RGilmore

Automotive body-trim adhesive.

@scoke is right about one thing - your problems start at the top of the gate. If you watch some video of the guys who built your ski, you might notice that they DON'T pull into and through the gates with bent arms. 32 off is right about where that bad habit is gonna start to really hurt what you're trying to do. as always, just IMO

The diameter of the hoop will depend entirely on the length of your PEX tubing. Even just a 10-inch diameter hoop seems like a much easier target to grab than what you're currently doing.

Take a piece of extra ski rope (poly, diamond braid) and run it through a length of 1/2" red PEX plumbing line. Tie the ends of your rope together and you end up with kind of a circular hoop. The PEX floats, so if you attach the loose ends of your teardrop thingy to the end of the air hose you'll have a large, buoyant ring, kinda like a hula-hoop. Add just enough weight to the hoop/airline connection to sink it. If you cut your PEX tubing about 6-feet long you'll now have a ~ 2-foot diameter hoop, floating vertically well below propeller depth at around 4-feet deep. That should be very easy to snag with a grapple or boat hook.

@"Keith Menard" - When I was in the 6th grade "metric" wasn't a word yet.

Chris Rossi skis all the time with them, and actually designed the Radar version - the "Vice" gloves. In the above picture it looks like Joel Howley is also using Radars.

@OREGON85 My point is not so much the need for "sub-inch accuracy" - allowable centerline error for world-record slalom passes is several inches. What I'm talking about a live-action unpredictable mass weighing around 5% of the ski boat's mass pulling and yanking on the boat from unpredictable angles with an unpredictable rhythm. Calculate the weight of the 110'-boom sprayer, or the field cultivator, attach a motor vehicle weighing 5% of that to a low-elastic tether and tell the vehicle driver to go crazy yanking around behind the farm implement... THEN we can talk about sub-inch accuracy. OR - and this is a far better idea let's agree to disagree :)

In order for "Autosteer" to have any chance at being accurate it will need to rely on accelerometers - GPS simply cannot refresh fast enough nor accurately enough (IMO). This is how Zero-Off works. But unlike Zero-Off (which is aligned with the relatively stable fore-aft axis of the boat) side-to-side rocking of the boat could "trick" an accelerometer into interpreting those motions as path deviation. Off the top of my head I can only think of a few ways to overcome this obstacle: 1) a single-axis accelerometer placement on the vertical axis of the pylon and coplanar with the water's surface, or 2) two accelerometers separated, but centered one above the other on the vertical axis of the pylon, or 3) a single multi-axis accelerometer being interpreted by one hell of an algorithm.

http://slalomguru.com/articles.php?article=balanced

@OREGON85 - Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think gps-controlled combines run through a field of corn at 36 mph with 5% of the combine's weight yanking sideways on it with all it's might on a 35 - 40 foot tether. Somehow I'm thinking that might present a little more of a challenge to keeping your cornrows straight.

Actually, she was water skiing in a "duo" act many months before that video was made. (not making this up). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3611575/Parents-explain-trained-six-month-old-daughter-water-ski-t-CRAWL-don-t-believe-dangerous.html

You got sumpin against the Radar Vapor?

@Than_Bogan Many years ago Steve Schnitzer wrote an article about what it takes to ski through 39-off. One of the things he advocated was to ski just enough to get your ankles around the ball, no matter how long or short the line. If you ever watched him ski you'd know he absolutely practiced what he preached. However, many top skiers will do the opposite, skiing wide and early around each ball at their longer lines - Rossi and the late GOAT Andy Mapple being classic examples. Without any question, the rope angles - and therefore the serpentine handle path through the course - must be quite different between the two approaches (wide-and-early vs ball-to-ball). So, IMO, it's going to be very hard to math out the handle path in any meaningful way without absolutely taking into account the specific skiing style (and therefore, rope angles) of any given skier. That was my point.

@Than_Bogan I don't want to be disagreeable, but I disagree. You interpreted my "formula" as suggesting the skier "... has to get the rope handle to the buoy at a certain moment in time.", but that is exactly opposite of what I proposed - or meant to propose. I think we are saying the same thing in different terms; my point is that the apex of the skier's turn does not necessarily occur at a "certain moment in time", but will actually vary [in time] from skier to skier. So Rossi's apex will occur at a very different moment in time than my apex (for example) and therefore the rope angle when I reach apex will be quite different from when Rossi reaches apex [assumes same speed and rope length]. The end result is that our handles describe notably different paths because our turns reached apex a notably different points, both in space and in time.

Maybe I'm just dumb, but given that the handle path - relative to the pylon - will always be an arc. IMO the only other "variable" required is the rope's angle (relative to centerline) at each turn's apex. The boat speed and elapsed time between apex points are known constants. So the only unknown is the rope's angle when those apex points are reached. But those points will vary greatly between skiers. For example, Chris Rossi, on a 13m line, typically apexes quite wide of the buoy-line, and relatively early (up-course) of the ball. Meanwhile, a skier just learning 13m might be barely getting his ski around the ball at apex. Those two handle paths with be very different, but so will the rope angle-at-apex - which I think primarily defines what each of those handle paths will be.

@jerrym ABS plumbing pipe (the black stuff) is MUCH tougher than the more common PVC (white) plastic pipe, and would probably hold up just fine, IMO.

FWIW, the late Ed Brazil probably knew more about putting in slalom courses than anyone alive. He wrote many articles on the subject, and last I checked he had over 1300 posts here. It might be worth weeding through them for some insight. Also, if you know anyone who built one of his "anchor wanker" devices, or even just has photos, that might be something for you to build / borrow to make your project a lot easier. With one of those you can pretty much float into position and set down a 200# block of concrete (on the lake bottom) anywhere you want.

As suggested above, except place a vertical length of plastic pipe, large enough to fit over your existing steel stakes, in the center (roughly) of each weight. Each piece of pipe should have a cap cemented on, and a stainless eye-bolt through a hole drilled in the end of the cap. Each weight's pipe can then be placed over the existing stake, making each buoy position pretty much identical to its current location.

Addressing your question 3, bevel configuration is also very important to how a ski performs. Sharp bevels create lift at the edge and "soft" rounded bevels allow the ski edge to ride deeper in the water. Sharp bevels contribute to speed, due to less drag, while round bevels contribute to "grip" on the water, again due to riding deeper. And that's just on the bottom edges; some ski companies, like Connelly for example, have also been experimenting with variable bevel shapes on the TOP edge of their skis. Most skis have a combination of bevel configurations over the length of the ski, allowing the ski to perform differently depending on how it is being ridden - e.g., weight forward vs. weight back. Like flex, bevel design is a real science/art skill, and is not something you're going to get down with a few forum Q&A's.

What @6balls said.

Radar Senate, one size bigger than whatever is recommended for your weight range. IMO.

Read this: /forum#/discussion/15667/canting-my-bindings-on-the-ski-helped-me-overcome-years-of-problems/p1

@Bill22 The fact that you're publicly telling your story here just proves the old saying "Stitches get snitches".

Two words: "Technobutter".

By no means am I a great skier, nor do I claim to be. But I can recognize a glaring flaw in your skiing, mostly because it's something I struggle with as well. And the best way I can think of helping you see it is with photos. So here's some photos of people who ARE great skiers, at or near the apex of their turns, followed by a few stills of you. Now you: 28 off 35 off Granted, the other skiers are skiing on a shorter rope than you, but they are at lengths that are probably as short for them as 35 is for you. The fundamental difference between them and you is that they've learned to let their skis "cast out" so they reach full extension at the apex of their turns. Meanwhile, there's no point in your turn where your "reaching" hand is more than a foot or two away from your free hand - in fact, you could probably have left both hands on the handle and still gotten the same results. Which, at 35 off, are: There aren't too many skiers around that can suck up THAT kind of slack. In my opinion you have to learn how to let your ski cast out, trusting that the speed and power you gained through the wake will let you reach full arm extension, and then make the ski "snap" back under the line. No question the other changes advised here are very important too, but if you can't learn to release and reach "properly" I'd say you may have found your ceiling.