NateW

(just kidding...)

traitor!

My first board was a Gyrator. Foam cores seemed like a great idea, until the idea had been around long enough for the early cores to break down... Like, two seasons, was it? My guess is the ski companies are looking at Lib's "Narrow Ass Snowboards with Magne-Traction" and pissing themselves. With laughter, I mean. :rolleyes: The Donek skis, on the other hand...

It's my understanding that the main advantage of low profile tires is reduced deformation, especially when cornering. These look like they could be made relatively stiff even with a tall profile. That's interesting. With bigger wheels you not only add weight, you add weight to the outer portion of something that needs to be spun up / spun down when accelerating and braking... adding 2 pounds to the outside of all 4 rims is worse than just adding 8 pounds of lead in your trunk. So running lighter wheels with higher profile "tires" might be a pretty good thing. Well, maybe. If I remember right, these same photos made the news about a year ago (maybe it was early '05) but I don't recall reading that they were destined for production. It'll be interesting to see how the pros and cons add up in reality. Oh, and you can adjust these too - the same way you adjust the damping on a TD2s or the cant on TD1s. Just swap out a harder set for a softer set. :)

If you want to see the math that makes my page work: http://www.natew.com/pages/software/snow/SnowboardCalculator.txt Measure the sidecut depth on one side only (3 not 6 in your example). For a tapered board, I just average the tip and tail widths. I'm actually not 100% sure that's correct, but even if it's wrong, I bet it's off by a negligible amount.

Sounds to me like it would help to move the bindings closer together and/or tilt the back binding inward, toward the nose of the board. Probably the latter, but try both.

If you have more than one board, get a set of each. If you have to choose, toss a coin. :) Cateks are slightly easier to adjust in the field (no extra parts, just turn screws). With Bombers there's the 0/3/6-degree bases to choose from... but also the different elastomers to choose from.

He isn't selling the board, he's selling the patent. (Not that I think the patent is worth any more.)

If the hard boot thing is appealing, then go for it. Which F2 did you get? The Silberpfeil seem like reasonable boards for starting out, especially the 162. If your F2 doesn't want to turn (did you get an RS?), I don't suggest selling it right away. You may grow into it soon enough to regret selling it. I think it will be easier to learn on something with a shorter sidecut radius though, as Jack said. Like 9-10m or so. It will turn tighter at lower speeds, so it will be easier to learn the technique. Get comfortable on it, and if you feel like the handling sucks at higher speeds, go back to the F2. If you like the other board and are happy with the way it drives, then sell the F2. I wouldn't say that a stiffer setup forces better technique, but I would say that a larger sidecut strongly encourages higher speeds. I got comfortable carving hard on boards with a 10m radius, then got one with a 13m radius, and felt like when I leaned into the turns it just wanted to go straight. It took me a couple days to get used to the idea that I had to either make big gradual carves or just go faster (30% faster I suppose, given the difference in radii). Going faster makes crowds seem denser and runs seem narrower, but if you have space, it's sweet. (It took me a lot longer to get used to the space requirements than to get used to the way the board rides.) Anyway, my advice is definitely go for hard boots if that's the style that looks fun. A more maneuverable board might make the learning curve easier though.

I turn by unweighting the tail and pivoting around my front foot. If I lose my balance it's usually to the rear, and with a stiff board I can push my weight forward more easily. Ever sit on a well-worn old couch that sucks you down and and you can't get up? That's how I feel riding moguls on a soft board. :)

How tall is the cuff on the Head boots, compared to Raichle and UPZ?

As someone who only plans to be around for another 10 decades*, I'm quite interested in what happens when you extrapolate from the last 10 centuries. *I'm an optimist.

Full face, Giro. I figure if I'm going to wear a helmet, I'm going to wear the most helmet I can find.

I'd wait for the long plates, simply because of the weight thing. Equipment failures can ruin your day, or worse.

That carver is pretty cool. Nice work!

Sounds like a skull-cracking good time!

what last attempt?

When I Intec-ed my UPZ, I put T-nuts into the boot and used machine screws to hold the heels on. With bail bindings, the heels are is always being squeezed onto the boot, and those self-tappings screws probably work just fine But with Intecs, the heel is frequently being pulled away from the boot. It seems to me that self-tapping screws will probably strip out with much less force than it takes to pull the T-nuts through the sole of the boot.

Lets gets some basics nailed down... What kind of site? personal blog? family? motorcycle gang? church? crips? IBM? How many uses will be posting to it? just you? you and gang? the whole comany? What are going to be posting? Daily diary? Photos? Movies? Lists of stuff? Do you like to write? Do you like to do graphic design? What movitated this project?

Hey, Derf! I just started messing with Mambo/Joomla. Which picture gallery did you use? My personal web site (http://www.natew.com/) is handwritten HTML and a homebrew perl quasi-CMS on a 90mhz Pentium in a back room at home. My parrot site (link in signature) is built on a CMS called Drupal and hosted. I've been wanting to convert my personal site to a "real" CMS for quite a while but haven't decided which one yet.

About 180 pounds (177 last time I checked, been as high as 190). I'm more careful with cars... I'm still driving a 1991 BMW 325iX that I bought in 1996. It's got a couple of scars but I try very hard to keep it on the groomed stuff.

When I was riding a freeride board with 45/30 angles I found the "face forward" approach improved my heelsides a lot. It also hurt my rear knee after a while - not seriously, just some pain that went away after I increased my rear foot to 40 degrees. So if you're like me, I'm guessing your turns will improve, but it will be uncomfortable. Try it and see if it works for you. (A good policy for any change that can be undone quickly. :))

Being a nerd, I always wonder how many people [get someone to] do the math before they attempt stuff like this. It would probably take some experimenting to figure out some of the parameters (like, how much friction on the way down the ramp, what's the difference between the ramp's takeoff angle and the effective angle due to rider input, etc) but to it shouldn't be too hard to calculate one's probability of success. Danny Way said he basically just eyeballed the Great Wall jump, which just blows my mind. I can see how one's judgement would get pretty good at that sort of thing with practice, but still... if it was my life on the line, I'd want someone running the numbers beforehand.

I'd bee skiing since 82 (4th grade) and skateboarding even longer, so when I saw snowboarding in 88 or so, I had to try it. I absolutely hated soft snowboard boots... They gave me a choice between too much slop or too much pain. I knew I should have less pain and more support, but was suspicious of hard boots because nobody else around me was doing it, and I couldn't afford to spend that much on something that might not work out (still in school, not much budget). I didn't want to give up twin-tips and bumps and jumps and freestyle, so I didn't have much confidence that it would work out. Saw some videos of Damian Sanders, was inspired, but the guys at Snowboard Connection (supposedly good shop in Seattle) discouraged me and talked me into one last set of softboot gear. Got out of college in 94, got a decent job, forked over the cash for hard boots for the 94/95 season, and totally loved the extra support and reduced pain. They still hurt my feet actually, it took me a while to discover boot fitting, but it was such a HUGE improvement. Was still on freeride boards (45/30 angles) until around 2000 though. I wish I'd seen all-mountain boards sooner though... it look me too long to realize that "alpine" boards can be just as versatile as freeride boards.

Let's see here... 88-92K2 Gyrator, no camber after ~30 days on it (foam core) 92-94 Aggression Tarquin - cracked after ~25 days (me being stupid) 94-96 Nitro Diablo - cracked after ~25 days (me still stupid) 97-98 Three Aggressions cracked after 1-4 days each (me smart, boards suck) 98-01 Sims Search 171 - no edge left, base trashed, 50 days, still has camber (damn rocks) 01-02 CustomCraft 170, ~10 days, still in good shape, one edge ragged (damn rocks) 02-04 Coiler 174 - ~65 days, no camber (I think it's the moguls) 04-05 new Coiler 174, no snow (friggin' el nino) 05-07 will beat the crap out of my new Coiler (prolly get another, too) Dates and numbers are approximate, but not too far off. You people with 100 days/season boggle my mind. I'm lucky to get 20. (They're all 6-8 hours riding pretty much as hard as I can, though.)