Well indeed, that will add weight.

My own diamonds are 3 mm 1x19 and seem to work well. Phill useds the old imperial 1/8 inch 1x19 wires (3.18 mm). I know that AHPC themselves use 3 mm dyform on their Taipans (and most likely on their Viper) and I seem to remember that Falcon/VWM does so too but I have to check that. Matt, can you confirm ? Hans, didn't you use 2.5 mm dyform on your own F16 mast ?

4 mm 1x19 is used on F18's and seems a bit like overkill for an F16 in my opinion.

12 mtr of 4 mm 1x19 will weight in at 178% of 12 mtr of 3 mm 1x19; thus translating into a difference of 0.400 kg. (a 0.150 kg contribution to the tipweight)





Lets have this confession become part of the public record.

I'm sure that you now store this non-superwing section well apart from the superwings.





Well, I didn't think so when I learned my tipweight. For it is heavier then both Frank's and Phill's masts. My tipweight of 8.3 kg is in fact above the (theoretical) average, so I have one of the heavier masts as well.

However, I do blame myself for that partly. I used the heavy proctor spreader arms where I should have used a much lighter fixed length laminated set like Stealth Marine uses. Just have three knotches in the wing tips to allow for some rake adjustment and forget about being able to adjust the spreader length (I never used that feature anyway). I also have a heavy closed cell foam seal that is 8 cm tall in the top of my mast and use both a 4 mm spi halyard as a 4 mm mainsail halyard. AHPC uses push up mainsail that require no halyard or top pully fitting at all. I may switch over to that system next time.

Interestingly enough I do have the lightest spinnaker bail setup possible. My uphaul line simply has a loop at its top end and that is thrown over the top of the mast and rests on the mainsailhook fitting. I have never replaced that line and it doesn't seem to wear down under use. The line used is 3 mm dyneema (1 mtr in total incl. the bail itself) and supports a Ronstan RF20100 microblock. These are respectively 7 grams and 20 grams; making my spi bail setup (ex halyard) only 27 grams ! But the best part is that no holes are made in the top of my mast ! The mainsail hook has rivets in the sail track and one that goes directly into the foam block that seals the top. My hound fitting (2.5 mtr down) is the first element that may compromise the seal of my mast. I used this setup as I was lazy and hadn't found a better alternative at the time. Now after several years of use I feel pretty happy with this solution.

But anyway that is beside the topic of tipweights at this time.


More importantly are the following three (possible) conclusions and solutions :


- A - If the die has been consistantly producing heavier masts over the time then making a new die is an inexpensive solution. (Start all over with light masts that increasingly growing heavier with more masts produced). The cost of such a new die will be spread out over what; 100 masts ? Or 50 bucks or less per mast in additional cost ?

- B - If the extrusion process has a very large (random) variation in produced mast weights then selectively picking the best masts is a viable option for what can be considered a reasonable increase in costs (a few hundred bucks at most). Putting the choice to the customer can then still allow for the medium weight masts to be sold and thus reduce the number of masts that are disguarded. It will also prevent any bitching afterwards by disgruntled customers as they know what they will get when they sign the contract.

- C - It is smart to precheck any mast before shipping them out to any far off place. Recognize and correct any 10+kg tipweight issue before the situation becomes irreversible. Best is to precheck each mast blank before fitting it out. But this is of course common sense.


With kind regards,

Wouter