Starboard 2018: New freewave board "A.I.R."

Tiesda, the new A.I.R. is positioned by Starboard as a "FreeWave board" - just like the popular Kode. What exactly are the differences between the two concepts? The main difference is the shorter length of the A.I.R., it is much shorter behind the footstraps and the bow area has also been made more compact. At just 2.20 metres, the board is almost ten centimetres shorter than the Kode Freewave. It is also important to note that we have moved the mast track back significantly to make the board more manoeuvrable.

What does this mean for the target group? Short boards sometimes cause problems for surfers with little riding ability when planing. Yes, that's right. The A.I.R. requires a slightly higher level of wave riding ability than the Kode Freewave, is a little more technical to ride and lies somewhere between the worlds of "Wave" and "Bump & Jump". For some of our team riders, such as Dieter Van der Eyken and Taty Frans, it is the all-round wave board for conditions with small and unpressurised waves.

What is the thinking behind the somewhat crazy-looking rear end? The design came about during the development process. Svein Rasmussen (Starboard boss, the ed.) developed it and it not only looks cool, but also proved to be ideal in our tests. We first shaped our prototypes with a swallow tail - it was great when turning, but it didn't have enough grip on the straights. When we changed the tail to an angular square tail, the grip was better, but the turning characteristics were lost. The current concept combines both aspects and we have named it "Bat Tail" because it looks like a bat.

In addition to the very light and expensive Reflex carbon construction, you also offer a second construction called "LCF". What is behind this? LCF stands for "low carbon footprint", in other words, a low CO2 footprint. It is the construction with the lowest emissions that we can currently achieve. It is laminated with bio-resin and the sandwich material consists of balsa wood, a new material that we are currently establishing in board construction. This replaces the classic PVC sandwich material, which is responsible for the majority of emissions. But there is still a long way to go, this is just the first step! The "Carbon Reflex" construction method is a different story: our aim here is to show what is technically possible in order to achieve the lightest possible weight - at a correspondingly higher price.

Starboard A.I.R. FreeWave

Volume83/93/103 litresLengths: 220/222/222 cmWidths59.3/61.3/65.0 cmFinns: 19/20/21 cm + 2 x 10 cm eachPrice2849 Euro (Carbon Reflex, all sizes); Carbon LCF construction for 2299 EuroInfo: www.star-board.com