Carbon masts are the same in this respect. Personally I always wondered why carbon mast builders don't use plain glass cloth to beaf up their mast in (wall) buckling resistance without affecting the stiffness of the mast much at all. Also glass cloth is CHEAP ! And if they do (I know some do) then why not use a little more plain glass cloth to get up to the tipweight of 6 kg without affecting the stiffness much at all while making the walls alot more buckling resistant (=dependability).
I would really like to hear a carbon mast builder tell us why this can't be done.
Wouter
But Wouter, you are asking the mast makers to add weigh to their mast because the rules say so.
The figures I have are that they can make masts lighter if they were allowed to. The rule we have in place are forcing the makers to make their masts over they weight than can make them to (or in fact add lead to the top to make them measure to the current rules). The figures I also have suggest that they could make masts about 1-2 kg lighter (all up weight) and remain more than strong enough to cope with the loads applied.
