JTX Freedom Air Rower

“Long story. As boat manufacturers adopted materials science from other industries they began to use techniques to replace age old wooden boat and blade making techniques. https://oarsport.co.uk/shop/aluminium-out-rigger-scull-pair Wing riggers are not that new and were seen in the 70s and 80s particularly on the sliding rigger concept. Developing from ALU side mounts was a carbon 2 stay rigger mounted on the side of the boat. This introduced the C cup pin mount (which itself was not really new) Instead of having a pin mounted at the bottom with a backstays to support it at the top the C cup supported the pin equally top and bottom, eliminating torsion on the rigger. So force was transferred evenly through the pin into large carbon backstay into the shoulder/hull of the boat. https://www.durhamboat.com/product/carbon-side-mounted-sculling-riggers/ But that meant the the stiffness of the rigger was only as good as the stiffness of your hull/shoulder. So shoulders of boats got reinforced with carbon. But were still flexing a bit, or you see the hull flex between shoulders. So there was some experimentation with putting carbon braces across the boat over the feet to stop shoulders compressing. But there was still flexing between the shoulders. Filippi did this for a while. Almost simultaneously there was the introduction of wing riggers. Initially in singles and other sculling boats with welded aluminium round tube and then followed by extruded profiles and thicker profiles which were stiffer. Also some experimentation with carbon wings but the technology was not mature enough and these were often not very stiff, resulting in riggers moving up and down a lot (flapping) Initially the original wing riggers were to make the boat stiffer. By transferring the force across the hull instead of into the side of the hull. It was common to see boats made with side mounted riggers flexing under load during the stroke. Lots of experimenting with wing rigger design initially. Crenelated gunwhales in Emp, giant S riggers from Hudson etc etc. https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/olympische-spiele-athen-2004-athen-leichtgewicht-vierer-news-photo/52570621 Wing riggers were initially stern mounted especially the original round tube welded riggers. The aluminium was not particularly stiff so a stern front stay was better as it was shorter. Extruded profiles did stiffen things up a bit. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/XENO-M%C3%BCLLER This was from about 94 to 99 ish Eventually it settled down to become what is a fairly standard stern mounted ALU rigger seen on Emps, Filippis and Hudson's etc today. https://store.filippiboats.com/shop/riggers/aluminium-wing-sweep-rigger/ https://store.filippiboats.com/shop/riggers/aluminium-wing-scull-rigger/ But the stern mounted wing rigger kept the same bottom mounted pin with backstays that original side mounted riggers had. And there was still flex on the pin due to ALU construction and torsion ”