Slalom.Steve

Which Radar binding? I did this once with an HRTP, sort of.
I tried a C-85 ski, and the front holes on the ski lined up fine with the feather frame, but the rear holes were too far back. So I did this, feather frame on top and aluminum plate under it:

The first set of screws is a normal mounting screw (though longer since it has to run through both plates), and it screws into the ski "like normal," holding down both the feather frame and the aluminum frame at once. The 2nd set of screws is a countersunk screw pointing up through the aluminum plate and the feather frame, with a nut on the other side holding it tight. This serves to attach the feather frame to the plate. Then the back screws are normal mounting screws that go through only the aluminum plate into the ski, but now far enough back to reach the rear holes on the ski.

Unfortunately I don't seem to have a picture of the bottom before mounting it, but this is how it looked on the ski:

This definitely adds height/thickness, since it has both the aluminum and the feather frame. I'd expect that the change in rear foot height would have an effect of some sort, but I don't know enough to comment how or how much. Also the head of the "upside down" screw seemed flush with the bottom of the plate, but the screw head still ended up marking the ski a little bit, I imagine just since the plate gets held down so tightly. That could possibly be mitigated maybe with some kind of pad on the screw head, or sanding down the screw head or something so it doesn't actually contact the ski even when the plate is tightened down.

I didn't end up keeping the ski, so I didn't trial this set up in the long-term. I don't see any reason it wouldn't have held up though.

Anyone know how far Nate's gotten down -43 in practice?

On 8/20/2023 at 7:58 PM, bojans said:

To me, the ultimate solution is to have a gimble mounted to a skidoc. The ski doc will keep the phone generally in line with the skier then the gimble can move to keep the skier centered with higher zoom and eliminate any camera shake. It would be great if you could select the skier as the focus object prior to the start of their set and then have speed based recording. I may be dreaming, but this seems possible and would result in high quality footage that could be used for in-depth video coaching.

Possible? Yes. Difficult? Likely also yes. Not sure if there'd be enough market to make it worth it for a developer, but I like where your heads at.

37 minutes ago, lpskier said:

GoPro has a speed based program. I’m not sure if it’s still beta or not. 

They do, and that is an option. I actually bought a GoPro this summer but ended up returning it, the issues being:

1. You have to buy a GoPro. Cheaper than a new ski, but more expensive than a $10 app. 🙂
2. The biggest issue is that the stabilization software that GoPro uses crops the sides of the video pretty significantly. This means in order for the skier to not go out of frame at each apex, you have to have the video zoomed out pretty far. This is even more pronounced at shorter lines. I had read that GoPro is too wide angle and always thought, "Whatever, I'll just zoom in while watching it back" but since the skier moves from the edge of the full frame to the opposite edge of the full frame, if you zoom in at any one point, the skier just goes out of the zoomed-in frame when they move side to side. I use video to watch myself back and critique my skiing, and the image was too zoomed out for that IMO, at least when viewing on the small screen of a phone.
3. There's the additional step of getting your videos off the GoPro and onto your phone or other device. You can send it via Bluetooth but it takes a long time or can error out, or you can pay for a GoPro cloud account and once you get home on Wifi it uploads, but that takes even longer, and when you access the videos within the cloud interface, you can only show max quality of 1080p. If you download the file to a device, you can get 4K, but that's yet another step of downloading off. You've also got to always carry the GoPro with you and make sure it's charged. Yes, none of these things is in itself a huge deal, but when I'm taking 12-18 videos multiple times a week, wanting to review them quick a couple times, maybe send one to a friend, and then delete them, the GoPro just added more work/inconvenience, opportunities for something to go wrong, etc. It's quite nice to just pop my phone on, which I always have and is always charged, and just have my videos waiting in my camera roll as soon as I'm done.

All in all, using the GoPro felt a lot less convenient than just using my phone, and while the image quality is good, the need to zoom out made even that not worth it. And if a phone app could actually capture in high-quality and be not super shaky, it's just as good as a GoPro and a lot more convenient!

The Wakeye app only records in 720p and only utilizes the main lens on a phone, failing to take advantage of improvements in new phones. Wakeye as a company has gone silent for years. I started talking with a developer friend of mine about making a new app, but I want to see if people are interested and if it would be economically feasible.

If we make a new and improved app, with GPS speed start/stop, options for HD and 4K recording, FPS adjustment, and allowing zoom out/alternate lens access to get around the rear camera stabilization issue, would you use it? And would you pay for it (one-time fee, not subscription)? We'd do iOS first, but could also do Android.

Also open to suggestions of a snappy name for it!😉 I'm thinking something not only waterski-specific, as other folks may be interested in the same capability (bikers or something?).

Ok I've figured out why @APB's solution of zooming out to 0.9x takes away the camera shake. iPhones have for a while now used 2 or 3 different lenses (as you can see on the back, 2 lenses for regular models, 3 lenses for Pro models). So as you zoom in and out, the lenses aren't actually zooming, but at certain "break points" the phone starts using a totally different lens (though they make the changeover smooth/not noticeable).

It seems the main camera (sometimes called the "Wide" camera) has the stabilization hardware, but the Ultra-Wide lens does not. So as soon as you zoom out to less than 1x, it switches lens to the Ultra-Wide and you access a lens without stabilization = no pylon shake. On Pro models, there is also a Telephoto lens that has Optical Zoom, but this lens also has stabilization, so it also won't work for pylons.

The problem is of course then, you can't use the Wakeye app and get the auto-start and stop based on speed. There's got to be another way to achieve that?

Just for reference, see the **UPDATE** to my post above. It seems not true that the rear camera is better now 😕

I despise wakesurf boats, or as I call them, wakesurf barges.

You could look into the Q-Collar, a pretty new but seemingly effective device at reducing at least the effects of repeated sub-concussive impacts. It's FDA-approved and has some promising research results. Skiing is certainly less of a "repeated impact" sport as football, but if you want to take precautions, it's something that couldn't hurt. Not sure if it'd float if it falls off though lol.

Oh, there is also the chance that in a fall without any head impact but decent "body flailing," as you are falling/rolling into the water, if the helmet "catches" water (think of dragging a bucket open side into the water), it would yank your neck in an awkward way, again coming down to basically: your body is going fast as you start to fall, by the end it's stopped, so where/how did it go from fast to stopped? If the rest of your body is slowing down at a certain "normal" rate, and your head/neck slow down much faster due to the helmet bucketing in water, that could cause injury (not concussion but muscular, etc).

This risk may again be mitigated with a soft rugby helmet instead of a hardshell.

I also had a concussion (from skiing) several years ago and looked into this.

There have been a couple other threads about using a helmet. There is a chance it actually puts you at greater risk for a concussion. Concussions happen when your brain moves within your skull and hits the inside of your skull, typically when both are moving fast and then the skull stops suddenly, with the brain continuing to move fast (for a millisecond) and then hitting the skull. So it's not really the "impact" itself that causes a concussion, but the rapid deceleration.

Now consider, if someone dives from a high dive with perfect form, they hit the water with very little surface area, breaking the surface tension, and maintaining their speed longer. No pain. If someone belly flops, they hit the water with a lot of surface area and stop very suddenly. Plenty of pain.

Hitting the water without a helmet vs with a helmet may be like hitting the water in a dive (no helmet) vs belly flopping (with helmet), due to the increased surface area of a helmet. The diving analogy is a more extreme difference certainly, but just to illustrate the point. Basically, unless you really hit the water, the helmet won't crush (which is what it does in order to reduce the rate of speed change when hitting something like concrete), and actually make your speed change more suddenly.

I suspect something like a soft rugby helmet mitigates this effect, as it's not as much surface area and relies just on soft cushioning rather than an actual "crush" of harder material like a bike helmet. BUT, I don't know where the line is on the benefit of padding vs the detriment of more surface area and thus more water resistance/more stopping.

As far as I understand it, there's been very little to no definitive scientific research around this though (ie testing water impacts with helmets, etc). Concussion research isn't gonna focus on the little niche of water skiing lol.

11 hours ago, coach3 said:

what do you mean, rear camera?

The rear camera is the camera(s) on the back of the phone, which take images/videos facing away from the phone user - VS - the front camera, sometimes called the "selfie" camera, which faces back towards the phone user. Rear cameras are almost always more advanced than front cameras. As such, they also have stabilization hardware, which is great for normal use (someone holding the phone not perfectly still when taking a picture), but often produces really bad image shake when dealing with constant, high-frequency vibration like happens sitting on a boat pylon.

I dig it! There's enough black skis in the world already 🙂

1 hour ago, APB said:

Wake eye was horrible. .9x works great on my ski doc.

What iPhone model are you using? Is that the rear camera or the front/selfie camera? And that's not from within Wakeye, correct, just the regular camera app (manually started/stopped)?

Well, it seems it doesn't work 😕 see more discussion here: https://ballofspray.com/forums/topic/52111-what-phone-works-best-zoomed-in-view-on-skidoc-for-slalom-video/

**UPDATE** So I do not have an explanation why, but on the 2nd and 3rd attempts using the rear camera on an iPhone 13, the video is shaky again. So apparently disregard my post below.😞 Sorry for any confusion, but you will still get better results using the front/selfie camera rather than the rear camera, even on the newest phones, at least when using the Wakeye app. APB may have found an alternate solution of zooming out to 0.9x on the rear camera, but that can only be done in the native photo app (not Wakeye), and thus you'd have to manually start and stop recording for each pass.

I have just verified that the iPhone 12 Pro Max and later models (iPhone 13, 13 Pro, 14, 14 Pro, etc) no longer have issues with vibration when using the rear camera (, because Apple changed their stabilization hardware, going from "dual optical image stabilization" to "sensor-shift optical image stabilization." I don't really know what those mean lol, but I can tell you that you can finally use the rear camera on those phones!

And, if you have a Pro (13 Pro, etc) model - those rear cameras also have optical zoom, which means the lens is actually more zoomed in, maintaining quality. Digital zoom, which is the only option on non-pro models, is basically just cropping the photo so it fills more of the screen, but the quality gets "worse" the more you zoom in.
However, in terms of zoom, the Wakeye app was made many years ago, with much older phones, and Wakeye has gone completely dark as a company. I have no idea if the zoom option within the Wakeye app would know how to utilize the actual optical zoom of the Pro models, or if it’s just doing digital zoom within the frame of the Wakeye capture. (and once the video is captured, if you zoom in while replaying, that’s just digital zoom no matter what phone you have.) If you don't use the Wakeye app, and manually start/stop the native camera app, you would be able achieve optical zoom on Pro models.

So good news for newer iPhone models (13 and later, and 12 Pro Max): You can use the rear camera finally. And you can maybe achieve optical zoom within the Wakeye app if you have a Pro model.

The history of trying to record skiing using an iPhone on a pylon mount like Wakeye or Ski-Doc is, to the best of my knowledge:
- Prior to the iPhone 6, you could use the rear camera and it'd be fine.
- Starting with the iPhone 6S, Apple introduced stabilization on the rear camera that, while improving "normal" phone camera use, it handled terribly the hi-frequency vibration of a pylon, and you had to switch to using the front/selfie camera to get video worth using.

But, I just learned that starting with iPhone 13 (and the iPhone 12 Pro Max), the phones now use "sensor-shift optical image stabilization" rather than the previous "dual optical image stabilization."

Has anyone tried an iPhone 13 or newer model using the main/rear camera on a pylon mount? Is it any better or is the front camera still the only option? In this video comparing the 11 with the 12 Pro Max, he does a "driving test," which is the closest example I could find to pylon vibration, and the 12 is definitely better.

15 minutes ago, water_skier1 said:

thanks for the replies I am a bit concerned over the laces and they are quite a bit more expensive as well

Yeah if you want a good boot, it'll cost money. T-Factors are the bomb.

Nick Parsons is also on the T-Factor.

Snapping turtles.

I ski in Indiana, which means I have to suffer through 5 months of not skiing every winter. Unacceptable, I say. So I'm trying to figure out how to get on the water for some days or even a couple weeks sometime in December thru January. "Go to a ski school, dummy!" Sure, of course, but I also don't make a lot of money and don't want to spend a bunch on top-tier coaching for a random week in winter (and I typically do a 3-4 day ski school trip in early summer, so that's already one expensive trip per year).

So what's the cheapest ski school/cheapest way to ski in winter? I don't care about quality of coaching, I don't even care about coaching at all, I just want to ski!

On 8/2/2023 at 12:52 PM, Horton said:

@SlalomSteven No man. It looks jackpot.

To be clear, I still very much want that ski 🙂

Inflation is also very real. For the Radar example, $2669 AUD in 2022 is worth roughly $2880 in 2023. So the "actual" increase in price from 2022 to 2023 was only $119 AUD. Certainly still an increase, but not as dramatic as it may seem, as everyone has to increase prices just to keep up.

My understanding is that skiing with hips that open isn't the predominantly taught technique anymore? Or am I off base?

I'm not an expert skier, but my thought process is: during a cut, the ski is pointing across the course, while the shoulders are pointing at least somewhat more towards the boat, so somewhere in between the shoulders and the ski there has to be rotation. Human hips/abs are very good at rotating from side to side, but if the hips are also fully open, then the rotation has to come from only below the waist: from the hip joint, which can rotate but isn't great at doing so; from the knees, which do not rotate; and from the feet, which again can rotate but not as naturally as the hips. It seems to me that it's more efficient to rotate primarily from the hips rather than trying to torque only your legs/feet into an unnatural twist.

That Lagoon Blue... 🤩 Pretty much my perfect ski color scheme.

Except the text on the back... I know it's a "water effect" but to me it looks like a slot machine that reads "RAUAK VAPUD VAPOD VAPOD VAPOD VAPOD".

@BrennanKMN - Next level!! But sorry, can you clarify the specific steps a bit more? My GPS setting QR text string is oSoB1oC!SK48-47!R , so I put !SAVEboot="oSoB1oC!SK48-47!R" into a .txt (or something else?) file on the SD card? What do I name the script file, and what QR code do I show the GoPro to get it to look for the script every time on startup?

Thank you!