RS aero

And, of course, we'd already pretty much exhausted the topic till then on this thread:

Lots of homework there for anyone joining the discussion at this point in time!

At the end of the day, the Aero looks like a big boys and girls Tera- I'm sure it will deliver good racing where there are enough of them.  

... and don't forget, they plane upwind, allegedly.  

how much of it is nonsense though?

Just to re-cap:

1) there's a question mark around the three rigs and rig switching

whilst it might be easy to manage at class events, what are the implications for local clubs and as a result of potential inaccurate reporting, the formal ENs once they are released.

2) there's a question mark over build quality

- this is driven by a fear of the unknown- light boat equals fragility right?  And fear of the known- RS's more recent form with some newer projects - e.g. Brazil, that Cat and those of us with RS100s with retrofits and corrections.  

3) It has a dacron sail

- no biggie, a clear do you want to buy a boat with a dacron sail personal opinion.  From my own POV, no not really, not on a 21st century design anyway, even if the bias is such that it matches the mast perfectly, or some such other way of saying it's built to a budget.

4) Marketing hype

- again no biggie, we're used to it almost every other aspect of our lives;  but on a consumer forum (formerly) attached to the only consumer magazine with an interest in racing dinghies, RS need to prepare for some bite-back when they do.  I'm sure most of their Facebook followers couldn't give a crap for us lot calling out the planing upwind comments and the nonsense over how special those foils are.   And certainly the buyers at Mark Warner and Sunsail won't care one jot that the Y&Y boat test was written by the soon-to-be 'Class Manager'.    

It is 3 classes and should be marketed as such (IMO).

I would also question a club that allows you to switch between all 3 rigs depending on the conditions. If all 3 sails were on the same spars then just maybe you could get away with it (when handicap racing of course).

Class racing 'run what yer brung'. This is what happens as most low level Laser events, radials and 4.7s all start at the same time although there may be a separate prize structure for them and their results get listed separately.