2012 Donek plate review

[Ernie00]

Here is my review of the new version of the plate from Donek. I have the long plate version.

clocked 2 days on the plate in very different conditions.. perfect grooming to pretty icy in the afternoon

First of all, the quality of the plate and hardware is amazing. The plate looks very good.

I have ridden a few plate, the Apex sports plate that I have tried a for a few weeks before it was recalled by the company and I have tried the Lowrider plate last season.

Now the weight, the Apex weight with hardware at 5 pounds and your plate a lot less, I think it was 3.9 pounds, only 1.1 pound but you can really feel it. No pain in the leg after 3 runs from sitting in the chair without a foot rest.

Setup is a little more complex, the Apex didn't have any stance options to move the axles where you wanted so it was very fast to setup. The Donek wasn't complicated but it took some thinking and measuring to get the axles where I wanted them to be. Which is a good thing I was able to put the axles exactly where I wanted them to be. Didn't take very long. After 2 days of riding nothing is coming apart (which is good) the apex I had the check the screws every few hours.

Now the riding. Low speed and moving around people, the plate is very easy to control, very close to not having a plate I find. At riding speed the Donek feels a lot mellower, the Apex had the feeling that it always wanted to throw you off board but the donek doesn't have that. I find it works very well with my style. It has very nice edge hold on the east coast ice. You can work the plate and pedal it to some extend, it's not crazy stiff.

So so far so good, It made my Coiler 180 VSR do what I wanted to do. I liked the board but it didn`t carry very well it`s speed from turn to turn on flatter spots in the mountain. Since the plate really pushes you out of every turn it helped to make that board ride the way I wanted it to ride.

I also find the plate almost completely eliminate shattering.

Height of the plate is not a real problem. It's odd at first to kick in the lift line but you forget it. Being higher on the board gives you the advantage of lowering a little the angles if you need without worrying about booting out.

I'm very happy with the plate, Sean has taken the time to talk to me and explain me things he did to the plate. Fun plate to ride for people like me who doesn't race and just like to carve it up !