Flyboy Wakesurf Super Fly

We sure hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Any day not working is a great day! We were able to get a LOT done on our Flyboy Wakesurf Super Fly wakesurf board. You may remember us describing this as a “wakesurf style” wakesurf board, borrowing that term from Mike Armstrong of Calibrated Wakesurfing. To refresh your memory, Mike Armstrong built what he envisioned was a perfect blend of skim style and surf style boards combined and called that wakesurf style. Right?! Doesn’t that make sense? It’s not SURFING. It’s not SKIMMING, it’s wakesurfing and why wouldn’t you take the attributes, that you prefered, and combine them into a separate and unique board? Well, for one reason, surf style boards really require that thickness to not bend and snap! Also, skim style boards tend to use a higher density foam and wind up being a tad heavier for the same size and shape as a surf style board.

So, we wanted to combine ALL of the best attributes of both of those boards. Now, we aren’t controlling like so many yahoo’s in this sport. What we have grabbed as the best attributes may not be what YOU want or need. You might want lower rocker and more thickness. That’s really easy to do and so cool! What we wanted to do was solve some of the problems that prevent specific attributes from being present in a wakesurf style board. So, we wanted it THIN, but still have futures fins. We wanted that super thin construction, but to also have a bottom concave. We wanted it directional, but also to have super sharp rails all the way around. We wanted it thin, but to be stiff and strong enough to not SNAP.

When you think about it, we’ve languished in design considerations because of surf vs skim. We hate the ridiculous spin that so many spammers put on developments. Don’t you hate being lied to by those folks? OMG! This is the most amazing device ever! No it isn’t it just fixed your crappy design because it was a mess to begin with! We are running with a concept first introduced by Calibrated Wakesurfing and while we think it’s an amazing fusion of the various stylizations, it’s NOT going to tell you it”s going to revolutionize wakesurfing! It’s just a fun and what we wanted to do is solve some of the engineering issues that come with going super thin.

So the first thing we had to manage was break strength and stiffness. Remember how we have talked about how thickness is exponentially related to stiffness? Well that works in reverse also, so we had to address that with our composite sandwich technology and different materials. Here are a few pictures demonstrating that we sure think we have that issue resolved.

That’s 200 pounds being supported by 3/4″ thick and with the support nodes about 3.5 feet apart – that’s an important part, if the support nodes were touching, who cares! So you get the idea, the WIDER the span, the more stiffness and break strength is involved.

Here is a short fun little video of testing the Flyboy Wakesurf Super Fly Wakesurf board stiffness and break strength

If you prefer using the Youtube video console, you can watch the above video of us testing the Flyboy Wakesurf Super Fly wakesurf board using the link.

Do you own a skim style board? It’s flat on the bottom isn’t it? That’s because it’s TONS easier to make them that way. Not that it’s better, just easier. We won’t go into that stupid “push” nonsense, AGAIN, but it doesn’t exist. There is LIFT and tons of it. Some boats are far more efficient at developing that lift, others require multiple tons of ballast to develop a surfable wake, but THAT is the force that is allowing you to wakesurf. It’s a force UPWARDS. What’s the best way to capture that? Concave! So we wanted that too, in case we were on one of those poorly performing boats that needs 9,000 pounds of weight to develop a clean wakesurf wake.

You’ve never seen that before on a super thin skimm have you? Revolutionary! Sorry we had to. We molded in that concave, rather than shaping it, so we didn’t lose any thickness and hence stiffness or break strength. Now in typical surf style boards, that concave is shaped in, and so the middle of the board will wind up thinner, OR a specific blank has to be purchased to allow that shaping, which creates a domed deck. In terms of control, domed decks are the least effective, flat is next and a concave deck is the most effective. So, by molding the bottom shape, and not actually mowing foam, we achieved the concave bottom without losing a mostly flat deck.

Did someone say thin? 3/4′s of an inch to be exact. Now we chose that so that we could install the futures side bites fin boxes. Effectively, that becomes the thinnest we could go and still use REAL fins, not those stupid thru-bolt, wakeboard fin wannabes.

Directional shape, not a skim style board, we wanted some of those attributes, but not ALL of them, so this wakesurf style board is directional!

We also wanted a rocker! The tail rocker didn’t show up that well, but it’s about 1/2″ way more than a skim style board and the nose rocker is somewhere in the 2.5″ range, about twice what a skim style board has.

BUT we still wanted those crazy sharp rails…all the way around!

So you can see, we’ve taken, what WE felt were the best attributes of both styles and combined them into our interpretation of a wakesurf style board. We also wanted to solve the engineering issue of going thin and not breaking, retaining the overall lightness of a surf style board. This wakesurf style board, the Flyboy Wakesurf Super Fly will weigh in at 5 pounds ready to ride, which is the exact weight that James surf style board weighs.

We have one last picture we want to share that is more for the purposes of informing shapers out there. This is a close up of the bottom of the board, looking at the left side of the outline. That is to say that’s the rail on the left. What do you notice? No lap line, right? No bulge or change in the weave pattern. Well what if we told you that we didn’t grind the laps AT ALL! It’s TRUE! There are laps, and there is about 1 inch of free lap all the way around. FREE LAP, not a fancy cut lap and not one second of grinding or any polishing on the bottom at all. That is straight out of the bag.

Oh, those red dots are glitter we tossed in the epoxy. Anyway, how much more productive and profitable, could you be if you never had to grind another lap? Or polish a bottom? OR pay someone else to do that for you? Yeah we thought so. Stay tuned to flyboy wakesurf and we’ll show you how it’s done!

Ok and one last test, or part of a test.  Let’s jump on it!  Look for extra flex or anything else unwanted in these few pictures.

Wind up

Hang Time!

Check back tomorrow, unless you’re a friend on Facebook, for the exciting conclusion AND a video of the whole thing!

Thanks so much for following along, and being good sports, we really appreciate it!

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