Hyperfin from Triton equipment

[salibandy]

Hello everyone! So sorry for not replying any earlier. I have just returned from a diving trip, which was great and has refreshed me.

Mr Fondueset, I ordered one for competition.

Bjorn, I suggest you not worry. Max's fins are well made and all perform superbly.

The difference in the edges is because Max used a different fibreglass for your fin, Fondue. Other than that, there are no real differences in performance. The footpockets are what matters most.

 

[salibandy]

Fondue, I've looked at your video. It seems that the V bend is both on the up and down stroke, but more so on the up. Could you tell us if it has affected your technique or anything?

Mine still doesn't show any v bending.

 

[Fondueset]

Hi Salibandy,

The fin is quite wide - and much softer than either waterway - and I am used to the hard one. Interestingly I seem to get much better speed and distance with much less effort with Max's fin. I am still working on it but it seems to want a slower, longer stroke than the hard waterway - with more glide at the top and bottom of each stroke so the blade has time to return. This is quite good for recreational diving as it allows a very economical way of swimming. We took it and my soft waterway out today and now, provided I get my socks lined up right, I have almost no problems with foot pain. I did quite a few 50 or 60 yard sprints and a few dives to around 50 feet.

All very easy though I do feel my technique needs work as it still took 8 kicks up from 50 feet. You should see this fin go for surface swimming!

Salibandy - is your fin for constant ballast or dynamic competition?

 

[salibandy]

I suppose it's more for dynamic, as I didn't specify on the incompressible wings thing. Max did say it would work as well for depth, but so far I haven't tried it.

Strangely enough, a hyperfin works best with short consistent strokes often. But there is a good deal more rubber in your fin to conteract for the additional space you asked for. Maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[DivingDane]

salibandy your right, i'm not worried about the fin i trust max's workmanship and experience.

it was just very interesting to see such huge differences between your fin and fondueset's. but seeing as the 2 of you asked for different requirements with your fins it makes sense that max would use different production materials/techniques (it is actually pretty encouraging to see that he knows which materials and techniques work best for different divers and their requirements)

so yeah i'm not worried just more intrigued than anything.

hopefully mine will be here on Friday and then i can relax.

DD

 

[salibandy]

Like I said, it's not very different. It's just that different fibreglass was used, thus different coloured blade, different shape and different reactivity. Also Max had to compensate for the bigger footpockets by using more rubber so that the fin would work as supposed to.

Please post pictures of your fin when it arrives yea Bjorn? I'm excited to see what it looks like.

 

[Fondueset]

Here is a reply from Max - it is interesting in part because it shows how much time and effort he puts into each fin. Real craftsmanship there!

Nice to hear you like the fin. As for your hyperfin I`ve just used
another fiberglass that is why I`ve changed a design of blade if to
compare with that I've sent to Singapore. Hypefins are very sensible to
any difference. You can buy the same type of rubber or fiberglass, but
dense of it can be different. So when we do hyperfin we test it after
each step. There is a point on the end of footpockets and you have to
control it all time to get a dynamic, all time we control weight,
floating, try to create a fin which will suite to your experience,
weight... You asked to make bigger footpockets because your shoesize is
44 and want to use it with 5 mil socks. I had to put bigger footpockets
what we don't do for finswimmers. To compensate bigger footpockets I had
to use more rubber. At the end I`ve got the necessary dynamic.

'v' bend is not very important in hyperfins. Of course that big bend is
not good. It means that hyperfin is too soft or blade is too long. But
small bend is right. Anyway, there is another technique in hyperfins. To
swim right in hyperfin you have to do small and often kicks. It is more
important for finswimming. But anyway try to compare.

I have been swimming instinctively with higher frequency/low amplitude style kicks and it s good to know I'm right (thought I was wrong) The footpockets are really very comfortable - I dove for at least an hour or so yesterday in this fin - so my feet are adjusting quickly. The Biggest problem I've heard of using hyperfins for recreational diving is foot pain/numbness and I'm really pleased with the work he did with the pockets. They are comfortable, but not at all loose.

I was playing around with dynamics yesterday and consistently overshot my targets.

 

[Fondueset]

Another quote from Max - very good description of how this fin feels.

Flyer is the standart monofin with an angle and wings for floating.
Flyer is middle between monofin and hyperfin. But hyperfin gives you an
effect of shock-absorbers. It gives a feeling that hyperfin swims
itself.

 

[Mullins]

I think a slightly lower amplitude works with hyper-style fins simply because the blade is positioned further from the feet, so the trailing edge moves further for a given kick amplitude than that a regular mono. The higher angle between blade and footpocket also helps. However the big dead-spot you get at the top and bottom of the stroke with these fins (because the footpockets do the flexing and the blade stays almost flat) puts a limit on how narrow the kick can be. Also, they're quite heavy so a narrow, rapid kicking style is going to waste a bit of energy simply changing the fin's direction more often.

What Max says on his site about the benefits of using fibreglass and the poor elastic qualities of rubber is a little contradictory in the context of hyper-style fins. If rubber dissipates so much energy as heat, why use it as the main elastic component? (I'm assuming this fin acts like the others I've seen i.e. the footpockets do all the flexing, not the blade. This is supported by the comment about the 'feeling of shock absorbers.' Surely you want transmission, not absorption?)

As for v-bend... a little is probably not going to do much harm. However I'd like to see what that fin looks like under load Fondueset, I suspect it might get quite a bit worse when kicking against buoyancy. Any chance of a side-on video to show 1. how much it v-bends and 2. how much of the blade's pitch comes from the footpockets?

I'll post a video up at some stage of how my Hyperfin looks in the pool under only moderate load, it's pretty bad! Both of those behaviours are quite pronounced. It is the best fin I've had to date and I can swim pretty good distances with it, but that doesn't mean its performance couldn't be better.

Also, Max is saying above that v-bend is caused by the blade being too long and soft. This seems rather strange. The short hyperfins like mine seem to be among the worst culprits. My Leaderfins Hyper Freediving is an unusually long fin and doesn't v-bend at all. It's also soft due to its length.

I think the Hyper-style fins are the best available and this one looks great, I just think some of the claims made about them are either over the top or contradictory. It would be interesting to make a lightweight fin with rigid footpockets, lots of angle, a blade that flexed without v-bending (!) and a bit of distance between the footpockets and blade. I.e. all the good points of hyper-style fins without the bad bits. Personally I'd also like to lose the rubber wings and see how that went.

 

[Fondueset]

Dave, thanks for your insights. This weekend we'll try for some footage coming up off the bottom - The water here is now 64F so I'm in my 3 mil with less weight - the real test would be the dead of winter in my 6 mil with a full load.
Viz has been mediocre lately - with ridiculous boat traffic so we did limited footage.

I know what you mean about the loss at the end of each stroke and have much more of a sense of resistance with my hard waterway - but the Hyper fin is much much faster with way less energy output. My dive buddy can normally keep up with me when I'm cruising in my waterway (with his C4 bifins) but he has to exhaust himself to stay with me in this fin when I'm just cruising at a moderate pace. The actual performance sort of flies in the face of how it feels.

What you seem to be describing sounds like the Leaderfins Free Flyer - or Flyer model where they've moved the blade back. The problem of maintaining thrust through change of direction is an interesting one.

 

[Mullins]

Kind of, but the flyer and chen bin (which is similar) don't have much angle and also don't have the blade set back from the footpockets nearly as far as the hyper style fins do. They're also heavy and have footpockets which flex... so on reflection they're a pretty long way from what I was talking about.

 

[OceanMan]

I am not sure that footpocket bending is pure rubber elasticity.
Indeed, the blade goes at least half way through the footpocket and I think that what we call footpocket bending is the blade bending inside the footpocket and at the bullet like shape of the footpocket.
If I am right, you would need a rather soft rubber to avoid decreasing the fiberglass properties.

 

[Mullins]

I am not sure that footpocket bending is pure rubber elasticity.

It is in mine!



I've got photos of my Leaderfins mono doing the same thing.

 

[salibandy]

Woah. That's a wicked bend. Like the one Ben posted.

 

[Fondueset]

I had a look at a Chen Bin but none of us were able to get it on our feet. It did seem to have more angle than the waterway Nemo (12degrees) but probably less than the Hyper.

I'd think the Freeflyer would be fairly rigid - the blade goes back into those pockets nearly to the heel. May be having thicker fiberglass under the foot and extending it all the way back would be a step in the right direction.

 

[ADR]

Also, Max is saying above that v-bend is caused by the blade being too long and soft. This seems rather strange. The short hyperfins like mine seem to be among the worst culprits. My Leaderfins Hyper Freediving is an unusually long fin and doesn't v-bend at all. It's also soft due to its length.

I agree as I've never seen bifins/stereo fins v-bend and they have to be a great example of long and soft

 

[salibandy]

I believe he means too wide and soft.

 

[Fondueset]

Yes, what with english not being the first language a little semantic flexibility seems in order
I'll try and get my fin to bend like the picture - but frankly I don't think I have the mass/power to pull it off.

 

[OceanMan]

It is in mine!

View attachment 20237

I've got photos of my Leaderfins mono doing the same thing.

Apart from the very bad bending of the footpockets, I can see something that's REALLY disturbing : Dave, I don't know how to say that, but your face seems upside down !! It must be a very bad neck bending or some weird optical illusion.

 

[salibandy]

Oh my gosh, you're right!