Dano

Effective and low cost.  takes about 15 minutes to make, if you buy a cheap camera holder from amazon instead of homebuild I did here.  the PVC i just matched to the size of my pylon. the top cap has a bit of foam to stuffed in there to suck up some vibrations.  and I used a few pieces of Tuck tape on the inside to tighten the clearance from the PVC to the pylon. It's easy on and off the pylon, which means shortening the rope is hassle free. Don't want it on the pylon? just pull it up and toss it to the side.

A lot of skiers do not know what good is suppose to feel like.  Maybe I still don’t. But I have a boot setting that works and feels really good for me.    I tried factory, then all the way forward, then all the way back.  It was obvious the extremes were not good,  it was also obvious which direction I wanted to vary from factory.   Disclaimer here is that my binding and ski are not the same brand. 

4 hours ago, Horton said:

 

Counter-intuitively, I often find that moving bindings back increases speed / width and bindings forward decreases speed/width.  

I spent a fair bit of time trying to reach my own conclusions on binding placement.  This is exactly what I arrived at.  There a few other traits that come with it but this is the simplest way to think of it.  

I moved to the Radar HRT from double boots a few years back.  Foot feels familiar and secure.  It did take me more than a few sets to really learn to trust it.  I think it's a pretty good option.  It offers a lot more freedom of movement than a double boot and also keeps your foot feeling secure on the ski. 

@scoke I doubt it was the rope,  too much bend and pull by the skier.

Xseries from S-Lines. Best rope I’ve ever owned.  Felt awesome right out of the box. It’s not stiff like a Syndicate rope,  but it’s not stretchy either.  High quality rope,  mine is a year old and it has  honestly held up very well.  I will be buying another.  Super happy with my sline handle too.  For me the feel of the xseries is so good that I just don’t think about  it being stiff or soft. It’s just right. I can go to a tournament grab the optimized or a syndicate rope  and still ski well.  I’m not left thinking wow that was different than my xseries. 

The foam is there for more than flotation. If you look at how these old boats were made the foam is sandwiched between the hull and the floor. Essentially acting as a core material making the  relatively thin fibreglass hull stronger, more rigid,  distributing forces across greater areas,  while also providing support for the floor.  In the boats I’ve seen with the floors pulled up there is very little structure that would provide any support for the hull with the foam removed.  I would replace with new foam and enjoy your ride.  Keep a dry bilge and it will last forever. It’s also a great safety feature. 
 

not sure what rating you need but you can check with skidim.com or skiboatpartsonline.com I’m sure they will both know exactly what you are looking for. 

This one is in Canada.  https://www.facebook.com/share/D6uM4dyBpY8XWH38/?mibextid=79PoIi

So i took Horton up on his ultra cheap video coaching.  the process was super easy, just drag and drop your video file into the conversation box,  pay your 10 bucks and you're done.  He responded very quickly, and as I expected the feedback was excellent.  I came out of it knowing exactly what to work on and why.  What I liked most is that without me telling him,  he addressed an issue that i've known to be my major issue for a long time, but I've never had a fix for it or understood why I couldn't seem to eliminate it from my skiing . So it feels really good to have him shed some light on it and to have some direction in how to fix it. 

If you haven't had coaching before. Get a video, and send it in.  You won't regret it. 

This is so good.

@scoke thanks.  It’s good to have info like this as a reference.  
Our water is still in the 40’s here and it just doesn’t feel good right now. 

@scoke  Which way are are the boots going as the water warms? 

From an old BOS thread I think @santangelo may have been the developer?

This app is still workfing with no issues on my iPhone ios17.3.1. 

@Horton it’s a useful app you can save multiple skis and all your settings and settings history with notes.  It also included a fin share option that could share your settings with other users. So you can see what others are using

I messed around a fair bit with this last year to try and get a feel for binding placement, mostly for my own reference.   I summarized it by how the ski felt thru the wakes.  From what I felt, too far forward the ski felt like it was a lot of work, was harder to maintain connection, it began to feel like I was hitting cement curbs crossing the wakes, and I just could not make space before the buoy.  I tried back and liked it.  For some reason I had it in my head that most skiers were going forward,  I  thought I must be doing something wrong. So I started this thread to discuss. 

27 minutes ago, Horton said:

My guess is that what you are feeling with the bindings forward at the wakes is that you have more ski in the water than your technique can deal with. Having the ski flatter in the water should make it faster IF everything is balanced.   

 

@Horton  I think this is spot on.  I’m just trying dial in -32 with hopes to get deeper into-35.  Boot forward is breaking me and I’m seperated after CL.  It’s a little easier to manage with my boots back a little.

@jjackkrash  Somehow i missed that episode.  around the 15 minute mark explains pretty much exactly what I'm feeling.  Thanks for sharing.

In reading about how to adjust bindings /fin most all of the info refers to tuning for turns, but there’s not much talk about how the ski moves/feels thru the wakes.    I like the way my ski turns with binding forward but I’ve found that if my front boot gets too far forward it becomes really heavy feeling at the wakes and takes a more direct path to the buoy.    Moving binding back,  the ski feels lighter, faster and creates more space.  It turns both sides well enough that I never really think about turning.    In reading on this site most people are pushing bindings forward.  This has never worked for me.  On multiple skis my favoured binding position has been 1/8 to 1/4 back of stock with stock fin settings. So I’m curious if I’m missing out on some magic.  I know it’s personal preference for each individual style I’m just looking to better understand things. 

@scoke wth are you even talking about?  He is no where near the whitewash.  Sure that day was an older Malibu.  I can assure you it looks exactly the same behind his 2023 prostar.  

@Horton  I’m as astonished as you are. But the skier In the photos I uploaded runs into -38 at every tournament, and probably every day.  I have to think  he knows what he is doing.  

@Horton  This isn't me.  He's a pretty good skier.  He is gliding and the boat has just cleared the 55's.  pass is -32@34.  This is interesting to me.  like you I watch the red balls as soon as I move left.  I would have guessed the boat is much deeper when I begin my glide.

Well I thought for sure mastercrafter was crazy.  But watching some drone footage of myself, the boat is certainly still going through the greens as I begin to stand up into my glide. I have never paid attention to that before.  

@ReallyGottaSki are you using coosa for the stringers too? Do you have to then laminate a bunch of pieces together to get the required thickness?  Will Coosa accept lag bolts for motor mounts are do you have to come up with a new design for motor and trans mounts?

@jhughes not everybody is in love with Cc.  Other brands drive fine too. They are just different. Other wakes are great too.  Cc to me is a great boat but I just don’t see it as being leaps and bounds ahead of others.  Having skied the bubble butts that everybody raves about, I think it has some great wakes but I don’t think they are so much better than other brands that the other brands are irrelevant.   

Free ski until we get the course floating in a couple weeks. Once the course in I'll run -15 for a few sets, if feeling good I'll shorten to -28 pretty quickly, that is where i'll stay for a while.  I can run -28 pretty routinely, -32 is harder and still pretty scrappy, -35 has not yet fallen for me.