Slingshot discuss their new foiling gear

Foiling Magazine's Contributing Editor Steve Sjuggerud talks to Wyatt Millerat the AWSI in Hood River about all the new products we can expect from Slingshot.

Wyatt talk us through the Wing Craft V2, the Javelin Boom wing, the Slingwing V3, the Glide Series and the PTM High Aspect Wing.

For the full interview transcript, see below.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Hi, I'm Steve from Foiling Magazine. I'm here with Wyatt Miller from Slingshot, here at AWSI 2022. And Wyatt, you've got a lot of new and exciting products to share with us today. So let's just jump right into it here. What do you have in your hands?

Wyatt Miller:

Yeah. We've got the Wing Craft Version two here. This is our wing specific board, and it's got eight sizes. So it goes all the way to the smallest I have here, 50 liters, all the way up to 140 liters. We really kind of changed the concept for the V2 and it's all about just planing, really flat bottom, hard rails in the back with a nice stable wide platform. The cool things about it is you get it, you're about to hop on, and it just kind of looks like you're going to find the balance you need to climb up on your knees. Does not look like you're going to struggle because you've got that width, and then chimes have gone away. It's just an ultra flat planing surface with hard rails. So that's going to get you up to speed as quick as possible.

For the beginner, you can bring it down to the water and be still fully planing on the water and then just slowly move your weight back to get it to bring back up. For a beginner, it's really easy because instead of touching down and losing their planing speed, they keep that planing speed. And then for the advanced rider, it allows you to land a trick and pounce right back up into a double jump trick. We're seeing a lot of the riders do a big raily, land and then bounce into 360s, so that really helps with that ultra flat.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Now Wyatt just looking at this here, I hadn't seen these before and I see a lot of little things that most people wouldn't see at first glance, and one of the things that struck me was this right here on the tail. I've never seen that on a wing board.

Wyatt Miller:

Yep. You've got slingshot. We've really moving towards out the back foil tracks in any of the boards that'll fit it. So that allows you to just leave the bolts and the nuts in the pedestal of your foil and just slide it in and slide it right back out. It really makes switching foil a total dream. You'll see that on a lot of our boards there. The out the back foil tracks is huge.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Awesome. Lots of cool little stuff there. Can we talk a little about the wings? What's going on there?

Wyatt Miller:

Yeah, so we got an all new wing. We came out with the javelin boom wing here. We got the javelin boom wing, full size range. You've got a two piece boom that fits all the sizes and then we've got a fixed skinnier diameter one piece boom that fits the bigger wings from four, five and up.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Now, you don't see a lot of carbon, but you have carbon here.

Wyatt Miller:

Yeah. It's a nice carbon lightweight boom there and the connection system is really nice. So you just got push pins there in the front and the back, so it snaps in and out really quick and really easy, and there's just really not much twist at all in the boom. So it makes back winded riding, finishing the back flip where you're pushing on the wing a lot easier and it just gives you a ton more control. You're seeing beginners be able to just use their wrists to keep the wingtips out of the water. The other thing about the javelin is by far the most compact wing span of any wing we've ever produced. So that really aids the beginner, keeping those wingtips out and also the guy who's trying to land a trick and keep those wing tips out as well.

Steve Sjuggerud:

With those narrow wing tips, how big in size does this one go?

Wyatt Miller:

Goes all the way up to seven five. So we go two five to seven five, but it's a really nice compact wing. The boom isn't for everybody, but especially me coming from windsurfing, it just gives an insane level of control. Back winding works really easy and just getting out of the water, as you're carrying your board and your wing back up out of the water, instead of having the soft handles and having that trailing edge drip or go down the water and pulling across the rocks, it's really easy just to hold it there. And I find myself riding one handed all the time with the boom, even hooking my arm up in there when I'm toe side and just relaxing. So I really like the boom. I'm definitely a boom guy.

The other huge thing on this javelin, it's probably the first wing that has a power regulation on the fly, like tuning, like a windsurf sail. So if I'm a little overpowered, I can on the fly just pull in on that strap, and it tightens it up, flattens out the canopy and really reduces your overpowered feeling. And then you can just hit it with your thumb, pop it right back out again.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Yeah. Another thing I'm seeing here is 10 PSI. Are these wings both?

Wyatt Miller:

Yeah, they're all 10 PSI. So we found that you can really pump them up and that just gives you so much more pop in your jumps. When you're pumping, you get that direct crisp control. So yeah, we pump them all up to 10 PSI, even the bigger ones.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Amazing. Yeah. Tell me about this one right here.

Wyatt Miller:

Then we added hard handles to our sling wing V3. Everybody's been loving the sling wing V3. It's just got a ton of low end grunt in this wing, really nice balance on the front handle, but we do like the added control of the boom so much that we decided to put these hard handles on the sling wing V3. So that's also a new one coming out this spring.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Awesome. Yeah, more direct. Yeah. And then you've got a radical foil in front of us here. Do you want to tell us about these foils? Are these new or what's the?

Wyatt Miller:

Yeah. So we've got totally new foils here. One was the G series, this is our glide series. We had a 926 wing last year that everybody loved so much that we created a whole line based around that. So there's a 700 wide, 800 wide, 900 wide and 100 wide. And these give you that sensation that made us all fall in love with foiling, which is that kind of frictionless glide. And they're not crazy high aspect, they're a mid-high aspect, so they've got a lot of stability and kind of user friendliness. This is just the wing that you could start somebody out on and they're never going to outgrow it. This is still like Jeremy Rolando and Max Robinson are doing all their back flips. They're mostly using these G wings, but I have no problem putting my first time riders on them and getting them going.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Just looks like fun, basically.

Wyatt Miller:

It's a fun easy, it's a good gliding wing that has a good amount of stability to it, which is really nice. And if you're too cool for that, then you can go with our PTM series, the full high aspect and basically say it's the pinnacle of high aspect efficiencies, glide and speed.

Steve Sjuggerud:

That looks beyond a 10 to me on aspect ratio. What do you have? Is it close?

Wyatt Miller:

It's pretty close. I mean, these are all really high.

Steve Sjuggerud:

It's like nine.

Wyatt Miller:

It's nine.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Yeah.

Wyatt Miller:

It's a pretty good, fast, high aspect wing. A lot of our lighter riders, the ladies, they love this 825. They have no problem getting up and going on it, and then you can just kind of stand there and cut through the back of swells and kind of keep passing swells. The G series is the one that anybody can just jump on and ride and feel comfortable and you're just really never going to outgrow it and a lot of our top riders are using this. And then if you really want that pinnacle of high aspect performance, we've got the PTM series for you and a whole range of sizes.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Awesome. Well thank you, Wyatt. Thanks. It looks all very exciting for this year, so thanks.

Wyatt Miller:

Some fun, new toys, some good colors and can't wait to see everybody out their riding it.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Awesome, man. Thank you.

Wyatt Miller:

Heck, yeah.

Steve Sjuggerud:

Absolutely.

Wyatt Miller:

Right on.