Yeah, really awesome feedback. I definitely see the Hellfire as the right board for me now since I do see myself wanting more of the "new school" approach instead of the traditional shortboard open faced rail carving style. And I'm really not a powerful type surfer to be able to take advantage of that longer rail in the Alternator.

I'm assuming the Hellfire might favor being ridden as a thruster in most conditions? And in situations where you'd think about converting it to a quad, I'd probably rather be pulling out my Dominator quad anyway?

Sounds like the Hellfire is the recommendation. Is there any specific area where the Alternator would excel over the Hellfire? Or is there anything about the "hybrid feel" of the Hellfire that would limit performance or skill improvement?

Wow, I came onto this forum with a very similar situation as daybit and the responses may have already given me my answer.

I'm 6'2" tall 165lbs and have been surfing a 6'1" tuflite flyer for many years now. It has been my everyday board for small so. cal. summer beach break all the way up to head high peelers at the reefs near my house. But I felt like I may be missing something from not having a flexy enough board and also thought that I maybe needed something a little more high performance for the bigger/better days, so I bought a 6'2" Flexfire roundtail. And after trying it out on some of the bigger days, I found myself falling back to the comfort of the flyer because it just felt a little bit more foregiving than the flexfire and I also felt it paddled a little easier. So the flexfire sat in the garage un-ridden for many months. Then summer rolled around again and I got the urge to get a better board to handle the smaller summer surf and got a 5'8" Dominator that quickly turned into my favorite goto board for everything. I ride it as a quad on most days and as a thruster on the bigger days of the summer. But as better winter surf started coming in again, as daybit mentioned, I did feel like the Dominator wasn't the best suited for the deep bottom turns at high speed on big overhead waves. I pulled out the Flexfire again and had that same feeling as before that I wasn't totally dialed into it, maybe I need to just give it more time and allow myself to get comfortable on it. But to bring this rant to a conclusion, I've been thinking that I want a firewire that will replace my tuflite flyer as my goto board for everything bigger than the Dominator is comfortable in.

So should it be a 6'0" Alternator or a 5'10" Hellfire??

Maybe another way to ask the question is what would be a better 3 board quiver. A Flexfire, Alternator, Dominator? Or a Flexfire, Hellfire, Dominator? I think I'm leaning towards the Hellfire at the moment just cause it feels like it might be a newer, cooler, fresher design that's evolved as a perfect better wave refinement to the wonderfully popular Dominator.

P.S. somebody down at my local surf shop said they used to work at Firewire and thought that the Alternator was almost an exact copy of the Flyer. Is that true?