If you are building a house the way you make a car you are not going to get a very good house...
Making a wing build as a windsurf sail wil never work , it takes technology from a different level .
Kites are a way , so is hanggliding , gliders and model airplanes .
I am making the Nelson Foils as easy to rig as setting up a tent . With a lot of the same acts and steps actually . Simple enough ?
Besides very few weekend windsurfers , often on 2 hand stuff , are capable of rigging there cambered race sails with the right amount of tension on mast , battens and boom .
The industry must not accept my foils , just like taxidrivers will never accept Uber and hotels Airbnb ...
as long as the daily users , I myself will ... ;-)
Have a nice weekend
Gerrit
I love to make rigging as easy as opening a umbrella but it is a bit challenging ... perhaps one day ...
""I am making the Nelson Foils as easy to rig as setting up a tent.""
Gerrit,
I put up my tent like this......
Select to expand quotehardie said..
Really interesting project, I hope it develops into something significant, and then accepted industry wide.
Just thinking out loud here, and I write from the perspective of a potential consumer/buyer, and not a technical or scientific perspective. I was wondering what would be needed for it to attract people away from traditional sails. I dont think the enthusiasm of the developer will be enough (Sorry Stan but its the truth).
What I see with traditional designs is that people are generally very happy with them. They rig easy, they are very controllable, they have wide wind ranges, they are fast with many GPS speedsailors having broken the 40kt barrier, (just to mention what comes off the top of my head, but 4 crucial ingredients).
So this new sail has at least these 4 elements to compete with? ATM the new sail sounds at least slightly more difficult to rig, and as Stan has admitted at times it hasnt been rigged correctly, so at worst it is much more difficult to rig in this early stages of its development. Controllability? Stan is claiming they are more controllable, at the same time he is also honest and admitting he is having troubles at the higher end of the wind range, so this still needs to be fixed. Stan claims these new wing sails have much wider wind range, so if true, this is a definite advantage, but not enough if other areas are not fixed. Speed, atm Stan is claiming they are not necessarily faster than traditional sails. The speed issue is critical here because GPS speed sailing is one area where these sails could be marketed and if he could demonstrate a true (at least 5%) speed improvement at the top end of the range eg (40kts vs 42kts or 52.5kts vs 55.2kts), then this is where people would buy it for sure, if the rigging, controllability and wind range issues are sorted.
Keep going Stan, I hope you can get this to a level where you are confident to give a sail to a top professional like Antoine who can set a new world windsurfing speed record, and you'll sell thousands of these sails world wide!!
Hey Hardie! This is all right questions and deserve answer. In my development free from corporate supervisors, I have freedom to be as objective as I want. Yeah last time i rigged with mistake ,first time in two years, but it didn't kill sail performance, just downgraded and that day didn't meet my expectations. Answering your questions: Conventional sail is anything but stable and it has 5 kt wind range. Let's say 6.5m sail you can start with wind 17 kt at 21kt got to jump in the water downhaul outhaul (detune) 23-25 you've got to detune again , some people probably can hold on to it, most of us run for smaller sail . I don't know where between these words I can say "wide wind range and very stable". Rigging wing sail same area a bit more complex, but you rig one time, no adjustments, it works wind from 17 kt (59cm wide board) to unknown to me upper limit. Sailing wing sail I never felt overpowered, it always can handle more wind, (board and fin is more problem). On higher wind range stiffness of the sail a bit problem because distortion of the mast , it solvable. But conventional sail has even more problem with distortion, even in normal conditions.
I trying to built sail with better overall performance and level of comfort for average sailor. I sill not ready to say that I've got product ready to be commercialized, but I do ready to say that I prefer to sail wing because it has better stability, not violent, easier to waterstart ,faster speed,unlimited wind range ,easy to jibe with, and safer to sail. One of major problem now is to develop cheaper way of production so sale price would be acceptable by the market.
Neilpete
Well ... if you rigg your sails like this...
Usual stuff, come to the shore and wind slowly dies. Anyway rig up sail to see how it shapes under the load. How much more you can see on the photo. Yes, have to fix dis and dat.. overall not terrible.
Looks realy nice Stanislav !
keep up the good work !
And the dis and dads will get fixed .
Select to expand quoteneilpete said..
No offence, but ?.
What is the point of having a window so small ...so high ?
I have to fix that too
Select to expand quoteARCWingsail said..neilpete said..
No offence, but ?.
What is the point of having a window so small ...so high ?
I have to fix that too
Just uploaded new videos of my new sail on the water, www.facebook.com/stanislav.mostoviy it was very bumpy and no much wind day 20 kt gust probably 23 not much speed to report 28.7 kt. but amazing upwind performance with new profile. Now my work will be more concentrated to make things more simple, practical and cheap .
Very interesting idea but I think what you have developed is a sail that will go upwind but be a pig downwind.
If it will go down at all.
I have a friend who is a pro sponsored by one of the major WS sail companies, and he says they apparently tried something like this and got those same results- great upwind but off the wind terrible.
However, the Challenger sail looks like it would work pretty well for course racing. Bag the sail for downwind, crank it for upwind angle.
Select to expand quoteBaja1000 said..
Very interesting idea but I think what you have developed is a sail that will go upwind but be a pig downwind.
If it will go down at all.
I have a friend who is a pro sponsored by one of the major WS sail companies, and he says they apparently tried something like this and got those same results- great upwind but off the wind terrible.
However, the Challenger sail looks like it would work pretty well for course racing. Bag the sail for downwind, crank it for upwind angle.
I completely disagree, you see, upwind performance is most important parameter for any sail system. This parameter tell you how much apparent wind this system can handle. Also my sail go really fast downwind, it just on that particular day wind was not so strong , chops was too high, I couldn't break my speed record. There was two more guys on the water , couldn't get them on video because they were too slow and most of the time they where not able to get on plane. I definitely looking forward to start manufacturing this sail for the public, but it would take some time to commercialize it.
From the videos I can see your sail is very stable and appears to be fast. You blast past a kiter a couple of times and in the end that is all that counts.
Select to expand quoteMobydisc said..
From the videos I can see your sail is very stable and appears to be fast. You blast past a kiter a couple of times and in the end that is all that counts.
Yes , sail is very stable , also board displace much less tail .
Select to expand quoteARCWingsail said..Mobydisc said..
From the videos I can see your sail is very stable and appears to be fast. You blast past a kiter a couple of times and in the end that is all that counts.
Yes , sail is very stable , also board displace much less tail .
Hi everyone! Lately past three months I was working on perfecting sail profile and price efficiency . Here is update. Sail become even more stable resulting in higher speed upwind and downwind. I simplify many sail parts and it saves a lot's of dry weight and cut material use . As it is now I working on production model, targeting end price $1300 for the whole system. Also few guys tried my sail . All of them surprised with stability and the power. So far I've got positive feedback.
Waiting for really windy days in September to try out latest model. August here in Northeast is not windy at all. If hurricane pass nearby it wood be just what i need. Cheers!
I have just read this thread with great interest.
My experience of the state of the art of windsurfing sail design goes back to 1980. I have seen and experienced it all evolve.
These are my observations, not necessarily criticisms:
The sail in the pictures above has the foil shape deep almost to the top of the sail. This looks a lot like late '80's sails and race board sails. This would indeed give the sail a lot of lift and power in light, marginal planing winds and on longboards at sub planing speeds. Your description and observations seem to confirm that.
For efficient use in much stronger winds, the centre of effort would have to be a LOT lower. Even if the foil remains very stable, control and efficiency will be severely compromised.
What is obvious when looking at the development of Race, Slalom and speed sails is that designers have realised that, although it may be counter intuitive to an aero engineer, lower aspect sails, with less theoretical aerodynamic efficiency, are actually faster and easier to sail. This is obvious those to study the Kinematics of the windsurfing stance and it's leverage limitations. One of the reasons why current windsurf sail designers are so concerned with building so much twist into their race sails in to keep the centre of effort much lower. It is as much about efficient efficient leverage as about efficient aerodynamics. You need to able to apply the power you have in the best vector.
In my humble opinion, you will need to make the COE much lower in your sails for them to work well in stronger winds for Speed-sailing and Slalom racing.
Also, in 30Kt plus winds, the sails will have to be quite a lot smaller for the same reasons. In fact, if they have higher lift/area, and better Lift/drag ratio, they may be best in even smaller area sizes than we currently use in record speed winds. (around 5m to 5.8m)
Your potential market is in Race, Slalom and particularly, Speed sailing, and those who want to go as fast as possible. The large market sector of those who buy cam-less Wave and Freeride sails have already rejected the extra speed and efficiency that is available to them.
I wish you the best of success in your quest!
Thanks for your opinion which is make a lots of sense. I did consider all of this during my summer testing, as a result I come up with 6 m sail that has small area on the top and larger on the bottom. It works from 15 16 mph wind using my 55 cm 74 litre jp speed board , small 21 cm fin. Sail is very fast , very stable, very crush resistant and easy to waterstart. I think my client will be sailors, who wants stable, fast and reliable sail. Last time I sail with my 6 m wing was 41 kt wind in cold air temperature 45F . For me it was just nice pleasant and fast day , with feel like sailing 25 kt wind, other experienced sailor next to me was using 4 m single ply sail, he had real trouble handling this conditions, he was extra careful, sailing really slow , no jybes and at some point have to walk upwind on the beach . Benefit of wing is very obvious. I working now on making aluminum tooling for carbon lay up. Hopefully soon you will see website with first in the world float-able soft wing sail for windsurfers. I'm very exited about this, all of my suppliers very cooperative and helpful, especially DP with help to develop new material for wing, so it looks like it just up to me to catch up with the rhythm.
Cheers!
Stanley.
I really do hope you succeed with this. Love the innovation and effort.
Hope it proves to be record breaking fast also:)
Thank you Boardboy! Words of encouragement ,is very valuable commodity , things that keeps me going.
Hello, Your discussion interests me a lot, to have thought about several issues for years. Excuse my poor English.
I allow myself to present to you readers some of my ideas for the optimization of windsurfing sails.
For those who do not know, there are on some aircraft wings (and gliders) devices called "turbulators". The purpose of these devices is to pick up the boundary layer on the surface and thus reduce the drag. I have always thought that the seams and fabric overlays, perpendiculars to the flow on our sails create bad turbulences. If incorporated in sewing a little extra thickness formed by a small ribbon cut zigzag, it would create a turbulence generator on.
Here is some pictures :
So, for our case, it could look like this :
We could add something like that on the vertical sewing located between the mast panel and the sail body. On the upper sail pictures (the red and grey one from
ARCWingsail), it correspond to the vertical pink ribbon.
I talked of this idea to sail designers, but they think it relates wings that are faster than our sails. I do not agree with them because these turbulators are used on gliders and model airplanes ..
Another point is regarding the top of the sail :
I am convinced that there is a big job to do there, because at the extremity of one wing quite subtle phenomena occurs (the two streams meet) causing a vortex that we must hang (you feel the vortex when you are behind another rider, slightly downwind. you benefit from it when you are on the road behind another vehicle). See winglets at the tips of airplane wings. A device of this style and smaller scale could be implemented simply at this level.
On a model RC glider (a big one !)
How it works :
A smaller model, on RC glider too :
I hope to know your feelings...
Mates just built another sports plane and he has things on the wings called vortex generators/turbulators to give the wing a slower stall speed he agrees that your idea should help a sail point higher
Hi! Thank you for suggestion! I don't think vorticle generators will be effective for windsurfing sail, because they provide benefit of having higher angle of attack for expense of some extra drag. I also resolve problem with stitches. I found the way how to ultrasonically weld sail parts so it become more slick and cheaper to produce. But I still have zipper, that run along the leading edge , ( 15 cm offset from mast.) What do you think about putting these zigzag lines covering zipper line? IF it works it would be another "eurica" moment. :) Anyway, you can look on my Facebook videos, how is new ( welded) sail does in action.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1207207619305273&theater
happened to be going through one of my old Windsurfing Magazines of Jan/Feb 2003
enclosed is a photo of the wing sail from Dan Kaseler working for Naish - patent pending
looks likes the inflatable tubes were running in the other direction
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