I got my Takuma e-foil last Friday, and I was really looking forward to test it on the water near Berlin where we have our motorboat located.
Due to the engine power of 3kW, the board is subject to labelling when operating in Germany as a small vehicle, and a CE certificate of conformity is required for approval by the Water and Shipping Authority.
Unfortunately, this was not enclosed with the board, and had to be requested by me directly from the French manufacturer due to a lack of 3x requested recall at Decathlon.
The waterproof remote control is charged by induction by means of a charging cradle. Unfortunately, the remote control only charges if you press it into the shell with force and somehow hold it in it, probably the charging coil is not quite optimally placed.
The board is extremely heavy and in the assembled state alone hard to handle, but the driving performance is surprisingly good, and thanks to the large volume I was able to start without getting wet from our inflatable bathing platform on the boat in the harbor.
Thanks to the large foil you can also get out of the water very quickly, which makes the beginnings in the air easier, when displaced it is totally stable and thus allows an extremely fast learning effect.
The two foils are made of carbon, but the fuselage and the mast are made of aluminum, and here comes the totally annoying part:
When I put the board back on the bathing platform after the 1st battery charge with a wide grin on my face about the first flight jumps and obligatory departures, I had to realize that the mast at the connection to the board has bent, the board is now about 3-4 degrees crooked.
I weight 87kg, started from the harbor, and was only in deep water, a ground contact definitely did not take place.
Unfortunately, you will not find any permissible weight information on the Decathlon homepage,
apparently, the Chinese producer has slipped with the material, the mast has of course to carry a decent load at this point.
All the more annoying me that in addition the 4 supplied M6 screws, which connect the mast to the board, and thus have to carry the entire load, were much too short: these had fully tightened just 2mm in the threaded nut from the double US-Box, although this has 8mm thread. The screws were therefore replaced by me before the first start of the journey against longer stainless steel screws.
I then drove a total of 3 battery charges, this morning the flight worked perfectly on the 3rd charge.
The board has unfortunately gone back to Decathlon, I would have liked to keep it, but 5900, - € are definitely much too expensive for me in view of the lousy quality…