BY your argument Macca we should ban all blocks, pulleys, sheet lines and fittings that have been made after 1975 because they are all lighter, more efficient, COST more, and are predominately made from "exotic" materials, and anyone who can afford to use them will gain an advantage by spending more money?
Does this sound in any way similar to your argument?
Sometimes today’s exotic materials (which become tomorrows standards) create resistance from "traditionalists" simply through their stagnation in the past, it was only a relatively short time ago that your same views were argued vehemently between sailers who wanted to convert their classes from wood to fibreglass and those who said it would kill their classes and sailing as a whole. History tells us who was right and who was wrong with that one.

I've asked quite a bit. But for the record let's see them.

I'd like a measurement certificate please.

So the difference between the old school boat and the carbon wonder f14 is around 18%. I hope you can see the irony in your figures.

On a semi related side note...

Darryl and Marcus. I'm now working with a local (Melbourne) company who are expanding into the marine market and have a line of 100gsm Carbon uni. as cloth or pre-preg. Let me know if you're interested.

Platform stiffness???? Seems to get forgotten here very quickly.

You can build an F16 down to weight using lead, but she ain't going to be stiff.

Carbon means you can produce a stiffer platform for the weight that has been set out in the rules. Or increase the hull volume and still meet min weight.

Indeed the class is. My point is that the executive committee that leads the class should be looking at not only F16's strengths but also where threats could come from. Whilst I'm sure you don't mean it that way, there does seem to be a bit of a "head in the sand" approach to potential threats and to just dismiss them out of hand because "we're doing fine" now will be doing the class a massive dis-service.



Possibly however I do believe this thread was started by somebody else asking a specific question of him.

Tiger Mike

ps. Other than paying an extraordinary amount of money to Hobie-cat in buying my Tiger I have no connection to any manufacturer. My sailing expertise extends no more than a weekend hack that might give the good guys a run for their money if I'm having an extraordinarily good day

beams still need to be bolted!! There will always be movement due to this no matter how you build the beams or from what material..

tell me why did you buy a Viper? (Im not going to put down the Viper as a boat/design)


The F14 doesn't have a min weight.. (unless Im mistaken)..
The question is then would a carbon F14 with 14 kg of lead be any faster than a glass F14 or a paper F14 at the same weight.

Darryl,

Instead of hypothesizing about buying blocks made in 1975, How about we keep it simple:-

1. Does building a F16 with carbon hulls, Beams, mast, pole and boom cost more than building one out of glass and alloy?

2. Will there be any performance gain in building a F16 with carbon hulls, beams, mast etc over the glass and alloy version?

Stewart,

Marstrom has beam bolts on his A Class and there is no discernible difference in platform stiffness between his boat and a fully glued A Class.

Why is this so? Because the hull to beam joint is very, very good and the hull is very stiff around the beam landing, plus the beam is super stiff with no free play in the beam bolt holes etc.

This is all aided in no small way by the high quality construction...

Who have you asked? The curent Aus committee members.? On the formula16.net website forum.?



The certificated is available on the formula16.net website - surely you can do that?

Yawn...........bugger..... run out of pocorn & this soap operah is getting boring.

To top it off this wannabe pro sailor macca has resorted to asking really dumb questions about a class he clearly knows nothing about.

So I am hoping you will start asking the A-class guys similar really dumb questions soon.?

Hah

Well, I have a copy of the Rules for the F16, have owned a class founding boat (Taipan 4.9), Sailed the Blade, Taipan in F16 guise and raced the Viper. So I think I know a couple of things about the class.

Yes, the Questions are simple and to the point, thats in in effort to get a straight answer from Darryl. Rather than the blocks from 1975 dribble he has been sprouting.

And, One day I hope to be a real pro sailor....

So you get an answer - I suspect it will come with paragraphs of info from Darryl.......what then.?

Keep the dribble flowing? I not sure if you have noticed but all this time wasting is not getting you or the company you are representing any head way.

You have beat your chest several times now on differnt occaisons & have gotten nowhere.

Give it a rest.

I will be in Gosford on Sunday - you be around for a chat.?

By all accounts you are a very experienced racer. By your comments you have an extremely limited grasp of composites.

Marstrom produces both bolted and glued beam set ups. The bolting is popular due to being able to more easily ship the boats. Glued beams do not necessarlily provide additional platform stiffness over a properly done bolting system but it saves, on an A, about 1 kg of weight per hull as you do not have to add spot reinforcing for the bolt point loads.

Right now an Ashby A is almost 30K in the US. These are not even carbon but Kevlar. There is an all carbon Falcon that was purchased by a guy for a lot less than that, and the F16 has quite abit more complexity, loads and kit than an A class. The point being the ultimate costs of a boat do not vary all that much with the materials.

To answer you other question, yes it is more but not that is not the only factor. If there were no box limits, then creating an faster better craft with exotics is possible. Making one appreciably better than one made with what is standard materials available today is not. If someone is going to come to the water in a "million dollar" class killer design, it is going to be because they spent that money on rig development, not carbon.

I fail to see any logic behind banning any material based on arguments I have read here.

And just because there are a few class members who feel strongly about defending the class rules as they are a good part of the reason they got into the class in the first place. Light weight and the ability to have some development are aprt of what is attractive to the guys who set up the rules and a lot of the guys attracted to the class.

The F18 rules were supposedly written to encompas as many 18 foot production existing designs as possible at the time and keep them. This is F16 and and because they do things different than the F18 does not mean that they have their head in the sand.

macca, don't guess but measure !

Alu tip weight superwing is 7.8 to 8.2 kg (depending on fitting out like heavy spreader arms etc)
Carbon F16 mast tipweight (per rule) 6.0 kg

Wouter

Macca says a heavier F16 will be better because :
-added weight means MORE volume thus better behaviour
-added weight means STIFFER platform

I have attached an image:
-orange hull displaces 68.68kg, has a surface area of 6.79sqm and a volume of .589cum
-lavander hull displaces 53.22kg, has a surface area of 6.60sqm and a volume of .548cum

As a result the heavier hull has 3% more surface area that should account for the added hull weight.
Assuming the extra 0,19sqm of surface of the heavier hull is made of an 8mm 90kg/cum foam core and lets say 400gsm of glass either side - the extra added weight should be 288grams, per hull.
The extra added volume/displacement will only account for 19-25square centimeters of more laminate compared to another F16 like the Blade or Falcon or whatever.
Assuming the extra 20kg are good for providing more stiffness we should see a deflection test, just like the one I remember Wouter posted some time ago, unless we see that test, the supposed more stiffness of a heavier boat is just BS.
The other F16 closer or at class weight are lighter NOT because they have less volume or less stiffness, but because they are better engineered and better built. The numbers are clear, so please Macca , don't use the more volume argument again, or the more surface area of the hull of the VIPER as an example.
UNLESS you or AHPC can provide clear evidence that the VIPER IS stiffer than other F16's built to class weight or close to class weight your arguements are totally unsubstantiated and thus the VIPER is just an overweight F16 that performs very well, just like the other F16's out there, and it's being overweight just because the builder chose heavier components for better profit margins, that only demonstrates the weight is NOT important in racing, but VERY important for ppl hauling their boats up and down.

Currently the big picture is : the F16 class boats (either DIY) or production , all perform very close to each other, since there are DIY options and production ones, cost should not detour sailors if they want a boat that performs well in the class.
Bigger volume=heavier boat by 20kg is just smelly BS
Heavier boat=much stiffer by ??? amount - please provide proof.
Exotics=detouring sailors low on cash - BS, other F16 perform just as well.

For a while I thought it to be smart to stay out of the discussion. God knows, I've provide for enough fireworks already lately !

The issue as I see it (also when I formulate the class rules together with input from very knowlegdeable people like Scott Anderson, Greg Goodall, Phill Brander and others) is like this.

Eventually there will always be some moron who will spend a fortune on a F16. That is in itself not important. Important is whether he will be noticeably and significantly faster then all other makes thus forcing the other competitors to spend similar amounts of money to remain competitive.

Currently, many of us can buy a minimum weight (2nd or 3rd) generation F16 with a carbon mast for no more then a modern alu masted F18. This will IN THEORY be the fastest boat available under current state of technology. One can spend another 10.000 bucks on diamond inlays or whatever but that will not make any meaningful difference in racing.

The class assumed that potential customers will themselves make a meaningful balancing between costs and returns and this balance does not favour an all-carbon/whatever boat as that is simply too expensive for the performance you get in return. That is also why the M20's never really caught on. To many times the much cheaper F18's were snapping at their tales. Therefor I see the market as self regulating in this respect.

If I were to buy a new boat and indeed the choice would be between a 25.000 F16 that is 1 minute per hour faster or a 15.000 F16 with alu stuff then I will surely choose for the cheaper alu version. 10.000 for a minute difference is of no consequence to me personally when I'm already say 5 to 10 min slower then Macca anyway. In the way of sailing enjoyment the 1 min difference per hour is lost on me anyway. So I never envision an arms race to develop under the current rules and that is why the overweight Viper is selling well. Other people don't see a small difference like that as meaningful or they would have bought F16's that were 25 kg lighter.

Remember by far most of us are weekend warriors and that is the way the F16 is intended.

From an engineering perspective I feel that the performance dependence is very flat under the F16 rules. There is no magical trick to make one build really faster then another. The limits are also more aerodynamic then static and that is why the 130 kg Viper (with an excellent rig) is so competitive. Large breakthroughs in performance require significant improvements in the aerodynamic efficiecies of the rig which are not easy to achieve. Look at the wingmast experience in the A-cat class. In theory it must have been a killer wapon but it wasn't.


I feel we are all scared of nothing. AHPC made a business decision to produce a significantly heavier boat and Greg himself told me that the main reason was that he felt that weight wasn't nearly such an important factor as it was many years ago. The introduction of the spinnaker and powerful/efficient rigs caused that. Other then that they wished to use several components of the F18 design which are arguably overdimensioned and overweight for an F16. My own homebuild is just over 120 kg and therefor AHPC could have easily build the Viper at 120 kg as they are many many times more skilled in building boats. They simply choose not to do so.

But this is all okay as the real point is to be found in exciting sailing and the basic F16 package (whether at 107 ot 130 kg) is a guarantee for that.

Wouter

Wow. I can't believe I'm doing this: +1 Wouter!

A nice constructed argument with no personal attacks that should close this discussion. Winner!

[Now, where is my pop-corn?]