I am able to control the ESC when the box is submerged, but the tip has to be out of the water or I have to hold the remote directly on the external antenna. As soon as I start moving its no issue, the board is quickly out of the water.
I don’t mind the battery box being on the back the way it is. For the board I ended up with its probably the best I can do. The back of the board is completely submerged when I take off, but with the antenna hack(thanks to lishine) I’m able to get going with out having to wiggle around to get a signal, the signal good when the tip of the board is out of the water. I’m only using two batteries, so the weight on the tail is minimal. I’ve had about 5 session now and it works well, I get 30-45 minutes of playing around before its dead.
The GY-1310 is very hard to control though, I’ve been looking at the ART foil offerings on alibaba and thinking I might get something different. I’m not sure if the difficultly in riding is something I can overcome with some time or if it’s just a really hard to ride foil. It does seem like the GY-1310 is too much area for prone foiling, and that’s my goal so I’ll probably need to get something different.
I also picked up one of the 70 amp ESCs, I haven’t installed it yet, but the dimensions are identical to the 50 amp one I have so it will be a drop in if I need more power with a different foil.
here is another picture:
To hold it down I initially had just one strap across the box. I thermoformed lexan into loops and glued them down with gflex, and they came off after a couple of big wipe outs, so I added another strap the holds the front down, and it’s stayed put after that.
I’m not a virtuoso but I can ride a foil behind a kite pretty well. Any recommendations of an Alibaba foil that’s easier to ride?