The Generic Foiling Podcast — a second brain

S - Ep 144 Fred Hope and Slingshots Project Drag

6 min read

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S - Ep 144 Fred Hope and Slingshots Project Drag

Fred Hope (of Slingshot, based in Hood River / the Gorge) returns for a ~2-hour deep dive on Project Drag — Slingshot’s collaborative board-and-mast programme built around a Tuttle-mast connection. The hosts have real skin in the game: Liam built a near-identical board off the same CAD file and has ridden the track version for six months, and Fred sent him a Project Drag Tuttle sample to compare.

In brief

Project Drag is Slingshot handing the reins to outside shapers — Ken Adgate, Kyle Touhey and a box-builder (transcribed “Michael”/“McKinley,” name uncertain) — to bring a proven Maui board/Tuttle setup to production. Fred talks through the origin, an unusually transparent development process (a public Discord, factory photos), and the core engineering trade-off: a Tuttle (“total”) connection gives lower drag, stiffer feel and dramatically better high-speed touchdown recovery, but less adjustability and harder assembly — so it’s aimed at the 10–20% chasing the ultimate setup, while 80–90% should stay on plate/track.

Key topics & claims

  • Origin (Fred): credit goes mostly to Ken Adgate, Kyle Touhey and “Michael.” Ken shapes ~50 boards a year for friends “not for the money”; he offered his learnings to Slingshot to get more people on the product. Kyle handles Shape3D CAD; “Michael” builds Tuttle boxes in-house. Slingshot compressed its usual 12–18-month dev cycle to ~6 months out of excitement.
  • Radical transparency: a Discord (~370 members, only lightly promoted) lets consumers interact directly with designers (Gabe/Bobby are on it), see factory photos, and read AI-generated summaries of design meetings per channel. Fred frames it as community-building — countering how Facebook groups and Kiteforum have become unfocused/spam-ridden (Kiteforum also plagued by hacking). Freddie adds that every brand he’s dealing with is now chasing exactly this “community and inclusion.”
  • Tuttle vs plate/track (the core tech): the Tuttle head is 15.95mm thick and the fibres run straight into the board, so it’s stiffer and lower-drag. Fred’s standout claims: better high-speed touchdown recovery (“it bounces back up onto foil”) and cleaner glide. Downsides: shims, top-mounted screws, harder to disassemble, only ~2 inches of fore/aft adjustment, no rear inserts (so not for jumpers). Verdict: ~80–90% of riders should keep a plate; Tuttle is for the last 10% of performance.
  • Standardisation play: Slingshot paid for the molds so “Michael’s” Tuttle box could go into their factory and be sold to other brands (Hydrocraft / Matt Alsasser already buying) — the trade being it frees him to keep innovating. Goal: avoid yet another proprietary connection that alienates customers, echoing the earlier ONELOCK-from-Phantasm switchover.
  • Mast thinness vs stiffness (major thread): thinner masts (11.8/12mm) glide better but can’t match a thicker mast’s stiffness — carbon gets brittle at the extreme. Fred relays Adrian’s (Axis) forum point that a mast tapering wider than ~15mm to meet a Tuttle head creates a weak point, so Tuttle suits riders for whom glide (not maximum stiffness) is paramount. Slingshot targets HMS-level stiffness, uses a titanium/metal collar in the Tuttle mast (sanded flush to cut drag), and is developing a 17mm mast (Bobby still tuning) whose thickness makes it stiffer than any Tuttle-compatible mast can be. QC pain point: masts came out with thickness variance (~11.5–13.9mm) they had to tighten.
  • Liam’s direct comparison: he asked Ken & Kyle to help him build another wingboard and was sent essentially the production Project Drag file — his DIY “green machine” is a near-twin. Riding Fred’s Tuttle sample (deliberately an early, not-yet-stiff one) he still found the lack of drag on take-off/touchdowns immediately noticeable, and stresses the touchdown recovery — not raw speed — as the real benefit; a plate is still “a good connection.”
  • Back-to-back mast test (Liam): compared F-One 12mm vs 14mm masts and Slingshot plate-HM vs Tuttle (V2 Eagle 790 vs Glide 725). In powerful easterly bumps he found the 12mm gave too much speed/glide (wanted a smaller foil); the efficiency gain was most obvious at low speed / when recovering, not across the whole range.
  • Which brands adopt Tuttle next? Fred guesses downwind/race-focused brands first. F-One (Julien) and Armstrong ride the mast far forward, which fights Tuttle’s limited adjustment; Axis’s tempo mast (polished thin by “Frank”) and Kane/KT are candidates.
  • The human side: Fred on managing a friendship not a business relationship (Ken/Kyle/“Michael” want no money — Ken asked only that a board be donated to a cancer raffle, “KEIPA”[?]; Kyle wants demo support); Jeff Logosz’s development spend and “blood pressure”; skew management; Mike Zajcik and Johnny Heineken chipping in via WhatsApp; raw long-form YouTube designer interviews (Edo, Trent). Boards retail ~$1,800.
  • Prone crossover: smallest Project Drag is 50L (a 35L requested on Discord); Trent & Edo have been proning it on Oahu. Liam is sceptical high-rocker boards suit prone surf.

Gear / brands mentioned

Slingshot (Project Drag boards, Tuttle/“total” mast, HM/HMS masts, ONELOCK, Glide/Flare/Flow wings, Surge 890), Mikes Lab, F-One (V2 Eagle, Glide, 12/14mm masts), Axis (tempo mast, ART), Armstrong (Performance X), Code, Hydrocraft, KT, Cedrus, F4, Ocean Rodeo “Mako/Maker” twin-tip (rocker analogy). Ken Adgate’s hand-built boards recur as the reference object.

Notable quotes or takes

  • Designers “like designing in their own little corner cupboard” and don’t want to sell — hence the value of putting them in a Discord (paraphrased).
  • On darts: good designers “hit a bullseye” and then fear diverging; Ken/Kyle/“Michael” and Slingshot’s young team “aren’t afraid to throw as many darts as they want.”
  • Aside praised: Johnny Heineken’s SUP-foiling video (Ocean Beach, San Francisco; “Clay Islands”/“ice and fire” edit) called one of the best foiling videos ever made.

Mentioned

Fred Hope · Slingshot · Ken Adgate · Kyle Touhey · Bobby Johnston · Gabriel Verrier-Paquette · Jeff Logosz · Mikes Lab · Johnny Heineken · Adrian Roper · Edo Tanas · Julien Salles · Kane De Wilde · Luke Atkinson · Liam · Freddie · Hood River · Masts · Boards · Kite Foiling · Prone Foiling

Upgraded from the earlier stub. Auto-transcribed (faster-whisper, unreviewed): “Sting Shot” = Slingshot; “total”/“tittle”/“tuttle” all = the Tuttle mast connection; box-builder “Michael”/“McKinley,” the cancer charity “KEIPA,” and “Mike Zajec/Zajcik” spellings are uncertain and flagged.