Pumping HA foils

Went out on my HA1125 for the first time yesterday. Discovered my "ollie" style of pumping my HS1850 did not work at all. I'm guessing HA wings require a different way of pumping up to foil?

Thx for the response. I was trying to pump the board up and down like I do with the larger foil, the nose would rise up and fall down. Basically my board was doing a head slap. Should I be using more of a scooting motion?

I was just out winging on the 1125 and V tail myself. It gets up and going super fast as long as you keep the foil quiet (no pitching or excessive movement in any direction). I'll pump the hand wing in short sharp burst with the nose off the wind a little and try to keep the foil trimmed level until the foil engages and I can kick it up to flight height. Lower body stays very quiet and stiff while upper body pumps the wing until launch speed (maybe 3 short arm pumps). Do this and the up/stall/slap pattern of the foil trying unsuccessfully to launch will stop. Another tip for the 1125 is to swing your hips in a level plane towards the nose whenever you feel close to stalling. Makes a massive difference in lowering the foil's stall speed.

I had the identical 1850 to 1125 experience.

Forget the ollie.

Play a new game to get up on foil...

The new game is, board speed without ollie.

Figure out how to go as fast as you can by pumping the wing only WITHOUT taking off. No ollie allowed. Don't be afraid to go a bit more downwind as well. (You will make up the ground lost once flying.) You will go faster than you ever imagined without flying, but keep doing it. Then you will eventually take off.

You have one other new game.

Don't pitch the HA foil upward. Period, at this point.

If you don't pitch it up, you don't fall out of the sky. When it tilts upward without enough speed, it drops.

Pump it far flatter than the 1850.

Play those two games your next time out, and you will quickly master the transition from HS to HA.

This is simplified advice obviously. You can bring back a modified Ollie and some upward pitch later.

For the moment, unlearn those two things now and you are golden.

Great advise everyone

Something to keep in mind, its the downward motion which creates power, not upward. The upward motion is just to help the board release, you reduce your weight on the board allowing the foil more leverage to get everything up. Pumping nose high / off the back foot is therefore rarley suitable on a well tuned setup, also with big/low aspect foils. It might feel like you're pushing the board up, but you're not really. "Jumping" up while disturbing the foil's direction as little as possible would be a good rule of thumb for the upward part of the pumping.

As for the downward / pushing phase: higher aspect foils generally have a thinner outline and less surface area aswell. This means they have a higher stall speed and are more critical in terms of required angle of attack. At low speeds the angle of attack changes a lot more when you change the foils direction (eg pushing the nose down), because the forward component of movement is relatively small compared to the up/downwards components. If you feel that the board slaps down on the water during pumps you're pushing the foil too much while not going fast enough, causing it to stall. Be more gentle early on in the pumping would be my advice.

The reason the ollie style seems to work for the low aspect foil is probably because its less sensitive to changes in angle of attack, this does not mean that applying "HA technique" to your low aspect foil in the future is less efficient (its probably more efficient, assuming the balance of power across your feet is equal).

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JohnnyTsunami said..
Going down on the down pump should be avoided as much as possible while maintaining speed. of course it's necessary to some extent, but it's like someone who can't run well jumping up and down on every step for no benefit.
See Oskar and his live videos where he's talking while pumping. His pumping is ridiculously efficient.

Going down is what generates the pressure, thats fine, its just that the board shouldnt be nose down but level, as the guy in the video says! If you keep the board level it will feel more like you're pushing / powering up the foil instead of just aiming it in a new direction. Granted I'm nowhere near his pumping level, but can manage to keep flying with the wing flagged for quite a while, say a few hundred meters, before I get tired.

Thanks for all the great suggestions, I can't wait to get back out there to try it. I have the fortune/misfortune of being able to see my wing spots from my office building. Looking at all the folks having fun in the water while I have to work is rough! The palm tree outside my widow is leaning in the right direction! Hopefully there will be wind on my days off, so I can learn to fly the HA wing the right way.

Dealing with this issue my self I couldn't help but notice that this is not necessarily a HA foil problem and rather a foil profile issue.
Testing back to back 3 different HA foils (Axis 1010, SlingShot Phantasm 926 and GoFoil RS 1150) verified my suspicion.

- My Axis 1010 with its thick leading edge and super low stall speed pumps up (ollie) like all my mid/low aspect foils but glides much better.
- My Phantasm 926 feels exactly like what other described. I couldn't pump it up to save my life, only wing pump and speed works but with
a good stiff wing this is fairly easy. 3 short aggressive wing pumps and it's up and once up this foil is amazing in glide and carve.
- My RS 1150 even though smaller than the 926, with its thicker leading edge and lower stall speed I can pump this foil as well without stalling.

Looking at the Armstrong HA1125, its leading edge looks a lot more like my Phantasm 926 than my other foils. It does looks like more
talented foilers are able to pump those foils but it's beyond my skill level at this point.

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JohnnyTsunami said..
Going down on the down pump should be avoided as much as possible while maintaining speed. of course it's necessary to some extent, but it's like someone who can't run well jumping up and down on every step for no benefit.
See Oskar and his live videos where he's talking while pumping. His pumping is ridiculously efficient.

Great video. Oskar is a machine, that's all the right tips in one video.
The one thing he hasn't mentioned, which is clearly not an issue in his case is foil position.
The pump he's doing almost more a 2 footed pump. Very little difference between what the back and front feet are doing, just a subtle timing difference, they are not alternating. Especially when he brings his feet closer together for maximum efficiency. When he's bending the legs it's more of an unweighting, the entire board lifts up, not just the front. The board stays flatter throughout.
You need to have the board balance right for this to work. If the board is nose heavy, if you unweight both feet the nose will just drop. So to pump a board set up like this you have to alternate front and back feet. In this case there's a lot of energy loss and the forward pump is much weaker, and it's not the technique Oskar uses.
In terms of pumping a high aspect setup onto foil, the same applies. You need a bit of board speed, but the sort of pump that works is short sharp pulses with both feet. It you stomp the front foot too much too soon it just stalls out. But you can kind of stomp both feet with the board in the water followed by unweighting to help get planing. Again you don't want to overdo this and snuff your board speed to early.

Finally was able to get out for my second session on the 1125. As suggested by another foiler, used the +1 shim on the tail. I headed downwind to get as much speed as possible. Did the "scoot" pushing both feet forward. Even when the front tried to come up, I directed that energy forward, trying to keep the board level.

Once flying, I got my feet closer together (shoulder width), the foil likes input, so I was telling it something to do frequently. Got my strong side gybes down a few times, weak side "re-gybe" (toe side) was not as successful.

Overall I had way more success than the first session. It helped a lot that the conditions were the best this year. The +1 shim kept the board flying more level, scooting and redirecting upward energy forward also helped. At the end of the session, I tried "micro-pumps". Not sure about the method, since my legs and arms were already shot.

Tomorrow is also looking good!

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eppo said..

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what I've noticed about the good pumpers - such as Oskar (and my son) on these HA wings is:

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1. chest out, shoulders back, upright torso.

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2. feet close together.

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3. therefore pumping is more like the correct body position of doing a squat - Even pressure across both feet and straight down through the foil.

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this in turn keeps the board horizontal and also reduces yaw on the pump.

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been working on this with lots of success. Still ways to go though on the Ha side on things proning.

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What I was doing was keeping the legs too bent, feet too far apart and leaning over somewhat. So watched Oskar vids heaps and of course my son in the waves.

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ps this pumping technique is for ALL foils. Even the HS armie wings respond to this. Doesn't have to be HA.

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Thanks eppo for the advice....something has clicked with this for me....pump feels way better. Still work to do .... but maybe on feels right track

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Thanks- am almost same setup on 925, tried with zero shim instead of negative yesterday and did not love it. Admittedly miserable conditions.

i can't dial this setup to work nicely for downwinders and general riding- either touching down when at speed or feels dog at lower speeds.

I agree with everyone on board speed being key. Here's a curveball, I've had two sessions with the HA195 tail with the 925 and 725 and I'm finding it makes it possible to bring the ollie back into play when getting on foil. It's not the same as you can do with something like the 1850 but it definitely makes that technique come back in the picture.

What really turned a huge corner for me only took a total of 4 hours. over two weekends. Seriously!

When Covid closed the beaches, I had to get my fix and had access to a dock on calm water. I learned to dock start on a huge foil (GoFoil GL240 which is fairly efficient for its 1550cm2 size)First hour - no success and I went home very tired and with my tail between my legs. I tried about 50 times and eventually got to where I could land on the board and glide a little bit a few times.

Second hour - I actually got on the board a few times and was pumping a little bit. I went home tired and hopeful.

third hour - things clicked and I was more or less able to get on the board and start the pump about half the time. I had several long laps and on occasion felt like I got in rhythm. I went home tired and super excited.

Fourth hour - got cocky and tried a smaller foil and failed for half an hour. Then went back to the big one and had a great time. I started dialing in better foot position and more efficient cadence. Was able to relax between pumps and feel the glide.

After this, the beaches opened and I was a whole new foil surfer. Or course it translated to winging quite well too.

Agreed above regarding stall speed. Even on my chopped 1250 (because I'm on a 85 mast for proning as well) yesterday morning first session in . a long time , not only stall speed but ability to recover and get back up to speed. And even the 1250 on the HA tail prefers quicker lighter taps to get speed and height up before you pump harder.