Has anyone made a set of wing struts/mounts out of carbon fiber or fiberglass instead of aluminum tubing. I would think that the wing frames would or could be stronger and lighter than the stock aluminum set. Anyone have a design available? What would be the risks?
I'm thinking that a set of wings for my H-18 may help me get the wife & kids sailing more.

Lets see. Hobie wings for a 18 are about 1500 bucs. Could you imagine what carbon would cost?

If I had come across a large surplus of carbon fiber cloth, I'd try it, but like said above, it'd be damn expensive.

That being said, I've come across some CF inexpensively, and I'm going to make a new bow foil out of it for my 17.

Those wings can't be aluminium as it should cost:-

Aluminium Tube is about $5/kg x 10kg = $50
Carbon fibre tube is about $50/kg x 10kg = $500

Perhaps they are made from silver
$150/kg x 10kg = $1500

Yep thats it, Cunning devils those guys at Hobie!

At Texel a few years back there were several boats that used a broken carbon mast section to make wings. They would drill and insert a tube from from the beam end through the mast groove. Glass it all together and sand. May one of the the folks from the Netherlands have some pictures?

In my own personal experiance with carbon fiber vs. aluminum, you are not going to lose a bunch of weight. Aluminum alloys we use are very close to the weight of carbon fiber and are much cheaper, easier to work with and easier to fix. We can match the weight of carbon fiber on some applications by drilling out non-load bearing sections and butting others.

H-18 wings are pretty light to begin with. I don't see the performance advantage in using carbon fiber in this application.

did you know that CF conducts electicity?

If Hobie made it, they'd just add a 'comp-tip' to it!

I just want to add, you will enjoy having wings.They make the boat larger,give you drier place to sit and add extra righting moment adding safety when the the breeze picks up. I had the old style wings. With the solid covers they weighed in at 36lbs.

Have Fun
Mike