Speedsail board

still not scaring me

I was visiting my folks last week so I thought I'd take a few pics of the land board my Dad made about 20 years ago. He copied a pair of trucks off one of my skateboards and made a bigger stronger version. It worked brilliantly, although I never went super fast on it from fear of the consequences. Thought the pics might be helpful for anyone wanting to build one.

(The wheels have been pilfered for other projects)







The trucks are now back home with me instead of rusting away in Dad's shed, this thread has inspired me. Horrific injury photos to follow (probably)

You could figure out which trucks are in -ve castor, (I can't do that in my head anymore) and tighten them up, or just fix them solid.
If that makes the turning circle too large, you can increase the angle of the pivot spindle, the more vertical it is, the more the wheels turn for any given change of deck angle.

present plan is to build a new reartruck which pivots up and down only this will allow the board to pivot for the front steering and not be able to wobble fore and aft(it makes sense in my head). The V3 board was great on length and grip. ,and the only falls I had were when I tried to slow from a particularly bad "wobbleboard session"and the sail back winded.
I was really impressed with myself when I managed a gybe( yes that impressed) so I'm looking forward to the next version

I quite liked the "C11" skateboards Truck design which gave true tuneability for the style of riding you were attempting, first saw it on the New Inventors.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s1871861.htm
www.grombiz.com/
www.grombiz.com/bombing.pdf

By tuning the way the trucks are able to turn they can make the boards set up for super turny moves or for high speed bombing runs where speed wobbles are eliminated.

Hopefully there is something in here which is helpfull

Thought I'd get around to posting a couple of pictures of the thing I built around 18 months ago following the the suggestions from this forum. Absolute minimum effort project:-

- Deck is a scrap of wood ~ 1.2 m long.
- Skate trucks are off an ancient skateboard since re-juvenated with new "rubbers" purchased for $10.00 from a skate shop.
- Wheels, axle, etc are from a pair of cheap trolleys (the type almost all hardware stores now sell for ~ $25.00).
- Axels were not cut down at all from the trolley and are connected to the skate axles using a pair of U bolts AND a pair of pipe clamps (jubilee clips).

I have used the thing quite a bit in a carpark, on the beach and on a football oval - pretty much always in light winds. Would have to say the fun per effort return has been great. It works way better than what I thought it would. To add a couple of points to stuff already posted:-

- Apart from obviously tightening the trucks, a technique thing you can do avoid the speed wobbles is to unweight the board by hanging off the boom. This transfers your weight to the mast base and hence the centre of the board. You may want to be a little careful if you have the mastbase mounted foward of the front axle.
- My board is just big enough for me to use a 5.3 with. Any larger and the centre of effort of the sail is too far back. IF you do a liitle geometry you will work out the turning radius is proportional to the board length. A 2m length board won't be much good for tooling around the carpark with so this is a compromise.
- The next deck I make will be slighly longer with the mastbase further back so there is room to get around the front of the board like a normal windsurfer tack.

I have got a litte video I'll see about posting.

Cheers
Marlon

I am well impressed Another idea for me to work with. could you do me a favour and and put that video of the dual bicycle landyacht into the construction section in the landyacht forum . The guys over there need a shot of inspiration to get them thinking out of the box again