What is the purpose of the wing foil RAKE?

Nose up ? Nose down ? Speed ? Pumping ? According to your practice, you can optimize the settings of your foil by playing on the rake.

Feel free to consult our
complete guide to learn wing foil
.

01 RAKE, KESAKO ?

First of all, what is the rake? It is the angle formed between the hull of the board and the fuselage.

We will thus speak about a positive angle when the fuselage is open compared to the hull and of a negative angle when the angle of the hull and the fuselage is closed.

02 NOSE UP AND DOWN

At AFS, our foils are set up to work with our boards, so there is no need to make any additional adjustments. On the other hand, when we are going to mount our foils on a board of another brand, he may need to adjust this rake, because in terms of shape, the board may have different characteristics.

In concrete terms, when you have a poorly set rake, it will be felt in two different ways:

Nose down board : when you accelerate, the board will tend to dive and you will have to compensate very hard on the back leg, which is not necessarily pleasant.
Nose up board : on the contrary, a nose up board, will point upwards and may provide a little too much power for what you want to do.

The purpose of the rake is to make sure that it is well adjusted so that we are balanced on our two legs or balanced in relation to our style of navigation.

The rake can be adjusted directly via the turntable, with wedges. That is to say that we will put more thickness at the front or at the back of the plate. If we put thickness it will be to open the rake, for practices rather at high speeds therefore in wing foil. To have a negative rake, we will tend to put thickness on the back of the skate, so for a practice rather surf foil, SUP foil and wing foil down wind. Practices that are done at low speed. The disadvantage of this type of adjustment is the obligation to have different size platinum screws to install the wedge, something we don’t always have…

Second possibility, you can also adjust the incidence of the front wing, i.e. by putting a wedge on the front screw. This changes the incidence of the wing, and has the same effect as the rake. We will put a shim on the front screw to solve the nose down problem and on the rear screw to solve the nose up problem.

03 RAKE OPTIMIZATION IN DOWNWIND WING FOIL

You can also optimize the rake setting according to the discipline you want to practice.

For a low speed practice, for down wind or surf foil, SUP foil, we will try to have a negative rake angle, that is the angle between the fuselage and the board, closed. Indeed, at low speed, we navigate with a rather high angle of incidence of the fuselage. This allows for more dynamic practice, recovery and easier pumping at low speeds. As we have a fuselage with a high angle of incidence, it will give us a foil that flies rather, and that will be more tolerant at low rpm. It is also possible, on this type of practice, to reduce the surface of the stabilizer to gain in maneuverability since we have a more load-bearing foil.

04 OPTIMIZATION OF THE RAKE IN WING FOIL SPEED

For a freeride practice in wing foil or race, we will prefer a positive angle of rake thus open between the fuselage and the board.
This will naturally move the center of gravity back. To compensate for this center of gravity that has moved back, we will slightly bend the front leg, so we will have a little more support on the front foot. This is preferable for higher speed control.

It is better to have a constant front leg support at higher speeds, it improves control, rather than having a support that juggles between the front and back foot.

The second advantage of this open rake will be for high speed touches. The most recurrent problem when you are nose down at high speeds is that the board, when you touch the water, will touch rather by the front of the board, so you will have a wet surface on the whole board, which will tend to brake brutally if you are at high speeds. With a rather open rake, when you hit it, it will be localized on the back of the board. This will reduce the “hard brake” effect, which is better for this practice.

05 MEASURE ITS RAKE

To measure your rake it’s very simple: you take a bubble level application on your phone,
we position the phone at the base of the mast, on the hull of the board, we calibrate at 0.

Then we come to measure the angle on the fuselage.

For a practice rather SUP foil, down wind and surf foil, we are on rakes rather negative, between -3 and -2 degrees.

For a practice rather freeride freerace in wing foil, we are on positive rakes thus between 0,5 and 1,5 degrees

If you have any doubts about your settings and you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to contact us, we’ll help you boost your equipment and have more fun on the water.