I be very interested.

This IMO is the biggest problem with frontal drag and the gap between quads and thrusters is cant and toe. Super interested to see and try this. There are set ups you can run that have adjustable cants but to complicated and solid state build, once it is set its set. So this has dynamic adjustment (as it is being used)? Go ahead!! sounds cool.


Thanks for the heads up MP.

Wow. Very interesting. I'm looking forward to it.

Donnie,

We kept it really simple - there is a barrel hinge built into the base that stops the cant at 7 degrees each side. The water pressure as you start to turn 'rolls' the fin over immediately and holds it in position. The moment you start turning the other way, the opposite occurs. There is no resistance as we preferred zero lag between 'cants'.

Mark

am excited by this - this is breakthrough stuff
lookin forward to trying one out

good to check you rippin at jbay

later
Deon

Interesting... FCS plugs have 4 degrees from the factory if i recall right. Most fins are built with 7-10 degrees from the tabs/truss(sides). Very interesting, so no cant until an assumed lateral load is made, therefore very little drag, as board lift happens when board gets to 'a' primary speed. Then once up and on the wave the fins become active? Is the hinge have a torque load meaning it wont roll until certain load is assumed?

To cool. A hair to much science trying to get my head around it; super stoked to get on a set though.

We have the largest FCS and Future demo fleet(s) available... I do all the fin/accessory buying so I might be giving Mr. RT a buzz about this matter ;-)

I wont brow beat ya too hard here Mark. I get the gist.

Will this mean fins sets come with FW's or as a stand alone purchase?

Donie,

No torque load, we wanted the full 7% to kick in immediately with the slightest water pressure as the front fins are already in a fixed cant. The Deviant will be a stand alone fin purchase as it works with any Thruster board, but will only be sold through Firewire Dealers. We choose a pretty standard fin template as its just for the thruster trailer, but down the road we'll introduce a wider variety of templates.

Deon,

Good to meet you and look forward to another surf session next March. I'll send Ginz a couple DEVIANT samples as soon as production comes through early next year. I'll be interested in your feedback on your Direct Drive, you were laying that board pretty hard on the rail already.

thanks Mark
really look forward to it
Deon

Is this out yet? If not, what is the ETA and estimated street price?

Mahalo

Shipping to retail mid - end Feb at the latest. $49.95 retail.

Is it a full set of fins or just the rear fin? What sizes/shapes are they going to be available in initially?
Thanks, Phill.

its a fairly neutral rear template, similar to the PC5, rear fin only. the degree to which the cant affects your turns is going to more than offset any small variances versus your current rear fin template. If everyone is stoked on it (like we are), we'll be adding additional templates and materials.

I thought that might be the case. I hope it gets a good response, more people need to step out of the industry's comfort zones!

I want to order one of those up here in Montreal...feasable??

Got some pre-production samples, production should be ready towards the end of Feb, early March.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice,that's a sweet good looking fin.

it's looking sleek now...

Futures version

What's the pivot made of??have you experienced any cavitation during trials???

do you feel the fin pivot as you turn or is it just really smooth and natural?

hinge looks well disguised now..streamlined too....top stuff!!!
interested too see if it loosens rar604 when surfing it from a forward position

The Pivot and the fin are the same material - similar to the Natural composite material that Futures uses.

No cavitation - it simply mimics the cant of your front fin going into a turn. Same logic as to why rear quad fins are canted.

It definitely will loosen up any thruster. When its in neutral, it loosens up the tail ever so slightly as the fins has 'play' from side to side. but the moment you commit to a turn, it rolls into position immediately and you can feel your board take off in a tighter arc and with increased speed as there is less drag through the arc of the turn.

I would imagine the the bulbous base does have some increased drag versus a normal fin, but if it does, its more than offset by the reduced drag through turns due to the cant. And lets face it, your board is seldom going dead straight anyway.

One thing I did notice is that at extreme speed (I rode it at J-bay last October and Chuy took it to Tavarua and Hawaii), it allows you to still turn sharply versus being forced to draw out a turn simply because you're going too fast.

Slater was on Chuy's trip to Tavi and he was very interested in it - he got the concept right away. But Chuy only had a Futures base on that trip so Slater could not test it in his own board. And that is the key to really feeling what it does. Ride it in the board you are familiar with and you'll notice it.

And the bigger the board, (or wider/thicker), the more pronounced the effect as it allows the board to get up on its rail faster. Chuy rode it on his 700 in Hawaii and was freaking.

Jeez can't wait to get mine!!!!,very detailed description, thanks very much!!! Would have been pretty interesting to get feedback from the guru Mr Slater!,but we got the freakiness of Chuy and that is more than enough!!!

sounds like it could increase the scope of my rar604...offsetting my now lighter svelt body...maybe no need for a flexfire/taj just yet...more money for spitfire/dom..!!!...or shoes for the wife....

naaaaa forget the shoes!!!they keep loosing them all the time. Besides I think we use our boards more than what they use their shoes.
What would you think will happen if you use the deviant principle on:
1)all 3 fins of a thruster
2)the front fins of a thruster only
3)2 back fins of a quad
4)the front fins of a quad only?

Looks cool Mark...

I wanted to say that there are some things that are counter intuitive. You be surprised how fins drag or dont.

I have read that any fin, wing, that creates positive lift they have to assume a high aspect ratio. Having a bulbous base might not have as much drag as we think, or it could have more. From what I have read on it, I think the deviant would be pretty nuetral. The AOA (Angle of Attack) doesnt change so hard to simply says so. Truth a flow tank with testing would say. But even then it could list good and surf poorly or test good and be shit.

So back to the bulbous thing. Its simple known fact water like to interact with a curved surface. If the high aspect ratio deal, trip or whatever them NASA engineers figured out in the 50's is maintained we can sleep at night. lol

I have calipered various FCS fin bases. The fins they tout as having the least drag, I noted as having the thickest base, which was @ 8mm. They also were foiled. I surf non foiled on good surf. Shit surf, foiled fins.

There is ton of good reading out there. It will ruin you like me. Makes your head spin but in the general picture i think any passionate surfer should know. Curtis Hasselgrave (Master fin designer), The Surfing Arts, Science and Issues Conference held at Scripps every year, and this thing called Google can make a head hurt.

Ill leave you all with this thought. I had a chance to meet Curtis... we talked cool guy. Knows his stuff and then some. We started talking boards and I asked him his thoughts on surfboards He said everything that applied to fins applied to surfboards. Then you guys got to start making em' flex.
To much data - system overload - system overload

Where's the advil- ha

DD

there is a little more material to create the hinge, but it adds very little weight

Re earlier post on multiple options for placement of the DF, I'm guessing it would add too many variables and be difficult to control. But once we get up and going with the project, we'll definitely be R&D'ing a variety of applications

donniedarko, my stream of consciousness: when you operate in laboratory conditions, you expect to get data that fits theoretical models, in this case the laws of hydrodynamics. Obviously experiments sometimes yield unexpected results, but controlled environments are as close to perfect as you can get. The introuction of variables is what often leads to new findings.

The point I am trying to make is, do you feel with a sport like surfing, there are enough physical variables to give unexpected results? Perhaps when you take a combination of wave characteristics, surfer characteristics, board characteristics and surfing locomotion, we would in essence, create a scenario impossible to recreate in a lab? At any given point during a ride, so much is changing: velocity, acceleration, friction, normal force, board orientation, etc. that it would take an entire team of guys from MIT just to model 1 roundhouse.

This brings me to my main point. The boardmakers who pioneered our industry made boards for waves that had never been surfed, most likely with only a general understanding of the basic concepts of physics. They made their first boards, responded to feed back and made their second, and so on. It is a sport built around research and development. Now through the use of technology, boardmakers can be more precise, technologies can be more advanced and more products become available.

I think no matter how far our sport goes and how exact our science becomes, technologies can only be applied after it has gone through all the proper R&D channels. Knowing who Firewire has R&Ding new boards and technologies makes me confident that anything they offer has been proven to work. Whether or not the Deviant fin matches the results of research done at Scripps, I would argue, could be deemed irrelevant. The most important element is that when put to use, the surfers participating in the trials are psyched on how the product works. I can GURANTEE that if MARKY MARK is posing with it at ASR for the photogs of Shop-Eat-Surf, it more than works.

is this available yet in stores or somewhere online? I really want to get one.

hot yet, we're still fine tuning the exasct type of composite that gives us the best strength to weight ratio and it has taken us longer than expected. The good news is we've had even more guys ride the various prototypes and all were stoked on how it worked. should be in stores in the next 4-6 weeks.

Aloha,

So four weeks have almost past. Is this fin still set to be released in the next two weeks? Very interested in getting an FCS one to try out. Any ideas when they will reach the Hawaii distributor?

Mahalos,

unfortunately not yet. the mold maker took on a ton of projects and we got bumped. so we have not even received the latest version in the new composite and slightly thicker base yet. Sorry for all the false starts. Rest assured that we'll be posting delivery details at least 2-3 weeks before we can guarantee delivery and it will be in all Firewire USA dealers simultaneously. Everyone is excited to test it and will carry it.

What's your call on this??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_vNVzc5l34&feature=player_embedded

The ironic part of that fin blurb is when he says it is aimed at CT level surfers.
The ones least likely to embrace technological change.
So I suppose it will appeal most to those who think they RIP.
Edited; Or for those who are "taking it to the next level" to use a common phrase.
Shouldn't be sending out negative vibes.
I dig my Blackstix.
On a side note keeping up with technology is really filling up our landfills with a lot of obsolecent TVs that work perfectly well though.
The local council had a clean up day recently where you could put unwanted household goods out the front and they'd come and collect them for free.
Nearly every house had a convential big fat TV sitting out the front.
Now all the poor buggers who just bought LED TV's to keep one step ahead of the Jones's will have to chuck it for the lastest and greatest 3D rigs.
Chuckle.

product/technological innovation. always good.

any updates yet? just curious

just got an email from the mold maker - final version (we hope!!) of the mold will be done on June 1st, we need a couple weeks of testing and if all okay, into production mid to late June - on track to have fins in stores by mid to end July.

Group buy through the forum! :D

/just sayin'...

count me in. is the fin in production yet or does it still have some more testing to be done? id be more than happy to hel you with that testing. haha

We've nailed the barrel mechanism and now we're redoing the foil so its as good as it can be. Curtis Hesselgrave did the foil rework - one of the best out there.

any estimates on when we can buy it? sounds better and better every time

should be at retail in the USA by late July, early August

Very cool Curtis is on the project... the guy when it comes to fluid dynamics and foils.

The new Solus fin is cool and have had good feedback on them. The new TechFlex look cool but are really re-hashes of the old Black tips they did a few years ago.

mark,any up date on deviant fin release in aus.

yes, rather than continually push out the delivery, only to push it out again, we're looking at a holiday 2010 release. the final FINAL mold will be done mid August, some testing just to make sure and then into production.

The good news is that the template and foil have been completely redesigned by Curtis Hesselgrave who is one of the best out there. The early protoypes were too big (slightly bigger than a PC7!), so despite the postive reviews, we believe the re-sized version (closer to a PC5), is going to perform even better replacing a standard rear thruster fin.

Don't know who the heck this guy is but he seems pretty sour:

http://olosurfer-woodensurfboardsatpipeline.blogspot.com/2010/02/ridiculous-surfing-inventions-firewire.html

Hey guys I found this on internet, might be of interest to you:

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6991503-0-large.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6991503.html&usg=__gspWsGZVEbEuMgpwcORxc8qMdoo=&h=556&w=2299&sz=193&hl=en&start=3&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=27dy5_lduAzpAM:&tbnh=36&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpivotal%2Bsurf%2Bfin%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26tbs%3Disch:1

iggy, look at his comments and then look at the things he is putting on the bottom of his board. NEED NOT SAY ANYTHING ELSE! Guy has tunnel vision.

wow is this guy bitter or what,i know ive got an open mind and will try anything once,not so for old mate above.

Did you guys fired this guy???? the poor idiot si so sour. Check the reply to the last comment