WavePoolMag put out the idea to Blair Conklin and crew for a Euro wave tour. Why not? There were at least four pools launching and we had the keys to the kindgom. After visiting AllWaves in Belgium we flew to Munich, landing in the thick of the construction of Germany’s first wave pool at o2 SURFTOWN MUC and Endless Surf’s much-anticipated technology.

“Could I try a right dude?” Blair is working with Endless Surf wave designers Axel Terradillos and Ander Wynne-Edwards to create the perfect tube/ramp combo. Axel’s surfing background and engineering chops boil down petabytes of data into the universal surf language of hand gestures. It works. Sometimes it works too well.

“The first wave I worked on with Axel with ended up being a little more dangerous than I hoped for,” said Blair. “I had the bright idea of trying to send a pulse that moved water away from the wall and made it shallower, while also making the air section come at you more. As we were going down the line, there would be a wave coming the other way. I thought that would really give us a good ramp to launch off of, which it definitely did. However, the unanticipated result was that we were landing in probably less than a foot of water and going at very high speeds.”

It was a very user-friendly air section and probably one of the best air sections, if not the best air section I’ve been able to hit in a wave pool.

– Blair Conklin

After learning that one the hard way, Blair, Leon Glatzer and Axel talked about how they could bring the air section out into deeper water. They started making a wave that foamed from the wall.

“The caissons were making a foam ball, and that foam ball turned into a peeling air section,” said Blair. “It was really close to the wall, which was nice, as it allowed for landing in deep water and a better transition. The air section they developed provided a really nice lip to launch off of, like a perfect ramp to set your rail and punt one to the moon, along with a very pillowy landing in much deeper water.”

After our visit to o2SURFTOWN MUC, WavePoolMag came away with a notepad full of scribbles, some share-able Insta fodder and thoughts. But this culture-shifting moment as told through Blair’s Skid Kids YouTube channel as captured by filmer Skylar and comedic foil Gary, hits the nail right on the head.

Endless Surf is a pneumatic wave system that generates surf by sequentially pushing air through caissons (chambers). The number of caissons at the deep end of its heart-shaped pool determines the wave system’s size. For example, the Endless Surf 18 features 18 caissons. An Endless Surf 48 measures 282m (925.2ft) x 84.5m (277.2ft). The system can produce 32-second rides on a single peak setting that spans the pool’s length, with average wave heights of 2-3 ft, reaching up to 7 ft for both lefts and rights. Rides in the smaller Endless Surf pool typically range from 30-60 yards/meters, while the largest pool can accommodate rides up to 200 meters. o2 SURFTOWN MUC is an ES34 facility. The system can generate 400-700 waves per hour.