Saturday, September 05, 2015

JP's foil-up sailing project!

In my last post I asked whether you could add foils to everything, and there could only be one response to that question and add foils to JP's own boat.

It's a classic Hobie cat (or at least a scale version) and clearly new-tech foiling required an expert, so we asked Hannah White of project Speedbird. Alas she was unavailable but mini-fig Hannah (above) was only too happy to join Team JP's foiling project!!

The first question was to the material to use for the foil, and we plumpt for Grape-Nuts cereal packet. This was found to be stronger than the Kellogg's Crunchy-nut equivalent (plus lower sugar - hurrah!):
Team JP engineers used high-tech design technology (Microsoft Visio) to define the foil size and shape, to optimise the aerodynamic effect. Naturally the coating was foil (for strength, water resistance and that shiny, laser bright look) and mini-fig Hannah was delighted by the result:
Of course the critical stage was the testing and we had to wait for optimum conditions in terms of water depth, temperature and number of bubbles.

Finally, we were able to launch the JP-foiling boat, and mini-fig Hannah had to hold on tight!! Yes, it was literally flying in the air!!
After a couple of successful runs it was back to land for a debrief:
Mini-fig Hannah's verdict: "Big thumbs up!" (or at least, the mini-fig equivalent).

So a success and proof that the JP foil-up project works!!!

It was, if I say so myself, a total foil-up!

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