need. In the next post we’ll talk a bit more about the fin choice here and how that impacts the ride and planing capabilities of the wakesurf board.

Thanks so much for following along, we appreciate you taking the time.

Technorati Tags: wakesurf board, wakesurfer, Wakesurfing

Continue reading »]]> So we are finished with all of the lamination efforts and you’ll probably notice that we only used one layer of 6 oz e-glass on both the top and bottom of the lastest wakesurfer. Now normally when we would do a futures fin installation, we would place the boxes under the glass, meaning that we would route and install the boxes BEFORE the final lamination. As we started this wakesurfer project we originally planned a twin fin installation, but then thought better of it. We can use the cant of the fins to capture some of the upward lift, but felt that would take away from the demonstration of the design which we hoped would be that extra length isn’t the only option, and that push doesn’t exist as a force in a wakesurf wake. The problem with that change of plans is that we didn’t have in trailer boxes, so we ordered them and went ahead with the project by laminating the bottom. In the last post on this topic we’ll get more indepth on the concepts of hydrostatic bouyancy and hydrodynamic planing.

So off we go detailing the installation of the trailer fin. This is what the entire unit looks like. We have a futures hatchet trailer fin and then the 1/2″ depth futures trailer box.

If you’ve spent any time following us here on Flyboy Wakesurf boards, you know that the rail fin boxes have a 3/4″ depth, but the trailers are 1/2″ depth. The reason for that is that most surfboard from the ocean taper to a fairly thin tail. Wake surf boards, for the most part, have only a passing resemblence to surfboard from the ocean and this would be a major deviation. Futures does manufacture trailer boxes that are 3/4″ deep for quads that have the fins moved forward into a thicker part of the board.

Our color choices are not the best for seeing pencil and pen marks, so we lay down a few pieces of blue painters tape to allow us to draw on them and see the marks for fin box placement.

Rail boxes are installed with a slight toe-in, like the front wheels of of car. The rail boxes typically point to some point out past the nose. However, a center trailing box must point straight ahead in the direction of travel fo the wakesurfer or the drag will be significant. So we have to take care with this wakesurfer to insure that the alignment of the trailer fin is straight. In the picture above you can see that there are three pieces of tape and then each has a mark which we’ve drawn after measuring the centerlin on the wakesurfer

This is what the fin and box unit looks like, we also need to position it a specific distance from the tail. This wakesurfer will be spending some time with the tail in the wash so we are going to poistion it fairly close to the tail.

This is a view of the alignment looking from the nose towards the tail, you can get an idea that we are trying to get the fin centered and straight.

We’ve talked alot about the various tools and components used in routing the holes for Futures fin boxes and so we thought we’d show you what the whole thing looks like when all assembled and in use. You can see the flat aluminum jig, the collar that fits around the bottom of the router and the router itself.

Before gluing it in, we test fit the box into the routed hole to make sure it’s snug and fits everywhere. This needed a touch more work, but it was close.

Ok all glued in and then we tape it in place to make sure it doesn’t move while the epoxy is curing.

So that’s the install of the single trailer fin and then in tomorrow’s post we’ll document some of the riding results, we hope we’ll see you then and thanks for following along!

Technorati Tags: wake surf board, wakesurfer

Continue reading »]]> We’ve already ridden this board and it worked as expected, we’re probably two days away from sharing those pictures, so we hope you’ll stick around as we wrap that up and talk to you about capturing lift, as there is no such thing as PUSH in a wakesurf wake. It’s also pretty interesting to get a further glimpse into hydrodynamic planing and hydrostatic bouyancy. If you can dispell the poor nomenclature that folks use, it will be helpful for you in making board choices and also working with your wake. You’ll have to work hard at unlearning from the whole push concept and that is used constantly even to this day.

Ok, so back finishing up this build, we have two basic step left, the first being lamination the deck side of this wake surf board and the last being installing the fin.

In the last post that dealt with building this wake surf board we laminated the bottom and left the wake surf board to cure. The epoxy has cured and here is a quick picture of that wakesurf board before laminating the deck.

We didn’t get any good pictures of the next few small steps, but what we do is remove any runners and knock down any rough spots that will make laminating the deck hard. Runners are loose ends of fiberglass that get laminated and stick out from the surface of the wake surf board. When we trim the fiberglass some of the wave can unravel and then when it’s wet out with the epoxy, they get heavy and can dangle down due to the force of gravity. We try to grab them with the squegee and flip them onto the wet fiberglass, but with the slow cure times and our refusal to sit next to the board the entire time it’s curing, can result in the runners.

We mentioned before that there are two pretty common style of lapping the rail of wake surf boards. A free lap, like we are doing here where the reinforcement fabric is cut and laminated over the rails, but the cut is just free-hand and the resulting overlap is not really uniform. The other is a cut lap, where masking tape is applied to the underside of the wake surf board and a very uniform outline in the wake surf board is adhered to. When resin swirls are used on the bottom, they can extend to the deck and there is a perfect deliniation where the tape stops the color work. As the epoxy cures in the cut lap process, the laminator typically uses a single edged razor to cut the curing fiberglass off at the raised area of the tape. That cut is then a perfect shape regardless of what the fabric was originally cut to. This method is rather labor intensive and tapes quite a bit of practice, but results in perfect artwork termination on the deck side of the wake surf board.

ahem, we didn’t do a cut lap. It’s gorgeous and really makes the wake surf board stand out, but it’s a huge pain! This wake surf board is just to demonstrate how we can gain extra range in our wakes without buying a new boat, weighting the boat illegally or struggling with a too small wake surf board, so we didn’t opt for the harder lamination.

So jumping ahead, we followed the same basic process as before. We laminated the entire surface with a white tinted epoxy and then went back and did the color work with some black tinted epoxy. We used the same process of mixing up a larger batch of epoxy for the white tint and then go back later with the black color. The process of adding the color we used is mostly just dribble it here and then and let it soak into the foam or run off the sides!

Ok so that’s the process for laminating the deck side and in the next post we’ll document the installation of a single trailing fin and discuss why we went that route. Thanks so much for following along!

Technorati Tags: wake surf board, wakesurf board