: Hi Bill thanks for the input I talked with a friend of mine who is
: really into rc airplanes and is building molds to create a kit.
: He went over the aero aspect of foil shapes with me and I took
: in alot of what he was saying so my understanding has increased.
: He did have one question though if you don't mind, when it came
: to the term "stall" in aerodynamics the wing would
: have be be on such an angle that the one side could not get any
: air over it to stall ( sorry for my lack of grace in explaining
: what he said) and in the application of a skeg he could not see
: how this could be achieved in a kayak and was wondering if there
: was a further explaination to better his understanding.

: Thanks
: dave g

Hi Dave,

Like I said, I agree that getting high enough angles of attack to cause a long bladed foil to stall would likely be impossible even with a flat, non-foil shape. You'd have to turn the whole kayak quite a bit and that's not real likely unless you're coming off the face of a wave (which certainly can happen). Btw, the angle of attack to create a stall depends much on the particular foil used and most of the home made-up shapes will stall at much lower angles than true foil shapes. Also most aircraft use cambered foil shapes (RC aircraft too) and they are more resistant to stalling than the symetrical shapes we use.

Still with things like waves and short wing shaped blades, stalling a skeg is certainly possible and you don't want to do that, makes for really odd and perhaps unsafe handling.

Bill H.