SunSurfer

That's them. Buckles grip well, and they don't loosen over the day. I pop riveted mine to the back of my boot cuffs once I'd worked out the "ideal" position for me. https://imgur.com/a/wJC0YBo The boots have a number of modifications, more on the rear.

Changed mine for Booster straps when I bought them. Never used the UPZ straps, at least not on the boots.

@daveoT I happily wear my VPD knee pads uphill and downhill when riding my bike. Restriction of movement is minimal. The knee pads stay in place without needing any adjustment over 2+hr rides. My Air VPD elbow pads are a different story altogether and need some trickery with Lycra arm warmers to stay in place. There is a small gap between my UPZ boot tops and the VPD pads so I wouldn't use them for gate racing protection on the snowboard, proper shin guards would be a better option.

@Jcara Have you ridden your Nirvana or Superconductor since the MCC trip? Has your Contra experience improved your ability to extract performance from other boards? A new board teaching an old dog new tricks?

I have my MTB knee pads, POC Air VPD. Warm and flexible, but don't have the wrap around 7mm neoprene the Rehbands have. Superb impact protection instead.

Brings back such sweet memories of my times in Aspen. Thankyou!

@AracanUPZ buckle layout becomes an issue when you increase rear boot ankle flex with the ankle buckle and the lower cuff buckle impinging on each other. The linked post shows the mods I made to my rear UPZ RC10 to improve heel hold down and to deal with the buckle impingement problem. If I was doing it again I would cut away slightly less cuff. 4 years on from the mod the rear boot continues to function as I intended.

Not related to the sale offer. I noticed that the torsion box construction appears to end well short of the end of the plate at one end. Which end of the plate is recommended to be at the front?

There's something about the Thirst construction that makes the boards resonate. Tap one and it's a little like tapping a crystal glass, it rings! My Superconductor roars like a 2-stroke motorbike on firm stuff.

You write you ride smaller hills with narrower trails, riding groomers. 16m SCR is almost certainly too large a radius for this type of use if carving clean turns is your goal. Don't worry too much about length, 175cm is easily handled in traffic if the SCR and flex are appropriate for you. 2nd hand Coiler Nirvana, Thirst Superconductor 12-14m SCR Kessler KST 168 has lots of fans and would probably suit your terrain Or go shorter SCR still, eg a slalom race board like a Kessler KST162 or Donek Rev Or go seriously short and turny, a Donek Madd Killer or Coiler Angry. Or get in line with Bruce Varsava at Coiler Snowboards, Mark Miller at Thirst, or Sean Martin at Donek and spend a little more to get a tool that is made just for you.

Some instructors know. Riding the chair at Cardrona in NZ with a ski instructor in his late 50's and his private student. "Nice turns! We were watching you as you came down."

A 2 plate AllFlex system only makes sense if attached to a board with the AllFlex mounting inserts. Then the result is free flex under the bindings, free torsion in the midsection, and lots of extra weight. There shouldn't be any significant constraint of the board flex, unlike the full length plates with their central connection arms. If you want that......

@barryj18cm waist means you'd probably have to run slightly higher binding angles than your normal 62/60. That means a more forward facing stance, which in turn actually makes it easier for your knees to absorb the bumps. Any board with the design parameters you're seeking is going to turn so tight you'll see your own backside ahead of you. So you'll make lots of turns, and that will make you work harder, so that the consequence of tired quads early in the day is a likely result of riding a board of the design you say you want. Sounds like you want the cake, and to eat it too! If I hadn't already had a KST 162 when I rode the MK at SES 2017 I would probably have bought one.

A thread examining the interaction between SCR, flex, board tilt angle, turn radius and edge hold. There is far more to it than just the SCR!

@noschoolriderReminder that one of the effects of using a plate design that allows the board to flex freely underneath the rider (hinge + sliding hinge designs) is that the midsection of the board behaves as if it had become stiffer. Because the rider forces the board responds to are delivered through the axles, and these are farther apart than where the rider's binding centres are, any given downforce applied by the rider produces less flex/chord depth than if the same force had been applied through bindings mounted directly to the board. Maximum flex for that downforce is produced if the rider's mass is only over the centre of the effective edge of the board, minimum flex is produced if the rider is on a plate whose axles are at either end of the effective edge. Sounds like your Kessler has been nicely optimised to be ridden with a Bomber Boiler Plate or similar design.

@1xscullero How slowly can you ride it and still carve the whole way? A game to play to practice tightening your turns on a beginner slope. Find a skier or boarder who is just tail kicking their turns and drifting down in roughly a straight line. Link beautiful carved turns but stay behind them the whole way down. Riding slowly and staying behind someone both require both turn shape control and speed control. You will need to learn real speed control on the beginner slope if you want to have speed control on steeper slopes.

@barryjYour brain got all shook up. Lots of nerve cells will have been stretched, some torn. You are probably finding that other tasks that require concentration or holding a train of thought difficult. Full recovery will not happen overnight. Patience is necessary, but just like the ice hockey player in the video I linked to you, some retraining of your brain may be needed. Like Corey wisely noted, play the long game.

Actually, there is a 3rd way. 4 M8 screws. Possible if you run lift only with no canting. I cracked a baseplate on my rear TD3 Intec binding. I had not paid heed to where I had my 3 screws placed prior to that. 2 screws to the rear on the rear binding shortens the effective lever length my rear leg can apply.

As far as I know, Head Stratos Pros are no longer made, and haven't been for many years. I rode a second hand pair for a while till the shells started to crack. Old plastics become brittle even without use. I now wear UPZs RC10s. The Heads accommodated my wide forefoot but I had issues with poor heel hold down. There are also fundamental design issues that affect the ability of the cuff to move when the boot is buckled. I modified mine to try to deal with both of those issues. My UPZs now have aftermarket mouldable liners and the shells have been stretched to make more room for my big toes on both feet. My riding techniques has also evolved/improved in a way that makes heel lift much less of an issue. Suspect using one of your new pairs and optimising with a bootfitter is your best option rather than trying to find a pair of HeadSPs.

Contact drupi, see email address 1st post in thread.

Echo Jack's comment about removing your canting, and having front foot toe lift and rear foot heel lift. Rear foot heel lift (your original problem) will happen for at least a couple of common reasons. 1/ you get unbalanced by a bump and your bodyweight gets thrown forward pulling your rear heel up. 2/ you are using an edging technique that emphasises lots of either toe pressure in your rear foot OR rear knee drive in and forwards. Those (2/) combined with the relatively wide heel shell design of the Deeluxe boots leads to rear heel lift. Appropriate binding setup makes applying good technique easier. On an alpine board your front leg and rear leg start off bent in different ways, and move through different ranges of movement as you carve turns. Therefore your binding and boot setup are different for each foot, not the same. Your front lower leg starts off much more vertical, while your rear lower leg starts off tilted forwards significantly. When you raise and lower your centre of mass to absorb bumps your rear leg moves through quite a range of movement while your front lower leg remains relatively vertical. A spring system helps your rear leg in particular to move through that range against a controlled resistance. We're, @Jack M and I, both assuming you are running binding angles in the 55-65 degree range. Unless you have some sort of severe pigeon toe problem your front foot should be the same angle as the rear or up to 5 degrees more. From here on this is my opinion. Your stance length on a modern alpine board should be in the range of your barefoot inside leg measurement divided by 1.6 to 1.8. And probably more towards the 1.6 end of that range. Finally a technique tip. A clean carve needs the edge by your front foot and your rear foot to be tilted at close the same angle. If you try to carve by strongly emphasising pressure on one foot you will tend to skid your turns. While heel side turns definitely need you to feel pressure on the lateral side of the sole and heel of your front foot, and toeside turns need you to feel pressure on lateral toes and sole of your rear foot, you also need to feel sole pressure through your other foot as well. So, heelside: pressure (and balance over) the little toe side sole and heel of your front foot, AND to a lesser degree the big toe side sole of your rear foot. Toeside: pressure (and balance over) the little toe side and sole of your rear foot, AND to a lesser degree the big toe side sole of your front foot. Feeling your edge in that way should help you maintain a consistent edge angle, stay balanced between your bindings, and reduce your tendency to lift your rear heel.

@1xscullerk Knee pain comes in lots of different locations and flavours. Where is the pain? Front leg, back leg? Inside the joint, side of the knee - inside or outside, under the kneecap? What triggers the pain? Does it persist after riding or is it only when you ride?

https://beckmannag.com/hardboot-snowboarding Erik Beckmann has created a resource for setting up gear, then self learning alpine snowboarding. Many people have found it helpful. Lots of gems tucked away in there. There are also Tech Articles here. http://alpinesnowboarder.com/tech-articles/ Then there's this playlist of tips from Sean Martin at Donek Snowboards.

Look at lots of hardboot carving snowboard videos and look at the riders stances on turns to both sides. You will see that many riders ride most of the time with the line of their shoulders more across the line of the board rather than in line with the length of the board. I've a big YouTube collection of carving video playlists you may find helpful. https://youtube.com/channel/UCbFkVPcmsd5oH-Oe0s3LEMw