Tkb Review: 2021 CORE SLC 1000 Foil

Sizes Available: 1000, 1250cm
Sizes Tested: 1000cm

Core Says:

The 1000 front wing features a stress-optimized carbon layup over a PU core that minimizes bending at the wing root while allowing the tips to twist. Our wing features a seaweed shedding and self-stabilizing sweptback shape. The reduced area tips and concave trailing edge outline add a little speed. An anhedral wing root (downward curvature) improves stability. This curvature is flattened towards the tips to improve breaching performance and minimize ventilation when a tip comes out of the water. Maintaining your track is easier than ever.

The stabilizer’s dihedral curvature lets you tilt the foil into turns like a skateboard for a smoother cruising behavior. This design also makes gybes, tacks, 360s, and transitions much easier when you can feel your back wing and use it to pivot the foil.

Our extruded aluminum mast is almost as light as some carbon ones with the added durability of 6063 aircraft aluminum. And its silent trailing edge design is a welcome relief. New foilers and wave riders should consider the 71cm mast whereas the 92cm mast is our allrounder. Our extruded aluminum mast features a progressive five-stringer, thin wall design that reinforces the highest stress areas. Precise fit tolerances ensure the mast fits tightly into the fuselage.

Visit for more info: www.corekites.com/us/foil/slc

TKB Says:

Core’s new kite foil platform does not disappoint and true to its namesake, the SLC stands for the perfectly silent ride you get with the carbon/aluminum hybrid foil set.

Design and Features
The new Core foil set comes with a carbon front wing, aluminum fuselage, carbon stabilizer and extruded aluminum mast, all the whilst ringing in at a surprisingly light weight given the use of aluminum spars. The overall design of the various parts has Core’s typical focus on engineering, with each part carefully keyed together to increase strength and reduce drag. The front wing features an overall delta shape that uses a fairly thin profile that has some fascinating curves in its underside. The stabilizer also features a delta shape with both the top and bottom fairly rounded. All the bolts use the same Torx head bolts and the front wing bolts to the fuselage with bolts of all the same length so you don’t have to think too much about assembly.

Impressions
When you bolt the 1000cm2 hydrofoil to the SLC board our first impression was how Core did an excellent job of keeping the weight down for a very agile and easy-to-carry setup while maintaining notable stiffness and performance. The foil-up speed on the 1000 struck us as a little higher than we expected but the takeoff was very easy, with controlled lift and a smooth exit from the water. The speed range of the 1000 is well within the freeride kite foiling range, but a bit faster than we might choose for wave riding, where we might slow down and match the speed of waves. The 1000 likes to keep the pace humming and it shines when you’re pushing the speed envelope and attempting more complex kite foiling tricks.

In terms of control inputs, the SLC 1000 felt fairly active with the yaw and the roll balanced really well with the pitch feeling just a bit more stable. Rolling into turns and correcting with the yaw felt incredibly intuitive and reliable, which in turn encourages you to begin to push the foil harder. There’s a lot of factors that go into foil design, but it seems as if Core made dependability a key design goal, because no matter what your skill level, a balanced and intuitive foil will always meet the limits of the rider. The SLC 1000 seemed to want more front foot pressure to get into the higher speed ranges of the foil, yet the amount of lift felt static. No matter what speed you were going, the SLC 1000 was perfectly silent, with no hums, slight vibrations or whistles””this is something that was quite notable. Feeling super smooth and more stable the faster you went, we were impressed with how the 1000 floated through tacks, carrying speed through the turns and responding to inputs. It usually takes a couple of tacks to adjust to a foil’s inputs, but the SLC made us feel quite at home right away. We never really pushed the wing as hard or as fast as it could go, leaving a lot of potential for highly skilled kite foilers to push the design’s limits.

On a couple of hard carves, we did breach the wingtip and the wing continued creating lift through the turn which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. This made carving mistakes a little easier to recover from and much like all the little design details of the SLC 1000, the end result is a dependable and forgiving platform that allows you to go for a Sunday cruise or push the limits of speed, powerful carving and technical maneuvers.