Moth on Foils: 31.1 knots (35.8 mph)

[Chris Ostlind]

Originally Posted by Grant. W.

I don't think that Chris has an anti foil bias doug.

If you said the sky was blue i'd think Chris would tell you it was brown.

I think it may be you doug.

I agree foilr, start a blog doug.

Spot, friggin on, Grant. Of course, the sky would have to be brown for me to say it. I carry a handy, PMS color chart for such occasions. ;-)

It's really simple. Doug is a techno-junkie of the highest order. He needs to have his regular fix of the stuff in order to feel like he's on the right track with his excursion through life.

OK, fine, he can chase the tail of the tiger for as long as he feels like he has the juice for it. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve basic problems, it only buries them under another layer of gloss so that the real issues don't have to be encountered. Small craft worldwide are shrinking in sales... not growing. The Foiling Moth thing has never had any real impact on the trend more than nabbing a few magazine Wowee shots and some stuff on YouTube.

The fleet has not grown by leaps and bounds and it remains, (and I'll say it once again) obscure in the grand scheme of things in the boating world. That's right... OBSCURE, as in: a curiosity, a notion, a tangent to what is really happening in the trade and not the trade itself .

It's at this point that our Blog Boy Doug will jump in with something like: "The Moth phenomenon has only been around for a few years. You can't expect it to grow that fast with so little development in such a short period of time."

While that sounds good on the surface, the truth of the matter is that this conversation has been going on for a few years and virtually nothing has changed in all that time save for the volume and the foamy spittle associated with Doug's hype fever.

In the time since the intro of the foiling Moth, the BIC people have introduced their thermoformed OpenBIC design
http://www.watersportswest.com/shopc...?page=BIC.html and they've sold several thousands of them worldwide. They've gotten more young people into sailing than the Moth builders could ever imagine possible. The reasons? They're accessible, they're simple to drive, they are rugged, they are affordable and the big one... they don't require an aerospace level of composites talent to keep them going if there's a serious prang.

All that kind of counter thinking at the other end of the boat scale is what dooms the foiling Moth to obscurity. The market segment is: a skinny, fit guy or gal with no plans for the USD$15K other than to bash around at speed and then have little to no resale value once tired of the game. There aren't enough folks worldwide who fit that envelope to allow the class to emerge from OBSCURITY.

All that said, I still think that foiling Moths are decently cool objects as boats and I enjoy watching them for short periods of time. I wouldn't own one and my, now 17 yr. old, son (who fits the target buyer segment if he robs his college account) would also not own one. He does own a beach cat that he and I built from my design (costing about the same as the OpenBIC) and he has a blast on that with his friends. Yes, Doug, my son has friends. I know that's a fairly alien concept for you, but some folks really like to sail with their buddies. They can't do that easily if they all have to pony-up the $15K to get on the water.

So, that leads me to the inescapable and very obvious question...

Hey Doug, where's that magical two person foiling, canting, sliding, WaterWorld vision of yours since you crowed about it last year? Please tell me you have something to show for the time other than your hot air on the topic? Since you've been blowing hard on the foil thing, Doug, I've built two very nice trimarans in my spare hours away from my cameraman career and you, apparently have nothing at all.

Just show us some photos of the boat in the garage where it is being built. Since you know so much about hype, perhaps you could allow us all some visual hype regarding your wonder tool that is going to knock the boating world flat?

Come on, Douglas... no time like the present to put-up or shut-up.

Your unfailing buddy,

Chris

Ostlind, aren't you even going to apologise for deliberately misrepresenting the facts about the 2006 Worlds to push your "trash on foils" agenda?

[Chris Ostlind]

Originally Posted by Chris Ostlind

So, that leads me to the inescapable and very obvious question...

Hey Doug, where's that magical two person foiling, canting, sliding, WaterWorld vision of yours since you crowed about it last year? Please tell me you have something to show for the time other than your hot air on the topic? Since you've been blowing hard on the foil thing, Doug, I've built two very nice trimarans in my spare hours away from my cameraman career and you, apparently have nothing at all.

Just show us some photos of the boat in the garage where it is being built. Since you know so much about hype, perhaps you could allow us all some visual hype regarding your wonder tool that is going to knock the boating world flat?

Come on, Douglas... no time like the present to put-up or shut-up.

Kindly respond to the above.

So I guess you're not going apologise? I'll update the thread on the X21 when I'm ready and not on the Moth on Foils thread-can't you stay on the topic?

[Chris Ostlind]

Originally Posted by Chris Ostlind

Kindly respond to the above.

What... still not ready? All this never-ending spew and you're still not ready. All of this is on-topic, Doug. That's how you fabricate your stream of consciousness postings. Say what you want, when you want and use jump-cuts from one issue to the next to keep yourself in the mental bob and weave mode.

Come on, Doug. Match the hype with something like fulfillment. What's taking you so long, anyway? Most modern epoxies cure off plenty quickly enough to move from part to part in a pretty short period of time. Do you need some direction as to how to use the stuff? Shall I slide on by for a shop session the next time I'm shooting in Florida... you know, just to speed things up a bit? I have some buddies in Orlando who find people for a living, so getting your address should be no problem.

I've got this assignment coming-up at Dodgertown in Vero Beach in about three weeks, I can just slip on up the road in my rental car after the gig and we can have a serious laminating session together so you can get on the water.

I'll even sign a non-disclosure agreement, if it makes you feel better. What d'ya say, Doug? It's, once again, time to put the marbles on the table.

Chris

Ostlund-I found that you were misrepresenting the facts and proved it in an earlier post. I know you're upset by this but why don't you just apologise and put it behind you. I promise I'll update the X18T(now X21) thread but doing so here is just not appropriate. If you want to post your "thoughts" on that project the thread is easy to find.
Lets try to keep this thread about this:
moth_torbole113.jpg

[Chris Ostlind]

Not upset, Doug... just amused in a rather passing fashion. I am intrgued by how much you have invested in the plastic bag thing when, in fact, it did happen. And, yes, that is a fairly serious vulnerability for such an expensive and high-tech vehicle, no matter how obscure it is.

It's something along the lines of the $60 million dollar Apache helicopters in Iraq that are grounded for most of the year due to blowing sand particulates that can shut-down the turbines.

$.02 bag kills World Champion from a repeat of title... What a headline.

You're off on this pursuit all on your own now, Doug. Blow into the tube as hard as you can. I'm sure it will be amusing.

And, no... there will not be an apology on the subject.

Do get your butt down to the garage now, there's a, (what is it now, 18' or 21') something or other, waiting for your expertise in boatbuilding. The change of LOA is right in line with all the rest of your bunk. Keep the target moving and nobody can pin you down as to what it might be that you keep blowing about. What's next, the price of epoxy has gotten so high that you no longer find it feasible to contiue with the project? How friggin' convenient.

It's kinda funny, actually.

Here's more on the subject that started on the bottom of page 34-this from Tom Speer in Foiler Design:
"If you look at the conditions for stable flight, the forward foil must have a relatively higher heave stiffness than the rear foil, and the rear foil must cause a greater change in pitching moment with a change in angle of attack than the forward foil. This is why wand feedback to the forward foil and a fully submerged aft foil work so well together. The heave stiffness of the aft foil is virtually zero, so it does all the job of stabilizing the craft in pitch. The forward foil then is totally responsible for controlling the craft in heave.

Manual control of altitude via the forward flap makes sense, since that is the surface that really controls heave. But the big difficulty is having enough control power to handle both the dynamic change in lift needed by the control system, and being able to trim out the change in lift due to speed. With direct gearing between the wand and flap and the boat flying at a constant pitch attitude, the only way for the control system to trim out the increase in speed with lift is to deflect the flap upward, and because of the gearing between flap and wand, this means flying higher.

If the boat is trimmed bow down as the speed changes, then the reduced angle of attack will compensate for the speed and the boat can fly at its design height with the foil centered (on average). One way to get this pitch trim is with manual control of the stern flap. The speed changes less rapidly than flying through waves or even being hit by gusts. So pitch trim with speed makes sense for manual control.

It might be possible to get some automatic speed trim by clever manipulation of the hinge moments on the rudder flap. Aircraft use a device called a "down spring" to augment their speed stability. A spring with a low spring constant is used to apply a near constant nose down force to the controls. This has to be trimmed out with the trim tab. But the force from the trim tab depends on speed. So as the speed increases, the tab effectiveness increases and moves the elevator in the nose-up direction. This makes the aircraft climb, which reduces the speed.

The opposite could be applied to a hydrofoil. If the rudder flap were deflected upward with a spring, increasing speed would reduce the deflection. This would make the boat trim more bow down, reducing the flying height in much the same way as the manual pitch trim described above. You could also divide the rudder flap into two parts - one driven by the spring and the other under manual control.

Naturally, the spring force would control the amount of automatic trim change. It's better to get the force from deflecting a long, weak spring a lot, than by deflecting a short, stiff spring. This makes a bungee cord ideal for the purpose."

[frosh]

Hey Doug, you didn't really give me your opinion of my proposed mutated super sailor. You know the one~! Two brains and three arms driving the Foiler Moth with fully manual system of attitude control, much quicker and smarter the fairly backward one (according to you) on the Fastacraft Moths.
BTW did YOU get my last posting deleted by any chance?

With so many breakages among Team Bladerider before racing even starts its going to be interesting. Apparently, one of the Prowlers broke a rudder gantry as well
According to "foilr" (Scott Babbage) the Bladeriders are faster upwind and the Prowlers downwind.Heres a link to his blog:
scott.projectsomewhere
Address:http://scott.projectsomewhere.com/
----------------
Uk Perspective on the worlds-daily reports starting Monday,June 25th:
International Moth Homepage
Address:http://www.int-moth.org.uk/ Changed:7:15 PM on Friday, June 22, 2007
-------------------
Rohan/Aussie perspective: www.rohanveal.com

Congratulations to Team Bladerider and especially to Rohan Veal . Rohan won races 1 & 2 by large margins and the Bladeriders were places 1-5.
Lots of carnage in the 20+ mph wind.

[Chris Ostlind]

Since this isn't about a Moth on foils going 29.76 knots, it would appear that Mr. Lord has successfully hijacked his own thread.

I'm sensing a large dose of Umber, coupled with the facial regions of the correspondent.

And, no, that's not a tanning formula.

Again, congratulations to Rohan Veal-he won races 3,4 and 5 sailed today by fairly large margins!
www.rohanveal.com

He locked it up today with three more firsts.
Congratulations to Rohan , Scott(foilr-who locked up second today) and to Team Bladerider for pullng it all together for this Championship!
--------------
RohanVeal-10.jpg

The results are here:2007 MOTH EUROPEAN AND WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP - Classification
Address:http://www.circolovelatorbole.com/cl...t/122file.html Changed:10:30 AM on Saturday, June 30, 2007
---------
At a glance:

63 boats:56 foilers, 7 lowriders
Top lowrider got 32nd(!)EDIT:WRONG 27th(!) see next post by Andy P for correction.