FAQ

Q: What is FoilFinder?
A: FoilFinder is an expert parawing gear advisor that does something no single person can quite do–hold all of the relevant information about parawings in mind at once, and come up with coherent, comprehensive, specific, up-to-date answers.

Q: Where does all this expert data come from?
A: FoilFinder combines first-hand reviews with the latest public info, reviews, and rundowns–and incorporates relevant details into a detailed knowledge base with full attribution.

Q: How is FoilFinder built?
A: It’s an expert knowledge system that I built with the help of Claude.

Q: What does “Tested by FoilFinder” mean?
A: We take every opportunity to test equipment first-hand, which allows us to correlate our own direct experience with reviews and other information, to assess wings on our own multi-point rating system, and to provide detailed head-to-head comparisions. We consolidate our detailed ratings into a 1-5 scale, with 6 reserved for exceptional, A+, category-winning performance. Note that these tests and ratings reflect my personal experience and opinions; your mileage may vary.

Q: Which parawings does FoilFinder know about?
A: As many as we have good data and reviews for! We’re constantly adding new products as they come out and as expert reviews become available. You can browse the full list of parawings in our product catalog. Please let us know if you notice something missing or that needs an update.

Q: Why not just use ChatGPT?
A: You know, just like Kleenex isn’t all facial tissues, “Chat” isn’t all AI–right? There are ton of AI models, but that hasn’t stopped ‘Chat’ from becoming shorthand for AI in general. So why not use ChatGPT? First of all, general AI models like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini don’t have the deep knowledge about our sports, the products, assessments–or the expertise to put all of that together into a meaningful, realistic, up-to-date recommendation–so you can’t get the kind of answer that you’d get from FoilFinder from a general AI. Secondly, ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, and they have been very clear about their intentions to insert ads into results–in fact they are already doing so. Seriously, fuck that! As I wrote years ago, advertising is obsolete–and others agree.

Q: Why just parawings?
A: While everyone needs expert gear advice, I had to start somewhere, and parawinging is the latest form of sail-, wind-, board- and foil-sports that gets me fired up. Once we get parawings and related gear right, we’ll consider expanding beyond that.

Q: “Wang?” Eh?
A: How many times have you said “parawing”–and perhaps been mis-heard as having said “power wing” or “pawrah wing” or what-farking-kind-of-wing-are-you-talking-about mate? Or found that now you have to say “inflatable wing” or something even more ridiculous like “hand wing” to mean, you know, those older sort of wings, which we used to just call wings…even though of course that’s super-confusing too, because of all “wings” that are part of foiling. Hey, just me, but I got tired of saying “parawing” “parawing” “parawing” all the time and so I just started calling them wangs. Wing vs wang, it’s easy.

Q: Is AI taking over? Is FoilFinder designed to replace people?
A: No. FoilFinder is designed to help people by doing something new, to highlight all of the great work–I mean fun–that riders, writers, testers, Youtubers, brands, and dealers are doing every day all around the world–and to help bring us all together.

Q: How do you calculate those nifty wind range charts with lightly-, ideally-, and heavily-powered bands?
A: Our wind range data starts with ranges declared by the manufacturers. Of course, each brand does this differently–and, to be honest, some claimed wind ranges are pretty unrealistic–but we have to start somewhere. First we make sure they’re all normalized for an 80kg rider, then we apply some basic rules based on our riding expertise to break out the power bands, which are slightly different for single-skin, double-skin, and hybrid parawings. You can use the product catalog to select wings you’re interested in, and then narrow it down by size or target wind speed–pretty cool!

Q: What’s the FoilFinder value index? A: Overall Tested by FoilFinder rating / (MSRP / 1000) -> rating points per $1,000 spent. Higher is better.

Q: Does FoilFinder serve ads?
A: No—and we never will. We are committed to staying completely outside the advertising industrial complex. FoilFinder will never sell your data, or let anyone pay to influence recommendations. We might charge a fee or subscription to use FF at some point, and/or license to dealers and brands, and use affiliate links–but never ads.

Q: How does FoilFinder work with content creators and publishers?
A: FoilFinder’s knowledge base is built on firsthand riding experience and publicly available web content—YouTube reviews, published articles, manufacturer specs—the same information that search engines and large AI models are already ingesting, often without any credit at all. The difference is that FoilFinder is built by an industry expert who cares about getting this right. No one reviewer, creator, expert, or publisher has all this information in one place—FoilFinder exists to synthesize it into personalized advice that simply isn’t possible for any one person to give all the time, no matter how expert they are. If you’re a content creator or reviewer, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking for ways to collaborate, improve our attribution, and make sure your expertise is represented accurately.

Q: How does FoilFinder work with dealers and retailers?
A: Our knowledge base is dealer-aware from the bottom up, so we can easily offer a dealer- or retailer-specific version of FoilFinder filtered on your inventory and tailored to your needs. We also have a partner-specific private data layer that allows you to add proprietary data to the FF knowledge base for internal use–and have it stay private. If you’d like to chat about a version for your shop, for sure, let’s talk!

Q: How does FoilFinder work with brands?
A: Our knowledge base is brand-aware, so we can easily offer a brand-specific version of FoilFinder that provides focused expertise on just your products. Our partner-specific private data layer allows us to incorporate your proprietary product data into your co-branded FoilFinder as you wish, without sharing that with the public. If you’d like to talk to us about a version specific to your brand, let’s talk.

Q: Who built FoilFinder?
A: Bowen Dwelle, life-long outdoor adventure sports enthusiast, sailor, kiter, foiler, winger, parawinger, writer, developer, and entrepreneur who lives and rides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Q. How can I support FoilFinder?
A. Consider buying us a coffee — it helps keep the lights on and the knowledge base growing.

Q: How can I contact FoilFinder?
A: Drop us a line any time.