AK Durable Supply Co. Tracer V3 1030 Hydrofoil Review

[Music] [Music] hi this is ash from wing tips and welcome to this new video this is a review of the AK durable Supply Co tracer V3 Wing foil setup I had the Tracer V3 for only a few days but in total managed to clock around 16 hours on the foil in varying conditions I also want to point out that I only had the 1030 sized foil and haven't had any opportunity to see what the other foils in the Tracer range are like so this review can only really be taken in isolation as a review of the 1030 foil i

n that range it would have been nice to look at other sizes in the range and see if they are comparable and have the same performance characteristics as the 1030 but unfortunately that wasn't available to me and so we can just look at the 1030 in this review so without further Ado let's get into looking at the construction of the AK Tracer 1030 the front Wing is made up of the wing which is also formed into the first part of the fusel AR much like an F1 Wing or a duone front Wing so you have thi

s lovely full carbon formed connection between your front foil and the fuse large which makes it very hydrodynamic and then the tail part of the fusar plugs into that with two 6 mil screws the fusar itself on the front Wing has the Mast plug into it and it is a really tight close connction there's no movement in it whatsoever really really well done really solid and well executed and you can see here that the intersection between the front wing and into that fuselage is really clean and is not g

oing to induce any extra drag whatsoever for the tail the tail bolts on with two six mil screws and has an innovation built into it in that you can just slide the tail forwards and backwards on those screws and that will adjust the angle of the tail so rather than using shims you can just slide the tail forwards and backwards on those slots and adjust your tail angle the foil itself is a gal Wing as you can see here and the Mast is a hollow M although it is a high modulus M it is hollow so it's

not as stiff as a solid Mast but nevertheless it's still quite stiff I didn't notice any movement in the wing from the Mast however this is one of the smaller Wings in the range so it would be interesting to see whether you would feel that on one of the larger Wings in the Tracer range and for those who are interested in the statistics it's a 1030 CM squar wing with an aspect ratio of 8.2 and a wingspan of 914 mm the cord is 149 mm and the cord thickness 15.5 mm the last thing I want to point ou

t with regard to construction is that the tail is this blue color and that's because it's not made of carbon it's G10 so that gives you a cheaper construction method not quite as durable as carbon but it does mean that if you want to buy extra tail Wings they will be cheaper because they are G10 rather than full carbon fiber before we get into my own thoughts and feelings on the Tracer I thought it'd be a goodidea idea to go to the AK website and have a look at the three hydrol series that they

have and just see what they say they're supposed to be used for so the first of those is the Trek hydrofoil series and that is described as low aspect ratio for ease of use perfect for entry level foiling and progression smooth lift and stability at speed now to me that sounds exactly like a beginner hydrofoil so this is where they're directing their customers who are just getting into hydr foiling and the wings that are available in that series would seem to reflect that they have a 1,300 A600

and a 2,000 so there is a really big Wing in there for people who are just learning and starting out on their falling Journey the second series they have is the Plasma hydrol series and that is described as high aspect hydrofoil for pump Glide and higher speed Arc down stabiliz for efficiency and pivoting turns modular aluminium rear fuselage now this to me sounds like it's something for down winding and they certainly mentioned chasing fast Ocean swrs or pumping with infinite Glide so this does

definitely sound like downwind downwind territory and the wings are A600 and a 250 so those are pretty large and then lastly we have the Tracer hydril series which is medium aspect ratio for ease of use and maneuverability markdown stabilizer for directional stability and ease of use versatile performance and highspeed control it says it's for Riders looking for the perfect balance between performance ease of use and the ultimate maneuverability so this to me sounds like it's kind of aiming in

that intermediate ground not particularly aimed at beginners but they mention ease of use twice so maybe a beginner could start on this foil but they're talking about speed and ultimate maneuverability and I think we're aiming here at Wave Riders Wingers and the sizes also seem to reflect a more advanced Rider there's a 650 and 800 the 1030 which I've got for review and the largest is a 1300 so these are not particularly large Wings although they are a higher aspect ratio okay so let's talk abou

t the kind of foil characteristics that we might look for when doing a review so the first one would be the ease of getting onto foil and how the foil gets onto foil is it a foil that you can kick up onto foil with very little speed and it will take that or is it a foil that you have to speed and slowly kind of rise up on the foil there's the roll characteristics of the foil so how it goes from rail to rail and how loose it is on the roll there's the pitch characteristics is it pitchy or does it

ride very stably and also to do with pitch characteristics is how it does a bottom turn is it stable through the pitch on a bottom turn and also when you're dropping into a wave is it a foil that you have to really step on on your front foot to stop it from breaching as you go down a wave does it or does it drop in really reliably and and without drama and make that whole process very easy for you and then there's the your characteristics so is it a foil that's very locked on the Y so you don't

really notice that it yours very much or is it a foil that's quite loose on the Y so you can actually turn it in another axis Beyond roll and Pitch then there's the overall speed of the foil the overall Glide of the foil and then related to Glide the stall speed so how slow can you go before the fo will drop you and also when it does drop you how abrupt is that drop is it a a fairly soft drop or is it a hard drop is it a surprise when it drops or do you know it's coming and then lastly there's

how it handles wave energy and what I mean by that is that when you're just falling through chop or or waves how much wave energy does it pick up and how does it pick up that energy does it pitch up and down as it picks up W wave energy or does it just lift you neutrally as you ride through that wave energy and those can be characteristics that really define whether you like using a foil in choppy messy water or whether you don't like using a particular foil in messy and choppy water okay so tho

se are the kind of criteria I'm going to look look at as I go through reviewing this foil so let's get started with the ease of getting onto foil and how it gets onto [Music] foil okay so our first category is how does the Tracer V3 get onto foil well this is only a 1030 foil and it's an aspect ratio of 8 and it's not a foil that particularly appreciates being kicked up onto foil when you aren't traveling fast enough for it to foil it will basically smack back down again when you try to do that

so it's definitely a foil that you need to speed onto foil and hold down with front foot pressure until it starts to rise on its own and then you can let it naturally start to rise up and lift you onto the foil if you aren't going fast enough and you try and kick it up then it will just smack down again it's not the most violent Smackdown It's relatively controllable you can ride through it if you try to do that uh but it's definitely much much easier just to speed this onto foil with your pump

technique and not try and kick it up onto foil in terms of how easily it starts to rise or how fast you need to be going for it to start to rise it's actually very good I thought it was really very good for a 1,000 CM foil it came up really quite nicely when I expected it to it wasn't like I felt like I needed to be going at light speed before it started to lift it was really a fairly predictable and not overly fast speed that you needed to be going for it to start to lift and to really get goin

g and accelerate onto foil in terms of its rle characteristics I felt that it was very eager to roll it was quite loose on its roll axis it wasn't a stiff foil by any means at all it was really very happy to roll from rail to rail and it was very controllable in that roll from rail to rail so it wasn't like it felt so loose that you were uncomfortable it was just loose enough that it was fun and playful uh and gave you a a certain level of confidence that it it had got you you were okay and you

could roll it from wing tip to wing tip and it wasn't going to throw you off it was going to take it and and it wasn't going to do anything unpredictable or weird whilst you were doing that I'm going to cover your stability next before I come on to pitch because pitch is a little bit more complicated but in terms of your stability it's also reasonably loose on your not really loose but reasonably loose on your and this is where it makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable in recommending this foi

l to a complete beginner because as a beginner it's bad enough trying to control just the rooll and Pitch axis of a foil but if you introduce some looseness on the your axis as well then that can really cause some problems another axis to control that a beginner can really do without so for that reason I feel this foil is really more aimed towards intermediate Riders who can appreciate that your axis loosen this and I I wouldn't say it was really loose it was a little bit loose um certainly loos

er than I would normally feel on uh something like a axis Spitfire foil or an axis HPS it's a little bit looser in the Y than than those types of foils and it meant that if you were doing something like a 360 and you needed to twist the foil through the last part of the 360 to get round then you could do that and it was very willing to do do that and it wouldn't try and just stick to its Arc and and force you to foil on the roll axis all the way through the 360 you could actually twist it out of

the last part relatively easily so I'm for for an intermediate Rider you can appreciate that for a beginner it's something you don't really want now on the pitch axis this probably has a lot to do with the tail cuz the tail was a 200 CM squ tail which is quite a large tail certainly larger than I would normally ride and for that reason I felt like the FL was really quite pitch stable and uh it was very very predictable on the pitch axis I suspect that maybe with a smaller tail you would certain

ly get a bit more pitch response and probably a little bit more responsiveness to the pumping of the foil because although the foil did pump really nicely when you Tred to do that on a on a wave and there was some energy to carry it off the wave I felt like it was more difficult to pump and that was really more to do with the larger tail than anything else in terms of dropping onto a wave to serve some swell um and certainly on larger swells I felt that the pitch was really very very controllabl

e it wasn't one of these foils where as you dropped into a wave it would swoop and then you would have this feeling like you really needed to control the pitch or it would blow up on you didn't have any of those sorts of feelings at all it was very very predictable dropping in on a wave very very easy to control your speed and your angle of attack into the wave and also when you turned in the bottom of a wave to come back up the wave face it provided a reasonable amount of feedback I would say s

omething like a Spitfire 840 provides I'm I'm more confident and um more more pressure in that bottom turn but the tracer was certainly very good in the bottom turn maybe not as good as a Spitfire but still very very good and very easy very easy to do the the bottom turn very responsive in in the bottom turn and in many respects Mak you feel like you're a better foiler than you maybe are it's one of those foils that you end up doing things on it that perhaps you couldn't do on other foils it mak

es you a better foiler than you perhaps currently are and let's you get away with some things that maybe you wouldn't get away with on some more technical foils in terms of speed I didn't feel like the tracer was particularly a hugely fast foil it it was very average I would say in terms of speed it's a relatively thick foil section on it when you look at it from the front compared to some other foils in that 1,000 CM size and so it wasn't you know mindblowing in terms of its overall top end and

speed and also I would have to point out that we do have the 200 CM tail on the back as well which is a significant amount of drag to be pulling through the water and I suspect that that was probably more to do with the top end of the foil than the front foil itself I think with a with a smaller tail it could probably be quite a bit quicker but I mean it was okay it was plenty fast enough it was certainly fast enough to keep up with wind blend swell and ride relatively large wind blend swell an

d I didn't feel like I had any issues keeping up with waves or staying on waves when I need needed to in terms of Glide I felt like when there was some power in a wave to push you along it really did capitalize on the available energy and rode bigger than I would normally expect a 1,000 CM foil to ride in fact I got some exceptionally long rides on the Tracer for the size of FO that it was and for the size of wave and swell that I was trying to ride it was very very good at extracting energy fro

m swell considering that it was only a 1,000 CM foil we do have to remember that it is an aspect ratio of eight so it is a relatively High aspect foil compared to some of other foils on the market but I did feel like it really did manage to capitalize on the available energy in the wave and really over deliver on what you would expect from a 1,000 CM squ foil in terms of store full speed again I felt that this was actually very good and actually where I expected it to be cuz one of the one of th

e big problems or one of the worst problems you can have with a foil is when it drops you when you're not expecting it so you think everything's fine you're coming around a j and perhaps you've lost some speed and you feel like everything's great and then all of a sudden the foil just drops you out of nowhere and you're straight in and and that's the end of that job the Tracer really was very very very predictable I always knew when I was getting to the point where it was going to store I could

always feel when the store was was close and was coming on and when it did stall although it was a relatively abrupt stall because is a reasonably High aspect foil it wasn't as abrupt as something like a axis art when those stall or an art Pro which has a very very abrupt stall when those stall out it was a relatively predictable relatively easy to ride through stall you could you could very often stay on the board if it dropped you rather than just pitching over the front it gave you enough not

ice enough time that you could adjust your weight and ride out of it dropping you when when it stalled and the last thing I want to talk about is that when you're in choppy water or very disturbed water how does the Tracer deal with that and and again it's a it's a reasonably High aspect foil in in in comparison to other foils other medium aspect foil I mean normally a medium aspect foil you might expect to be in the six to seven and the Tracer is is in eight so in terms of picking up lift in ch

oppy water and that sort of thing it certainly does pick it up I feel like it was it was picking up the lift in the chop and I could feel it but the key aspect was that when it did pick up the lift it wasn't that it would pitch the foil up when it did that so it wouldn't pitch me up into a breaching situation it would just kind of give me a bump but it would be a horizontal bump rather than a pitching up bump so it was relatively easy to control and keep the foil in the water when you were ridin

g through chopping or messy water I never really felt like it was giving me control issues or making me work too hard initially when it was bumping me I was thinking oh I'm not sure about this because some foils do tend to pitch up when they get bumped and then you can have a a breach or a wing tip can come out and all of a sudden you've lost um foiling capability or the foil is air rated and will drop you but the tracer was not like that it would give you a bump but it never really poked its it

s nose out of the water as a result of that and also if it did breach a wing tip and I breached wing tips on it many many times it managed to reattach the flow of the water and ride through it more often than not without me really even noticing or I could hear that a breach of a wing tip had occurred but I couldn't feel it so it was very very good in terms of managing the lift and making the lift that you could feel you know less less of a problem it wasn't a foil that would pitch up and just br

each when you you know hit a big piece of chop or something like that it had a very very neutral approach to riding through that kind of heavy heavier choppier more Disturbed type of water and the last thing I want to talk about is pumping the foil so in many occasions I'd be on a piece of swell that would have some carry on it and then the swell would disappear and I would need to be looking ahead either to get on a piece of swell that was ahead of me or I'd be looking back to get on a piece of

swell that was behind that I could pick up and then carry on riding that piece of swell and the Tracer proved to be really quite good at carrying speed and pumping onto or back to another piece of swell Much More Much More capable than than I was expecting actually didn't expect that as a th000 CM foil it would carry that well in a pump and and it did it was really quite capable as as a little pump foil on a reasonable piece of swell and you could carry you know your your speed forward onto the

bump in front relatively easily it was a little harder to come off the back of a piece of swell and then pump onto a a piece of swell that was behind you but certainly getting onto pieces of swell that in front you could pick up speed and ride up over the top and back and onto a a piece of swell that was in front of you and that was actually you know really quite satisfying and easy to do and I did get some very good swell rides doing that kind of thing I would say that it's quite different to

pump than something like an axis Spitfire the axis Spitfire tends to be a foil that you kind of tap and you pump it along and the tracer was more like a foil that you have you know more of a roller coasy type pump to it in order to to par it along he gave very very positive feedback when you pumped it you could feel the energy go into the foil and it rise on the mast in response to your pump so it was it was quite a good tactile feedback to the pump that encouraged you to to you know keep trying

and and try to Power It Forward some more okay let's try and map some conclusions or final thoughts out of this I think the best measure here is whether this is a foil that I would buy or even consider swapping from my usual axis foils onto and the answer to this is a resounding yes I really did enjoy riding the Tracer it was playful fun and really performed remarkably well of whatever I try to do with it my only reservation would be it's a little slower than my current setups but I think that

is mostly down to the larger 200 CM tail and I normally run much smaller tails in terms of overall capability for an intermediate Rider I thought it was a really solid performer and there were several occasions where it made me feel like a better foiler than I actually am or at least it let me get away with some things I would not ordinarily manage to pull off and when you get that happen it really does feel good in terms of Pros it rides really very well it's predictable and forgiving and it ha

s a really wide range of performance the front plane design the fitting of the Mast into the fuselage and the overall fitment of the various parts is excellent and I like the Innovation for not leading shims for the tail angle adjustment in terms of cons the Y is a bit loose for beginners it's fine for intermediates but for a beginner I feel like that would be an extra barrier to learning I'm also not sure whether the M will hold up in terms of stiffness for much larger foils I wasn't able to te

st this as only the 1030 was available for demo and that is a relatively small foil so I would want to ride the AK Hol Mast on a much bigger foil to decide whether the Mast really has the stiffness to control a much larger foil something I didn't mention when I was looking at the over design was that I don't particularly like the way the carbon Mast is designed with regard to how the bolts fit to it you use flat headed bolts onto a flat surface on the top of the m and when you tighten those down

they tend to mark up the M I much prefer to use counter sunk bolts into counter sunk holes or counter sunk slots as those tend to hold up much better whilst I like the idea of G10 for the tail because it makes buying Tails cheaper than buying a carbon tail I did find that the G10 tail wasn't as durable as a carbon tail and if you ride from a Stony Beach where it can pick up some knocks and scrapes then there is the concern that you can put dents and dings into your tail more easily than you cou

ld with a carbon tail lastly as someone who rides from a stone Beach and is often repairing scrapes and scratches on my foils and I also do repairs for other people on foils AK have decided to paint parts of the front foil blue and this would make it really really difficult for a foil repairer to make a nice invisible repair to a foil or to patch up a scratch or repair a ding in the foil and hide it because you need to be able to repaint those blue parts and make it look like it was originally a

nd that's very very difficult cuz they kind of misted this blue onto the foil be much better if the foil was just straight carbon with a matte lacquer and then if you ever need to repair your foil or repair a ding you can do that and you can make it look like it's almost brand new so that would be my wish list really would be to get rid of the blue paint on the foil it's a small thing but as someone who repairs foils it's something that uh I just saw immediately and I thought yeah I really would

wouldn't like that if you enjoyed this video or found it useful then please do let me know in the comments this is the first time I've attempted a foil review so let me know if you think I missed something or if there is something you feel I could have mentioned or talked about lastly this review wouldn't have been possible without the help of the water sport center they had the Tracer V3 for around about a week I borrowed it several times from their demo in that time in order to be able to do

this review and they were always very very happy to let me do that so many thanks to them and if you want to show them some support then I'll put their links in the video [Music] description