ZeroVix said..
No spam. Getting newsletter already. You should work for them and fill orders. Influencing and marketing is great so far. Thanks.

Thanks! Some context: I do not work for them, but I am an ambassador, this means I try to keep up to date on their products and whereabouts (such as the shipping situation) to be able to provide advice, especially on non-French speaking forums where people cannot easily find the info on the French Gong forums & groups.

My main interest in "promoting" things is when I am so satisfied with a product, with no available alternative, I want the company making them to survive so that I can continue to buy them in the future.

It was the case with C-Drive fins, now with Quobba fins, and for a long time with Gong because at 100kg and on the weak Mediterranean waves 10 years ago, Gong boards were the only ones that would allow me to have fun on efficient sub-7' SUP boards. With other brands I would have been stuck with 9+ barges, and may have quit SUPing, and for this I will always owe Patrice, even if nowadays plenty of SUP shapers know how to make boards work well for all conditions and people.

I'd be very interested to hear how it paddles for surf SUP. I assume the short length and wide curved rails will make it slow to paddle, but the high volume (particularly in the 5'5" length) might help with paddling? Also interested in how it pumps.

I have a long paddle to the local break. This looks like a stiff and durable little board.

ZeroVix said..
Thanks. That is why I said that you should work for them.

Well, I am retiring in 5 months (can't wait), so I am not looking for any work :-)

Besides, for me, SUPing is fun. I would be a bit wary to burden it with the constraints that any work could bring. For instance, I am a software engineer, and I love coding for fun on free Open Source projects, and I plan to do it a lot more once retired. Coding for free is fun, coding for work, well...

colas said..
Patrice just posted this video, where you can see he doesn't use the rear footstrap on his hard board (lemon):
www.instagram.com/p/CF5TL3kI4G-/

It was during the "Alex" tempest hitting France currently. He struggled for 20mn to get through the shorebreak, damaging his 3m Pulse Wing many times (you can see a rip at the far tip), but says it was a surreal experience to downwind alone in nearly 60knts of wind. He was going out 2km them coming back downwinding.

And for anyone wanting a rear footstrap. You can get a Gong Footstrap symmetric (not left/right) and mounts with 3M adhesive from.

www.northshoreinc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=159&idcategory=16

I agree that many will not use rear straps, but if you wanted to convert it isn't too hard.

colas said..
I am not sure the NSI inserts have enough surface to properly glue to PVC.

I would try to glue on top of them a 4"+ PVC disk to be safe. A bit like what is done for inflatable handles...

For sure. Nice PVC fabric (1000 denier) with cement and reattach EVA decking to make it look new.

Bruuka said..
Would the HIPE foot strap mounts accommodate half straps or only full straps?

I don't recall seeing reports of people using half straps.
Only one guy asking the same question on the Gong forum, with no answer.

I guess it will be OK if the half strap has a wide enough base to provide enough friction to prevent rotating around the single screw.

Alysum said..

Yeah, nah. Let's see what the other brands do, hoping someone will design a board with bevels & recess to solve the touch down crash issue.

Or just have better technique, as it seems his pal with a better (wider) stance didn't have the issue :-)

Seriously, this video is a bit strange in the way it allocate time to some points. And here I am speaking from a really personal point of view, not with my Gong ambassador hat: He spends minutes whining about a trivial issue (no straps found in the package), but not about what seems much more important to me, especially for an inflatable (e.g. stiffness) of both of the board and foil connection. I have received boards missing straps or fins (or other goods missing things), I just grabbed some and went on the water, and just asking for a refund if I had to buy missing parts. But that's just me I guess, I see no point in making a fuss about every small things in my life.

This said, I found that this video was interesting as the most points covered were relevant for a lot of buyers, be them good (stiffness, safety, ...) or not (lack of hull handle, weight, ...). And that he discloses his affiliation with a competitor, and includes (a bit) the feedback from others. As always with reviews, try to look at what is important for you.

colas said..

Alysum said..

Yeah, nah. Let's see what the other brands do, hoping someone will design a board with bevels & recess to solve the touch down crash issue.

Or just have better technique, as it seems his pal with a better (wider) stance didn't have the issue :-)

Seriously, this video is a bit strange in the way it allocate time to some points. And here I am speaking from a really personal point of view, not with my Gong ambassador hat: He spends minutes whining about a trivial issue (no straps found in the package), but not about what seems much more important to me, especially for an inflatable (e.g. stiffness) of both of the board and foil connection. I have received boards missing straps or fins (or other goods missing things), I just grabbed some and went on the water, and just asking for a refund if I had to buy missing parts. But that's just me I guess, I see no point in making a fuss about every small things in my life.

This said, I found that this video was interesting as the most points covered were relevant for a lot of buyers, be them good (stiffness, safety, ...) or not (lack of hull handle, weight, ...). And that he discloses his affiliation with a competitor, and includes (a bit) the feedback from others. As always with reviews, try to look at what is important for you.

colas you have a habit on this forum to always call any Gong review video as "strange". I think it's great seeing people giving in-depth reviews rather than those boring "unboxing" videos.

If a package is missing something that was fully paid for with a high shipping fee, I expect the missing parts to follow through. Seriously how much does it cost to send a small envelope with some screws?

Customer experience is super important when dealing with a direct-manufacturer sale when there's no retailer in between. Personally I've been well looked after by Switch kites in the past, whenever there was a faulty or missing part, they just ship the items for free, no questions asked. Perhaps Gong could learn from this.

Grantmac said..
I just received the 5'3" as a newbie winger with windsurfing and windfoiling experience.

Initial thoughts are I bought a board too small. I wish the 5'5" was available in a 5" thickness because the 6" thickness adds a whole lot more volume and weight. I would have liked the extra width of the bigger board.
Because of the high volume to surface area ratio this board is extremely "corky" and quite a struggle in chop. I spent my second session on complerely flat water trying to get my starts better figured out with lots of success.
I'm unsure why they didn't include a rear footstrap mount. I'm currently strapless but I'll want it eventually (windsurfing background).
They could have easily made a small ledge on each side of the foil plate to use as a handle but honestly coming from windfoiling this thing seems very easy to carry around.
Also they could have made a cleaner release/rail on the back using the plate. I think this would have fixed a lot of the stickiness he reported (and I also noticed as a not very good pumper).

All that said it IS very rigid, it does pack down fairly small and the bag is big enough to also carry two wings with a squeeze.

I'd keep an open mind about the rear strap. I switch feet with my front foot in the straps, and my rear foot moves around a lot more than it would ever do windsurfing. It's not the same sport and the dynamics are different... If you don't switch feet then you can put the straps offset to keep balance, but if you do swap feet you can only put the rear strap in the middle, which means you tend to have too much weight on the heel side rail.

Alysum said..
colas you have a habit on this forum to always call any Gong review video as "strange". I think it's great seeing people giving in-depth reviews rather than those boring "unboxing" videos.

This is just a personal issue for me. Again, on this specific topic, it has nothing to do with Gong. I buy a lot on the internet and spend a lot of time reading/watching reviews. And I am becoming more and more irritated when reviews spend time dealing with issues that pertain to only the first minutes, such as the packaging, quality of the box, ... basically all what you do not like in unboxing videos.

Plus, some people can be real whiners, I do not count the times have have seen people complaining about companies (not only Gong) not answering their support call, only to have the company produce proofs that the customer was offered immediately good solutions but was pretending not to have received them, because they went full Karen and locked in some mindstate demanding some kind of royal deferential treatment. I have seen people whining that they were not receiving answers for weeks... being forced to admit they only contacted the support minutes ago. And I am not speaking of all the cases where people went crazy just because they did not check their spam folder. Or this guy "blackmailing" the company telling them "give me a 50% rebate or I tell my youtuber influencer friend to badmouth you" and then posting everywhere "this company is crap" and inventing stories because they refused the blackmail. And of course, the more you are acting like a jerk, the less the support grunts will want to actively help you, that's human.

Well, I could go on and on...

So, in a nutshell, the way this guy spoke of his issues rang a whole set of alarms bells in me :-)

Grantmac said..
My interest in this case is for eventually jumping.

You should forget it and enjoy your progression. Most probably when you will have the level to jump without too much risks (without the mast, the control is not the same), you will want to transition to a hard board anyways for extra performance. Inflatable are nice, but you cannot have sophisticated rail and hull shapes with them anyways.

When you start surfing, you do not need to worry if your beginner board is the best one to tackle Pipeline...

from where I sit, 5lbs for the bottom plate sounds crazy. If it is solid carbon as they say, I'm not surprised - but that's not only foolish, but also super expensive. I wonder why they aren't using a sandwich construction with core? It should be in the range of 1-2lbs.

I got my Gong 5'3" last week as well, and I'm starting the Franken-mod's for it. Too cold to sail , so I am embarking on a father-son project. The goal is the dual purpose wing/wind board for easy travel. Got the calipers out, fresh roll of filament for the 3D printer, some HH-66 PVC Adhesive and my son's mad Fusion 360 CAD skills and 3D printer. Currently, measuring up a 12" non-vented mast box that will attach to the board via 2 Scotty PVC Glue on base mounts. The 3d designed cover will integrate all the connections for clean look. The mast box placement (and eventual footstraps...front and back) will follow scaled dimension of my W105 5' 10" board. The key assumption is the mast box connection (via the Scotty Mounts + H66) can handle the loads of the sail. The mounts are wide enough to both provide contact area for the glue and can dissipate the loads. I considered a tray with the mast box on it that would bolt to the existing foot strap mounts, but I think the glue on approach should work and will be lighter and better looking. In the long run PVC gear does not last as long as hypalon gear...but cost less, it's worth the experiment and could result in a smaller, cheaper board than Manta, Indiana, F-One and Naish.

Stay tuned.

Gong gear was a bargain when you load a few wings and replacement bladders on the order, shipping becomes more reasonable.

jondrums said..
from where I sit, 5lbs for the bottom plate sounds crazy. If it is solid carbon as they say, I'm not surprised - but that's not only foolish, but also super expensive. I wonder why they aren't using a sandwich construction with core? It should be in the range of 1-2lbs.

The problem is that the forces are applied on very small surfaces (bolt nuts, edges of the foil plate), so the I-beam flex resistance of sandwich alone is not enough for the whole plate. Given that they master sandwich construction, for example in the wings where you have this transition sandwich in the core + full carbon at the insert, I guess introducing some sandwich in the plate for partial weight gains has not been found worth the increased cost, time to produce and time to market, and the reduced reliability for a product with such a demand...

imagine plates failing when some people are already throwing a tantrum for missing screws...

This is a similar issue in my opinion to with the weight of the alu fuz. Some anal people went and drilled holes in it and filled them with foam to gain weight. (sorry cant find the pics) But is it worth to do this in production with the increased cost and risk? One heavy pumper has already broken his (unmodified) fuz after a good number of sessions, so the risk is quite low, but is already there.

Hi All - I am late to this discussion but looking for input. I have read some of the reviews and opinions around but thought I would ask those with experience with the Hipe. I'm picking up winging with my family (2x13yr olds and my wife)
I have lots of experience with windsurfing. We all have a fair amount of surfing experience from a year spent in Central America. That is all. No foil experience and no wing experience yet. I want to get us one board to start playing with. The Hipe makes sense for a number of reasons.
Originally, I admit I was strictly looking at volume and thinking the 5'3" should be adequate - after all, most suggest weight (in Kg) + 30-40L for beginners. Aside from me, the 5'3" at 110L would fit the bill (I don't mind struggling a bit but I'd rather not set up my family that way for starters - I want them to enjoy it as soon as possible). Or, I guess if we want to be super generous, we could grab the 5'5" (I'll make it sound like its easy to get ;) In peoples opinions who have used the Hipe as a first wing board and foil board, what size do you think would serve us best? 5'3", 5'5" or even the 6'5"? We'll be starting on flat water and small chop at worst.
Opinions from those who have used them would be appreciated! Cheers!