Steve and Dave Clarks UFO

Discussion in 'Multihulls' started by Doug Lord, Aug 24, 2016.

  1. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Ufo

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    I emphatically disagree with that. You know that it works for kite foilers --and very well!
    It works in a Moth for quick takeoffs by sliding aft to get started. It may not work on the Opti w/o a wand controlling a flap but I still think its possible.
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    I'm not sure if you're saying they don't use a flap-but they do on the forward foil.
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    Interesting that they say takeoff in 8 knots with top speed in that wind of 15. Just heard yesterday that the Quant 23 took off at between 7 and 8 knots of wind and did 19+ knots+! Hugh has also written that the 23 foils upwind in 8 knots of wind . Michi, the builder, wrote that the 23 takes off in very light air-approx. 5 knots on flat water. And he said on one particular day while they were sailing with A Class Cat foilers and Moths, that the 23 foiled when the others could not foil.
    I think that for any production foiler taking off in light air is real important . Still early days for the UFO-their numbers are bound to improve.
    ---
    I'm not sure I understand your reference to posts 15 and 20?
     
  2. Skyak
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    Skyak Senior Member

    Doug, not to cut you off, but unless you have a link to experts on control theory and human capability, linked to doctorate level fluid dynamics you have no chance of changing my mind. No dis. but you are not proving anything. Consider it respect for your time that I tell you up front.

    That said, if it is on subject and has not been posted before I want to see it.

    Posts 15 and 20 are my answers to why the UFO dagger is in front of the mast. The video confirms what I inferred in these posts.

    About UFO vs Quant23, we are still in the early days of foil development. I wonder if when it is all through the bigger=faster characteristic will return to the same prominence as in conventional sailboats. Both boats are designed to be easier to sail than all out performance designs and larger boats are intrinsically easier. Drag from human bodies is proportionally smaller on bigger boats.

    Doug, you are obviously tracking this info -do you keep it in a database or at least a table so it can be used effectively?
     
  3. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    =====================
    Thanks for the "respect". What is it that I won't change your mind about-the Opti or the Kitefoiler? The kitefoiler should give you pause about making sweeping statements like in your last post. I'm not trying to change your mind about the Opti-I realize that would be impossible to do without more evidence. However, I'm not sure how you can so dogmatically rationalize that when one of the most "impossible" foilers around is the kiteboard where altitude and manouverability is 100% controlled by body movement. Same with a windsurfer using an "airchair" type foil system.
    ---
    I think the UFO will be probably be faster than the 23-if we're talking top end. But it is flat remarkable that the 23 takes off in such light air and foils upwind in the same wind that the UFO needs to takeoff. I would think Dave and Steve would want to lower their takeoff windspeed but it is a very cool little boat.

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    Everything relevant is saved one way or another.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  4. waynemarlow
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    waynemarlow Senior Member

    "Wayne,
    I'm just a state college engineer with one aerodynamics class audited, reasoning his way through the physics. "

    Skyak, do you go sailing and have you experienced a true foiling boat, your answers are coming back along the typical Doug Lord vein that of lots of theoretical knowledge but little actual real world experience.

    If you have been sailing a foiling boat such the A's or perhaps even something a little larger ( then please do say ) you may well have noticed and been impressed in just how little the skipper has to move about to alter greatly the foiling capability.
     
  5. Skyak
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    Skyak Senior Member

    Doug, only the opti without wand control of it's forward T foil. I put a lot of thought into it, and I also bounded my prediction. Kite foilers and wind surfers have much more to work with. Go back and read the post in the foiling opti thread. I know the plane foils work for kites and windsurfers. The foiling wave surfers expanded the envelope for human control in my mind.

    Knowledge allows one to see what others can not -it should for the amount they charge for education.

    My understanding of foiling is still evolving. I think T foils are the lowest drag over V based on the T Speer paper. But then I know that there is the flap control drag that I have not fully factored in. I am still learning about surface proximity effects but my best source so far is a photocopy of a study done in 1942.

    Keep in mind that wind speed is not the same for a boat with twice the mast height.
     
  6. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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    Thats BS Wayne-another comment with absolutely zero credibility! I've sailed, raced, designed and built boats for all of my life. I've spent the last 26 years or so studying, designing, building and flying foilers. I designed ,built and foiled my own 16' foiler. I've designed a 19.5' trimaran foiler with a unique foil system and have started the design of a 14' Variation on the same concept except this time using Welbourn ama foils instead of Uptip ama foils. I have over 200 hours on a Rave in addition to thousands of hours sailing rc foilers. I designed, built and produced the worlds first production RC sailing foiler. I had the great privilege to work with Dr. Sam Bradfield and I designed and build two RC test platforms that he used for model testing his 40' SKAT foil system design.
    That kind of comment is uninformed and 100% uncalled for. You owe me an apology!

    -----------------
    And what is your experience with the design of full flying foilers?
     
  7. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    It is a great video with a very interesting boat. As Skyak notes, Steve Clark was emphatic that body movement is insufficient and from my limited experience with monofoilers I'd have to agree. It's just like any other sit-down boat in that the effect and ease of body movement is vastly less than on a board. The situation with the A Class may well be different, but the size, speed and style of movement in big cats is often so different that lessons from a big cat may not be applicable to a small bifoiler. The foiling Laser, for example, requires a degree and speed of fore-and-aft movement that is hard for even a successful Laser sailor with a lot of high-speed experience to achieve sitting on their bum.

    There is no way to compare the way your body can affect the trim of a dinghy and the way it can affect the trim of a board. Perhaps one good example is that you can jump even a 13' long windsurfer on flat water, by using body weight and affecting the board angle. You cannot jump any planing dinghy on flat water in the same way.

    One point from the video that is arguable is the possible implication that the drop-off in dinghy sailing is due to the age of the popular designs. If ageing design is the problem, why are so many of the most popular designs so old, and why does Steve Clark himself nominate one of the older designs as still supreme in its field? Furthermore, why are the forms of the sport that use newer designs (windsurfing, kiting and cat sailing) so tiny compared to dinghy sailing? With great respect to the Clarks, given the lack of correlation between new designs and popularity in other sections of the sport and within dinghy sailing, how can be sure that there is causation?

    It could well be that this issue is linked to the price issue and the way new boat costs have skyrocketed when compared to other consumer goods. And no one's saying that new types aren't great. It's just that the lack of them may not be the cause of sailing's ills, and that it's small-minded and arrogant to say that they are "the future"*, as if there was only one future.

    * not that the Clarks appear to
     
  8. Skyak
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    Skyak Senior Member

    CT, my feeling about sailing (at least sailing in the US) it's importance, and what it needs, are completely aligned with what I see Steve Clark saying and I am thrilled that Dave is picking up the torch. The UFO is their interpretation of doing exactly what I would do, (may still do) and have been saying should be done -use foil lift to make small cheap boats as fast or faster than big expensive boats.

    Your arguments have so many flaws I can't help thinking that you know you are wrong, but when you get corrected you can just wander off in a rant about all your experience. Do you really care about the sport or are you just looking to vent out of fear some new designs will make the class you mastered less important or get less attention?

    Consider my taking up the argument as a sign that I think at some depth your intentions are good.

    "Why are so many of the most popular classes such old designs?" -Because they are there! What is the right answer when someone says "I want to participate in sailboat racing, what boat should I get?" GO DOWN TO THE CLUB AND SEE WHAT FLEETS THEY HAVE! And why are the designs so old? so there are $400 used boats for beginners that would not pay $4-7K for a new boat.

    And while we are on the subject of used fleets, if you were investing your money to produce boats, would you believe a guy that advised you to build boats to one of those old designs (or worse, similar but not one design compliant) using the logic you just laid out above? $50 to $100k for tooling and promotion for the capability to produce boats that cost $6k when there are dozens of used boats/buyer that are not selling for $400? Or would you throw that Ahole out and look at what is important-

    What are the trends in new sales? What are the demographics of those sales? What can you do to your product to make it attractive to customers that already participate, and even better, what would make your product attractive to the larger audience of people who have never purchased before.

    Think about what you are trying to sell someone in their mid 20s

    1) Here is a boat design that is older than you, and if you buy one you can come out and lose to a bunch of old farts (I can say it because I am one...like the N word) that have mastered minutia like mast bending. If you don't spend $5K for a new boat that will be worth $1k after the first season you won't be competitive, ditto buying a $500 sail each season.

    Alternatively
    2) Here is a new boat just developed in the last 5 years with up to the minute technology (cool attractive stuff) that goes 3 times faster than the old farts boats for $7k and there are half as many controls to produce more power and speed. Some old farts will still join the class and may beat you but they are on the same learning curve for the new boat and you may be able to beat them with greater energy. There are no used boats available so yours will likely be worth at least 80% of what you paid for it after 3 years And the new technology sails are competitive for at least 5 years.

    So from the perspective of a 20 something -which boat does more to attract you to sailing? 1 or 2?

    Your statement about the video targeting old designs is a misinterpretation. The old designs are used as benchmarks for features. Nothing more.
     
  9. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    I'll start by reiterating that I think it was an excellent presentation (especially the comparative price information, which has been largely ignored although some of us have been raising it for years) and that the UFO could very well do great things.

    If I have mentioned my experience it is because it involves things such as a lot of research about the long-term trends in dinghy design and to ignore all that could be learned from the past is illogical. You are not showing any holes in the argument or "correcting" me - you are merely claiming that your opinion is better than mine although you don't seem to show any basis for your claims.

    Since you brought up the issue, it's fair to say that I sail high-performance classes, change classes every couple of years (the last time three weeks ago, to a class faster than the UFO), and if the whole sailing world went to foiling and/or cats tomorrow it would improve my results. This is not about me, although I do wonder if anyone else in this thread has actually sailed a 'people's foiler'.......

    Dave Clark clearly says that "there is a huge wad of people who are sticking with elderly technology and not having any fun". That appears to be implying, in the context, that such classes are responsible for the issues with the sport. If you ask the people sailing older classes they will dispute that they are not having fun. He also says that people prefer faster craft, however that doesn't equate with what people buy. They prefer performance dinghies to performance skiffs, they prefer Beneteaus to cruiser/racer multis, they prefer conventional keelboats/dayboats to sportsboats, they prefer Lasers to Raceboards and Formula windsurfers, and they often prefer skiffs to faster cats.

    Yes, existing fleets have an advantage. But if the advantage is so large, why have the fleets in windsurfing, cruiser/racing yachts and cats churned so much? Secondly, if class age is the issue with dinghy popularity, then why have the disciplines with newer classes failed to grow dramatically? If new classes are the answer then why are the segments that have more new classes not doing better than the segments that have fewer?

    If racing sailors really want to go fast, why do so few of them buy kitefoils and cats, and so many of them buy Beneteaus and Lasers? If racing sailors really want to go fast they'd be wasting their money on a UFO when they could be buying a kitefoiler......

    You asked what the trends are in new sales. Well, if you're talking absolute sales numbers, it seems that it's Lasers, 420s, Sunfish, plastic kids' boats, Hobie sailing yaks, and RS hiking classes. It's certainly not fast boats or foilers - Moths sell about 150 per year, worldwide, plus there are about 50 Laser foil kits per annum, some 60 new A Class, and probably a few dozen other cats. So the answers to the issue you raised are clear - a single "conventional" boat like the RS Aero is selling several times as many boats as all the foilers combined. You asked what the demographics are - well, foilers are apparently mainly currently attracting middle aged men.

    Plenty of us do think about what we are trying to sell to people in the mid 20s; in fact many of us do "sell" our classes to people in that demographic. No one would tell any of them that they will lose 80% of the value in the popular classes, because that would not occur. Nor would one guarantee the sort of residual values and sail life you are talking about, since no one knows whether you're right.

    The UFO sail looks like monofilm with a light scrim over it, full battens and a foot batten, pretty much like a late '80s sail. Will it last for five years of regular sailing? Probably not, in other classes such sails don't seem to. The most successful new class of recent years, by the way, has a dacron sail because the manufacturers reckon it's better, and they have far more experience in launching successful new small boats than anyone in the world.

    I'm not sure about how much interaction you have with sailors (both experienced and inexperienced) in their teens and 20s, but from actually sailing with and against them, coaching them and having a bunch of them myself, I don't buy the whole idea that they are so caught up in what is new and extreme. People in their mid 20s these days seem to be less hung up on "cool new stuff" than they used to be. We know what's attracting people, including 20 somethings, to the water - pop-out SUPs, plastic sit on top kayaks and other fairly cheap, heavy 'pedestrian' stuff. That indicates that most potential new sailors don't actually care about whether their new class goes faster than an old fart's boat, nor do they really care if it's high tech.

    One may add that sportsboats, skiffs and "funboard" windsurfers were all described in terms similar to the ones used to describe foilers. Plenty of people said they would take over. None of them did. By the way, in the UK there are plenty of boatbuilders that seem to be able to survive re-modelling older classes. Look at Hartleys, for example.

    Again, the UFO looks great and the presentation was great. It would be cool if it did well.

    By the way, you raised the issue of my motivation and experience - what's yours? What sort of fast classes do you race? Are you buying a foiler? Have you run a class or club? What sort of research into the sailing marketplace have you done?
     
  10. Doug Halsey
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    Doug Halsey Senior Member

    Do you have a reference to any data that supports that statement?

    I'm skeptical because the maximum flap deflection angle on the Mach2 foils is only about 10 degrees & the shape is such that it's surprisingly hard to tell when the flap deflection is zero.
     
  11. Doug Halsey
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    Doug Halsey Senior Member

    I'm also skeptical because it's another example of an overly-broad statement. You can't just say that one foil has more drag than another; you have to specify the conditions.

    A foil with a flap may have higher drag than one without in low-lift conditions, but lower drag in high-lift situations.

    Here's an example to illustrate that point, from a Moth foil-design study that I worked on earlier this year.
     

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  12. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ===========================
    I can help you with that: no one anywhere has sailed a "Peoples Foiler" because there isn't one yet. No one can declare their boat a peoples foiler-the people who buy them will do that over time.
    Because of the great changes occurring in foiler design there is a high likelihood that one or more of the newest foilers will eventually become a "Peoples Foiler": a comfortable, easy to sail, relatively inexpensive foiler that can fly in the whole windrange particularly in very light air.
     
  13. Skyak
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    Skyak Senior Member

    Doug, just a suggestion, don't feed the trolls. Your forums won't get filled with DBs insulting you if you don't let them piss you off.
     
  14. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    You're right-that trash was just a surprise coming from "marlow".....
     

  15. Skyak
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    Skyak Senior Member

    Doug,

    Dave C. made the statement in the video and cited a tank test -Based on my notes it's somewhere around the 26min mark. I don't have anything more to contribute at the moment and I would appreciate your sharing any findings.
     
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