Flitelab AMPJet First Prone Attempt

Riding the 4'8 AMPJet with 75cm armstrong mast, MA890 + surf tail. Main plan is this for a downwinding tool, took it out recently for a prone foil attempt - my experiences below.

Background, zero prone foiling experience, reasonably competent surfer, plenty of kite/wing/parawing foiling. Conditions chest to shoulder high, ~13-15sec period swell (west coast).

There is plenty of stuff to give you the physical rundown on the AMPJet and I've not got much to add to that, but on the usage side:

- Controls are easy to use, paddle assist works well, boost mode is also a handy 'oh ****' when you're about to get rinsed you can very quickly exit stage left
- It does what it says on the tin. Never prone foiled before and got to my feet on foil multiple times. The second bit of actually riding a wave was mostly unsuccessful (3 x 6 sec waves) but that's on me for not knowing how to prone foil (the swell was also bigger than I had expected and I struggled to hold the MA890 down, which was probably a combo of a completely new setup for me mast/wing/tail and not having the mast position dialed).
- Power is no issue. First half I was getting launched from too much boost, dialed it down from 10 to 7 and that improved things.
-Battery is no issue. Went out for about an hour, battery at 65%, charged for an hour and had lunch, went out until I couldn't move my arms any more and came back in with 55%. Most of this time was paddle assist through shore break and boosting/not catching waves, if I was catching the occasional wave and linking I would have definitely had heaps for a session.
- Its pretty intuitive, basically position yourself how you would normally for a wave, press the button, paddle and the boost will kick in as you're standing up. can't tell you how it compares with normal prone foiling as i've never done it, but it is basically like a shortboard take off.
- Initial feel is the mid-length board will be better for downwinding but we'll see how it goes.

Probably the main question for most people is where does it fit in to the quiver:

- Its not an eFoil replacement. You're not going to cross over straight from efoiling to this, its a completely different beast.
- Based on one sketchy session its not going to value add a lot to winging - but maybe has a place in a one-quiver travel setup (light wind wing with the motor, standard sinker board in stronger winds, and DW/prone).
- TBC on parawinging, that will be my next experiment

In short for me it is shaping up a great tool to augment or replace SUP, prone or DW sessions. I'm really hoping I can make something of it parawinging - travelling with this and a couple of parawings with space to spare in a double board bag would be epic.

Happy to field questions, fire away.

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eppo said..
Proning is easily the hardest of all the foiling disciplines to learn and do well (well initially prob DW sup foiling maybe because of the consequences being stuck out in no man's land for so long wishing you would just die)

. it's impressive you got up and went with never having done that. Be awesome to give it to a really competent proner and see the pump / link capability .

Did it feel "heavy" ?

yeah and I definitely want to get across that for the average punter this will make prone foiling more doable, its not a magic bullet but as all the footage I had seen was pros riding, it is difficult to tell what its beinginf to the table for the rest of us

honestly couldn't tell at this point if it feels heavy, time on wave was so limited and not having ridden the foil before i was like a dog on lino. but it definitely didnt have that ponderous efoil feel - even heading out and carrying it is not bad.

Can someone explain how the Flite fuse>wing connection differs from the old Takuma connection (which sucked)? Not casting judgment on it until I've seen one in the flesh and ridden it, but they look pretty similar unless I'm missing something.