Long Fin FF Spitfire Kelp Sporasub

The New Sporasub Spitfire Kelp fins grab one's attention with their semi-transparent solution, the hole on the blade and the excellent foot-pocket.

Aesthetic design

Certainly interesting, thanks to the green semi-transparent techno-polymer, the New Sporasub Spitfire Kelp are quite astonishing and distinguish from all the other fins with techno-polymer blades, also thanks to the drop shaped hole at the base of the blade. To these two solutions, we can add the quality of the bi-color foot-pocket, that well matches the colors of the blade and is extremely well refined.

The blade

The blades of the Spitfire Kelp are the real novelty. Made of green semi-transparent polypropylene, certainly they offer a great camouflage. Sporasub points out that the material of the blades has a very high elastic return, practically no fragility and well adapts to warm and cold water temperatures. Moreover, and very important, is the addition of a UV protecting substance that reduces deterioration of the material due to sunlight. The drop shaped hole, of dimensions 10 cm long and 3,5 cm wide (values measured by AP), is positioned at the base of the blade, in the area which does not bend much and actually does not really support thrust, but mainly moves water up and down. The hole has the function of letting the water by and so making finning less tiring, without loosing efficiency. Not only, such solution help avoiding lateral shift of the blades during finning.

With terminal profile with the shape of a dove tail, the blade is well refined with ribs that act as reinforcements that help the blade to bend in the correct way and return as much force as possible. The structure is in fact made of three upper ribs and four lower ones, with the intent also to give stability to finning directing correctly water flow along the surface of the blade. Stability of the fins is finally optimized by two small thermo-rubber water rails (reduced in dimensions thanks to the stabilizing systems seen previously). Dimensions of water rails are extremely small, with total lenght of 7 cm and total height, above and below the blade, of 2,6 cm (values measured by AP).

The foot-pocket

Made with the most advanced solutions, the foot-pocket is made of two different hardness thermo-rubbers: the green, softer (55° Shore), is utilized for the upper part of the heel, the ankle area and the toes, while the black thermo-rubber, harder (85° Shore), is utilized for the inferior part of the heel, the instep and the longerons, for best transmission of the movement from leg and foot to the blade. The green rubber is also utilized for the intelligent tessellation under the heel.

The longerons, of important dimensions, are 30 cm long and 3 cm high at the base of the foot-pocket, going down to 1 cm at the tip. The retaining clips are pretty hard and insure a good connection, but are also tough to dismount and, especially, reassemble. The lateral profile of the blade that is inserted in the longeron has the traditional differentiated height shape to help insertion.

The connection of the blade to the foot-pocket is also insured by two screws and plastic plate positioned under the blade just at the height of the tip of the foot.

Dimensions and weights

The blades are 64 cm long from the curve under the foot-pocket to the furthest point on the terminal profile of the blade, which means laterally, while the width starts from 13.2 cm (measured by AP inside the longerons) on the tip of the foot, and goes up to 21.4 cm. The weight (measured by AP) is equal to 400 grams for the blade and 600 grams for the foot-pocket. Total weight of each fins, including plastic pad, screws and clips, is equal to 1015 grams.

Flexion

The blade loaded for flexion curves in a uniform way all along, with a slight shift towards the tip. Particularly soft when bent, the blad eof the Spitfire Kelp does not offer of course the reactivity of composite material baldes (glass fiber and carbon fiber), but we will evaluate with a test in the sea the real performance and sensations given by the new Sporasub 2017 fins.

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