S - Ep 038 Armstrong

A long-sought sit-down with Armie Armstrong, founder of Armstrong Foils, finally landed while he was in Hawaii for the Molokai-to-Oahu (M2O) downwind race. Two hours covering the M2O race, the brand’s origin story, its durability-first engineering philosophy, mast-stiffness trade-offs, the multi-year development of the MA/A-wing range, team news, and where Armstrong is pushing next (surf, race consulting, wake, pump foils).

In brief

Armie talks through just having raced the Molokai channel crossing (team rider Oscar’s first downwind race, 7th place, technical line-choice between the fast deep-water channel and the slower inside line), then the origin of Armstrong: getting into foiling via SUP downwind racing to beat rivals in his 40s, teaching himself to foil in 2017, and hand-building his first foils from wood templates before meeting Rob Whittall (Ozone) and Kevin Trotter (later an AXIS partner) who helped the early design phase. The brand’s whole engineering identity — titanium core, continuous-fibre wrap, hex-shaped fuselage — comes from Armie personally trashing gear as a 90kg rider. He’s candid about the early Performance mast being too flexy by today’s standards (fine cord at the bottom for drag) and about the HA 925 being released “unrefined” before much of the market was ready for it, which fed directly into the more stable MA range. The back half covers the two-year, 80+-iteration development of the A-wing/XPS with outside sail and kite designers plus input from America’s Cup sailors, team news (Jeremy Wilmotte’s move from AXIS to Armstrong), the new CEO Nathan taking day-to-day pressure off Armie and Rob, and where R&D is headed: surf foils, race-foil consulting work that may “trickle down” like F1 tech, low-stall-speed pump foils, and wake foiling.

Key topics & claims

• Molokai race (guest): Armie’s role was “basically beat Dave Calama Dave Kalama]]” — result described as mixed (“could have done better, could’ve done worse”). Team rider Oscar’s first competitive downwind event; came 7th after losing the fast pack early and having to find his own line, plus a reef mishap near the finish that cost him minutes. Armie explains the race’s core tactic: the deeper mid-channel water carries faster swells but at a different angle to the direct line, so racers trade extra distance for more energy; this year’s more northeasterly wind flattened the inside line and rewarded staying wide (where Kane and the leaders sat).
• Why downwind is huge in Hawaii but not the UK (guest): driven by conditions (reliable, consistent bumps) and logistics — most Hawaii/Oregon riders can car-shuttle rather than need an escort boat, and cross-shore coastlines (vs the UK’s mostly onshore conditions) suit the discipline. Downwind boards’ “happy accident,” per Armie: they double as excellent light-wind wing boards, which he credits for much of their commercial popularity.
• Origin story (guest): Armie grew up in a sailing family (born in the UK, sailing round the world from six months old, settled in New Zealand), then spent ~18 years in the film industry building underwater camera housings under an Austrian engineer he names as “Ziggy Zignis” (spelling uncertain, transcription unclear) — his stated source of engineering grounding. Got into foiling chasing a downwind SUP racing edge in his early 40s; started shaping wooden foil sections by hand and glassing them onto an old kite-foil mast. Met Rob Whittall (then an Ozone wing/kite designer, based in Raglan) surfing, and the two decided to start a foil company; Rob remains a partner and, per Armie, “chief inspiration officer” who wrote much of Armstrong’s early marketing copy. Kevin Trotter (later a partner at AXIS Foils) is credited with helping the initial design phase.
• Manufacturing: early prototyping happened in New Zealand, but the brand moved production to Asia largely because of shipping economics — Armie says shipping components out of remote New Zealand cost more than shipping a finished foil kit worldwide from Asia.
• Durability as the founding design driver (guest): Armstrong’s signature titanium-core, continuous-carbon-wrap fuselage (source of its hexagonal shape) exists because Armie, a self-described “gear thrasher” at ~90kg, kept breaking lightweight kite-foil gear through jumping. The approach borrows from high-end sailboat rigging, where fibre is wrapped continuously around a thimble rather than machined/bonded joints.
• Mast stiffness (major thread, guest): Armie admits the early Performance mast’s flex was partly a byproduct of keeping the bottom cord thin for drag, and that the problem only became visible as riders moved to bigger-span, higher-aspect wings. The new Performance mast is now, per others, one of the stiffest on the market — but Armie personally still prefers some flex, especially on smaller surf foils, for pop out of turns and to dampen wave energy. He draws a direct contrast with Adrian (AXIS) wanting maximum stiffness, and relays that Raphaël Salles rejected an F-One mast prototype with a varying taper purely for the feel of a consistent 14mm section rather than for stiffness reasons. AXIS’s older alloy masts hit ~19mm thickness for rigidity, at the cost of drag from the bigger cord — a direct trade Armstrong’s thinner, turn-focused masts avoid.
• HA 925 and the shift to the MA range (guest): Armie agrees with the hosts that many riders bought the HA before they had the skill to exploit it, and reflects the brand under-refined it at launch (could have used a thicker section, shorter fuse, or been pushed further forward) — a driver behind the more stable, forgiving MA series that followed.
• A-wing / XPS development (guest): the biggest collaborative project the brand has done — roughly two years and 80–90+ iterations (numbers cited by “Rob” during the conversation), bringing in outside sail/kite/windsurf designers because Armstrong’s in-house team had taken the original wing as far as they could alone. A recurring design input came from a sail designer named “Pete” (transcribed inconsistently as “Pete Blair” and “Pete Dirling” — spelling uncertain) about pre-twisting a wing so the whole span carries load evenly once loaded; Armie says this insight was applied both to the XPS wing and to the MA foils’ own twist. The XPS itself is pitched as a wave-riding wing (grabs upwind well, has a front handle for wave riding) rather than a race or freestyle wing.
• Team & company news (guest): Jeremy (Wilmotte/“Wilmot”) has moved from AXIS to Armstrong, reportedly initiated via team rider Oscar; Armie says he can’t share the full story. New CEO Nathan (from a well-connected top New Zealand sailing family) is now running day-to-day operations, described as taking pressure off Armie and Rob and managing the Asia manufacturing team.
• Design consulting from sailors: Armie credits beach-side feedback from America’s Cup sailors “Pete Blair” and “Jimmy” as some of the most valuable input the brand gets, alongside paid consulting relationships. He traces his original foiling inspiration to watching the 2013 America’s Cup boats foil in Auckland.
• What’s next (guest): a major surf-foil push (citing more “hardcore” surfers picking up foiling); race-foil consulting that Armie says may never become a retail product but should “trickle down” tech the way F1 development does; new pump foils (Armstrong Pump Foil 1675/1880) claimed to have the lowest stall speed of anything the brand has made; and a wake-foiling push built around team rider Noah, supported by a full-time US-based wake rep Armie names “Mike Mirth” (spelling uncertain — described as having “invented the modern tow foil” and the air chair). The hosts push back that Armstrong’s price point likely limits it to the “someone I follow rides Armstrong” tier of the wake market rather than true mass-market entry gear.
• UK/Europe presence: Armstrong has a UK rep, Tristan, based in Weymouth; the brand supplied gear to the SailGP Inspire youth program (wing foiling try-outs for young sailors) which Armie attended in Plymouth/Weymouth and called one of the best sessions he’s had, name-checking a strong wind-against-tide spot off the Weymouth coast.
• Desert-island gear pick (guest): given free choice of any brand, Armie says: Duotone 5m wing, a custom KT board, and — pushed to name five non-Armstrong foils he rates — Tukuma (for its “Kujira” tech), an AXIS ART 899 or the newest AXIS model, an unreleased new Slingshot carbon-rig foil, and a Lift HAX 110. He still says he’d want an MA in the mix regardless, specifically because of Armstrong’s quick-release/removable foil feature, which he says no other brand offers.

Gear / brands mentioned

Armstrong (CF 1600/800 early foils, HA 925, MA range, XPS wing, Performance mast, Armstrong Pump Foil 1675/1880), AXIS Foils (Kevin Trotter, alloy masts, ART 899), F-One (Phantom, ART, Raphaël Salles’s mast-feel anecdote), Slingshot (Dart — joked about as leaking/flapping in a wave-riding story from Antigua; unreleased carbon rig), Lift Foils (HAX 110), Duotone (5m wing), Ozone (Rob Whittall’s former employer), North, Tukuma (Kujira tech), Levitaz (name-checked by the hosts as Armstrong’s closest early competitor on slot-in fuse design).

Notable quotes or takes

• Armie’s stated engineering mantra, attributed to a friend: “don’t let perfect get in the way of progress.”
• On the HA 925 in hindsight: too many riders bought the high-aspect wing before they were ready for it, and Armstrong itself “probably put that too far, too early” rather than trimming it back for stability from the start.
• On durability: he describes himself as a “gear thrasher” who broke enough kite-foil gear (mostly jumping) that fixing it became the reason he started making foils at all.
• A running joke about a Slingshot Dart flapping and folding mid-wave-ride in Antigua (Freddie’s story, not Armie’s) — both hosts are careful to caveat it isn’t a knock on Slingshot as a brand.

Mentioned

Armie Armstrong · Armstrong · Rob Whittall · Adrian Roper · AXIS Foils · F-One · Slingshot · Lift Foils · Ozone · North · Jeremy Wilmotte · Kane De Wilde · Dave Kalama · Jack Salmon · Johnny Heineken · Hawaii · Hood River · Antigua · Liam · Freddie · Masts · Front Wings · Downwind · Wing Foiling · Kite Foiling · Pumping

Auto-transcribed (faster-whisper, unreviewed, no speaker labels — attribution above is inferred from context and phrasing, so treat host/guest splits as best-effort). Specific uncertainties flagged: the Austrian underwater-housing engineer’s name (“Ziggy Zignis”); the sail designer credited with the wing-twist insight, transcribed inconsistently as both “Pete Blair” and “Pete Dirling”; the wake-team rep’s name (“Mike Mirth,” likely a mis-transcription of a real tow-foil/air-chair pioneer); the wake rider “Noah” (surname never given); and the CEO “Nathan” (surname never given). “Dave Calama” almost certainly means Dave Kalama. No timestamps are available in this transcript.