Wing Foil interview: Adrian Roper with Axis Foils on the Blue Planet Show

Aloha friends! It's Robert Stehlik, welcome to another episode of the blue planet show, which I produce right here in my home office, in the garage. In today's interview, I speak with Adrian Roper, the man behind AXIS foils. We get into some tips for beginners, and then we talk in detail about foil design, how to set up the foil properly, how different things affect different things on the foil.

New designs he is working on, the mast, importance of stiffness, the fuselage, the angles of the foil. So many cool technical things. I learned a lot from this show. I hope you do as well. I wanted to apologize in advance. The auto focus on my camera keeps going in and out focus, and it's very frustrating for me, but I didn't wanna stop the flow of the interview.  I hope you can just overlook that and focus on the technical details in the interview.

You can watch this interview right here on YouTube, or you can listen to it on your favorite podcast app. So I hope you enjoy this show and as always, please give it a thumbs up if you like it, subscribe to the blue planet surf YouTube channel, and without further do here is Adrian:

Okay. Adrian Roper. Welcome to the Blue Planet show. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you doing today? Good, thanks. Yep. Beautiful sunny day. And it's pretty glassy out there. So it might be a good day to go fishing. Nice. And you're for you. It's like the middle of winter right now, like for us it's summer, but you're on the other side, so it's pretty nice.

Is it pretty cold or how cold is it? It's cold, like compared to Hawaii it's cold, but still went foiling yesterday and had quite a good session. Excellent. I didn't have a full on thick suit on either, so it's not too bad. Okay. Yeah. All right. So this season that I'm trying to start a little bit with beginner tips right away in the beginning.

Last year, I always did that  as an afterthought at the very end, but I want to start with some good tips for people that are new to wing foiling. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about your background and and get more into. The equipment side of things and technique and so on.

So let's start with that. What are some tips you have for people that are new to wining foing same look, we have quite a few learners around us and I guess one of the biggest things is when you're learning, you don't know how to pump properly and getting up on the coil is the biggest.

Just getting up and going. So having a little bit bigger hydrofoil than you might normally think, is a good idea, cuz it helps you get up and also having a slightly bigger wing as you improve with your skills, you don't need quite so much having an easy writing foil makes a difference. And like with the access stuff the BSC range that we came out with, the bigger ones, the 1 0 6 oh and the nine 70, they were particularly good and they are particularly good for people to learn on.

And then we've also introduced the recently the SES, which is like a complete package and that comes in 1 0 4 oh and nine 40 and it's basic and simple.  But it works really well. And it's a great entry into the whole access platform. You can, upgrade it as you want bits and pieces wise.

But it they're both the BSC range and the SES are particularly good for learners. You can stand in slightly the wrong place, you get away with a murder with them and they just, they still ride along quite nicely easy to carve, nice to ride. Okay. So using a. Big foil and a big wing.

That makes a lot of sense. And then, yeah, so you have that super easy start package now where I guess it's made particularly with beginners in mind. Yeah. Yep.  Same base plate, same mask. The fuselage is slightly different, but it's similar to our normal red fuselage. The front wing was based on a BSC wing.

But we've rounded the ends off more so that you can't stab yourself so easily. And we also, because we're, it's a different construction, we've made it out of colonial wood. So it's a solid wood core with a fiberglass laminate. And that makes a strong wing, that's a bit more affordable. And we thin the profile out a little bit on it which is actually quite a good thing.

It runs quite nicely and it's a fun setup to use. Okay. And then right now you have it in two sizes. So basically one for the the bigger riders with almost 2000 square centimeters and then one for li right. Lighter riders with 1668 square centimeters. So both of those should have plenty of lift, right?

Yeah. I think a lot of people, when you're getting into foiling, they walk into a store and there's just so many foils and it's also confusing and they just, I don't even know where to start. This breaks it down to AO over 80 kg or less than 80 kg. This is the one that'll work for you, and it makes it a lot easier.

And they can go away, get started, have fun and work it out from. Okay. And then obviously you're also using a fl