Chouinard

My experience with all three sports [alpine carving, windsurfing & kiteboarding] started with buying expensive gear and learning complicated controls in a dynamic environment which eventually creates the same dilemma. The better you get the better conditions you desire which means unless you live at a location conducive to success frustration sets in because your opportunities to advance diminish as you progress. In my case I sold my windsurfing gear after more than 10 years of chasing wind and sent my kite and board out west so my son could use it. Last weekend at a local resort north of Sault Ste. Marie 50% of the soft boot boarders were carving. Of those 50% carved exclusively. If there were boards with a rigid soft boot binding matched to a board available for tryout then the boot issue goes away. If someone likes their experience they may be more likely to jump to a hard boot. There's always going to be a subset of the population who want to carve, its just a matter of availability of equipment and guidance. Your idea of a low cost forgiving board/boot setup sounds like a good entry point to make an impression on wannabes.

Easier to change edges for sure with just bindings which logically suggests it would be faster without the plates. Slow speed turn initiation on a cat track. It's always been a challenge for me since I rode a Burton Asymmetric M6 for so long and got into the bad habit of always riding an edge thru flats for fear of hooking the floppy nose.

I calling your post bs! I’ve got grey hair and a grey beard that I never had when riding my Burton M6 AND after doing laps all day long I am physically exhausted.

Thoroughly agree except the Midwest undergoes rain/thaw/freeze cycles after mid January which turns the base into ice. The Titanflex support disk is rigid under the binding center disk which directly transmits vibration whereas the Gecko plates are suspended above the board by the extension bolts and the binding center is effectively isolated from a majority of vibrations.

This thread dovetails with a equipment trial I conducted this past weekend. I recently took delivery of 10 orange Gecko Plate bumpers for a tryout. I had been using all red bumpers on a Coiler VCAM. I wanted to see how the plates affect the board in terms of stiffness and how the plates affected the feel of the board in less than ideal conditions. Surface conditions: machine groomed lake effect hard packed snow/ice tracked and chewed up for 4 hours. Board: 174 Coiler VCAM Bindings: F2 Intec Titanium Test equipment: Neither strain gauges NOR accelerometers. I completed the following trials over 6 hrs. Test sequence: 1) Symmetric Gecko plates with red bumpers 2) Symmetric plates with two orange instead of red bumpers at the outer positions on each plate 3) No plates 4) F2 Titanflex Bindings 5) Plates with two orange bumpers at the outer positions on each plate but the plates were offset tight together with minimum projection past bindings towards the nose/tail. 6) Plates with two orange bumpers at the outer positions on each plate with the plates symmetric under the bindings again. Findings: 1) Without plates the board feeds back surface chatter after the groom is destroyed. 2)The plates with any color bumpers stiffens the board. 3) With plates the ride is much smoother [ride impression]. 3) With the orange bumpers the ride is as smooth as the red but feels softer [nose/tail flex]. 4) Moving plates closer together nose-to-tail makes the the board as smooth but even softer. Bright Idea: Thought I could use my Titanflex bindings to achieve the same results and then sell the plates. Wrong. Although the Titanflex bindings softens the board like the short position plate setup, they do not smooth out the ride as much as the plates in any configuration. Conclusion: Keep the orange bumpers at the end positions with minimum projection beyond the binding for my VCAM. Future Test Variation: Remove the red bumpers from the inside four fingers of the plates and see how it affects the ride with the potential future modification of the plates by removing one finger. ============================================================================================================ Change of topic: Consider a longitudinal axle with soft bushings to allow the binding plate to rotate above the base plate and use an adjustable torsion spring [constant or progressive spring rate] to control lateral movement. Might work but it's bound to be bigger and heavier than the SW. The difference between the Bomber SW and the F2's is similar to the difference between a statically determinant and a statically indeterminate design. The Bombers have distinct components that appear to independently address the dynamic loads whereas the F2's relies on the design shape and material properties to do the same. Occam's Razor

It does thanks for the link to the previous gecko plate review. I am currently using plates on a Coiler VCAM with red bumpers. I split a set with Lurch and am going to put 2 orange bumpers at all four extreme end positions thinking it will soften up the ends and see what they do. My first impression using the plates was that I could hear the board running over/thru the crappy surface but I could not feel it. I’ll post feedback my findings after next weekend.

Good review but did you go back on same conditions with the orange bumpers again to determine if the good performance is a function of the bumpers or a day of experience on the same conditions. The reason I ask is because I’ve heard comments that there is no discernible difference between the red and orange bumpers but your comments indicate there may be.

Interesting thread. It is what’s needed to broaden the appeal which is the subject of another thread. Toss in rider characteristics like height, weight, mondo, stance width, riding angles, experience level, pitch preference, condition preference, bindings, objective ride performance characteristics and then multiregress the mess and you’ll have a pretty accurate guide for picking a board for a given rider and his/her riding expectations. This forum is loaded with data but it is closely held by the members. Collect significant leg, ankle and foot physical characteristics along with boot and liner preference and you could have a very accurate boot selector. Collect significant riding characteristics, weather tendencies, pitch preferences, preferred riding days, etc. and you could have a very informative guide of the best places, pitches and times to ride. These are the things that make it easier to access and enjoy the sport. It only works if a significant number of riders across the forum (age, experience, location, etc.) participate. The same 20-30 riders responding won’t work.

Push the two ends together. Use a paint stick to draw an arrow on each half that meet together indicating proper overlap. Drill out two holes. Take two shoulder bolts that will fit in drilled holes, cut off the threads and then cross drill a hole in each bolt to accept a TSA lock. Put the bolts thru the two holes. Use a spring clip on one bolt and a solid TSA lock on the other. Solved the issue of a TSA cable lock installed at the bitter end of the tube overlap holding back a complete dump of two boards and a set of skis.

Three boards sandwiched with one set of bindings on top board in Sportube 3. Edges wrapped with 1/2" diameter x 6' long foam pipe insulation ($1.67 each at Home Depot, etc.) held in place with packing tape.

Cut it out Corey...one book at a time. I'm still reading the Tennis book! The Tennis book was very timely. Having struggled thru the analytical stage in excess, the Tennis book taught me top stop the brain chatter which I replaced with a single mantra "Feel the edge". I just let my body do whatever it needs to do to "Feel the edge" and it is a quiet and dare I say relaxed carving experience.

Details please.

4 Seasons 15 sessions a season 4 hrs per session 12 cycles/hr 200 ft vertical per cycle 576,000 ft total vertical drop

Was digging thru the forum today for discussion on dehydration which is very near and dear to me now but the thread degenerated into a discussion on water quality so here is my public service announcement for all you carvers 39 yrs and counting. I suffered from leg cramps just about every post carving session and sometimes at night which was explained to me to be symptoms of dehydration. I drank a little more but never in massive quantities. I took possession of two new boards in November and was extremely stoked to try them out. Came home after the 4th session of the year and had a dull pain in my back which eventually lead me to the hospital for a CAT scan because I thought I broke a rib boarding or burst my appendix. It was a little fricken kidney stone slicing its way down from my kidney trying to find its way out thru my appendage. I watched a month of the season fly by with two boards by my side before the issue was resolved with laser beam surgery because the little bastard decided to stop moving. Why the long story...because I was never told of the risk of kidney stones due to dehydration. You need to consume 2 - 3 liters of water every day so you can make 2 liters of urine if you have any chance to ward off a stone. That is a lot of water that I would have gladly drunk every day instead of having a laser beam stuck up my [fill in the blank]. The broadest class of stone generation has no metabolic root cause, comes on suddenly with a vengeance, and can happen to anybody because they are a function of the food we all eat and the lack of water that you [not me now] drink.

Cannot achieve goal ...[rotate or not, bomber or not, cross over or under, push and pull, Pure Carve, Pure Board, Euro Carve, ride the edge or tench out the pitch]... unless you define it. Most likely gonna do all especially when it comes time to save your ass. Wash On, Wash Off. One change at a time. Do the old, try the new, redo the old and compare. Keep what works and discard the rest. What works for one may not work for another. No shortcuts. As speed and g-force increase, attention to detail must follow or you will pay the price. Get a good helmet. What do I know anyway...been an expert beginner for years BUT this year I finally got my boards, bindings, and boots dialed in after four years of slogging thru the details on a 200' pitch cycling thru the lift four hours at a time. A lot of good content in this forum but you got to get on a hill and put in the time. Got to go out and do it! Wash On, Wash Off. Muscle memory is a MEMORY of a previous action.

Are your referring to a “push-pull” motion?

If I can one day grab the pebble that will be good enough...but you may have to angulate your hand so I can do so!

I have been ever so slowly finding my way so I appreciate your insight. My current focus is to remain as quiet as possible, read no flailing body components, finding and getting up on edge and then maintain that feeling of the edge while progressive trying to get lower into a turn. If I understand your statements above, your saying that the initial edge engagement from the foot/ankle motion drives the reaction vector down and the rider's following center of mass, as he maintains his position in line with the falling vector, tilts the board higher on edge which then drops the vector down further on a feedback loop until you run uphill or out of bounds. It is unfortunate that I have a stubborn need to resolve everything to a physics based understanding but it's my way of sorting out the significant inputs. Surprisingly, I am starting to unweight during transitions to point where my tracks leave no witness marks at times.

If I understand your earlier statement you are using foot/ankle motion rather than knees/hips to tip the board!?

Everyone in the SES 2015 video looks worthy of emulation with a common thread of quiet relaxed motion for the most part! What I really like is the surface conditions. We have yet to have a significant snow storm in SE Michigan formerly billed as the "Winter Wonderland". Been riding on man-made all season.

Couldn’t agree more. Got their videos on an endless loop in my mind. Having ridden the past few years just about every weekend with Pat Donnelly all I can say is that the smooth relaxed carving you see is both pure in form and pure in motion. No excess wasted energy. It is deceiving because they look quiet but they are simply moving their center of mass in synch with the edge reaction vector almost effortlessly.

And the significant inputs are???

How about a thread describing how your solved specific issues you encountered when setting up your gear OR a maintenance issues that you addressed to extend the useful life of your equipment rather than simply buying a new one. Issue: Wore a hole in my Palau liner with my ankle bone. Fix: Found "Tenacious Tape" online and the patch is going strong. Designed for Fabric, Nylon, Canvas, Mesh, Rubber & Vinyl. Don't get much in a roll [3" x 20"] but surprisingly it does not peal off the inside of the liner.

Beckmann AG provided a clue to the root cause of your issue in response to your post “Boot Liner With Best Heel Lock?” when he stated: 5. Examine your preferred technique, and figure out how to get it done without using your shin as a lever, or your boot tongue as a fulcrum.  "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day: If no fulcrum, and no lever; then no heel lift." From your statements it appears that you have not adjusted your technique but instead locked your heel down. Your tendon was simply the weakest link in your leg. You may want to consider increasing your heel lift so that when you are fully extended in your technique the heel is at the position it wants to be rather than locking it down at a static position and then stretching “something” to allow you to fully extend because you do not want to provide compliance by means of heel lift. Maybe you need a spring restrained telemark binding for your rear boot that would keep your heel locked but allow you to fully extend. There’s a Pure Boarding guy who I guarantee has extreme heel lift when he lays out his carves. When I asked him about it on a lift a couple of years ago, he only responded by smiling and laughing.