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@Nando Not sure if it will be a comeback, I hope so and time will tell. Spending my free time this winter working out to regain strength and getting down 5 more pounds to my best skiing weight. Also got some good feedback from this forum and other places on improving balance and reflexes. Its great having a reason to get fit.

 

My choice of ski is a 68" D3 ION considering the 30mph speed. I am sure there are other good choices, may be better choices but I figure this is a reasonable starting point.

 

I am stunned by the all the articles and forum threads on fin tuning. All credible people agreeing that .00x inch adjustments making huge differences. All the language developed to talk about fin settings and I have no idea what they are talking about.

 

I am also in the dark about ski bindings. I talked to Lance about boots. He told me he couldn't ski at all after mounting a new boot. He installed a snow skiing cant to fix it.

 

Do the new boot options actually improve performance versus typical competition bindings from the past ? Are skiers using the hard shell boots for lateral control like ski racers ?

ITS THE SKIER NOT THE SKI   What about the skier that doesn't worry about the performance of his ski's. In a charming way always pokes fun at the guys who are always messing around with their ski's.

 

THE TRUTH    A gifted athlete can do pretty well on a terrible slalom ski. A mediocre athlete will get higher tournament scores on a great ski.

 

At the 1965 Nationals in Minneapolis, A skiing legend / World Champion trick skier introduced himself and asked if I could use a practice partner. The skier had started a real job and had been transferred from California to Minnesota. He started skiing at our place that day, the day before his Trick event. For the following 2 summers he skied at our place every weekday morning before he went to work.

 

He had signed an endorsement deal with a sports company known for their basketballs. He didn't get his input into the products that he was expecting. He had their skis for all three events. The designs were nothing more than a marketing guys idea of where to put their name. The trick skis were shaped like a diamond that came to a blunted point at each end. There was no tracking and no fore and aft support. The slalom ski was a banana design like used in ski shows. He finally used a hand saw to cut the slalom ski so it also ended with a blunted point at the tail.

 

THE PROOF . . I think he placed in the 1966 Miami Nationals on his diamond shaped trick ski. He occasionally ran 30 off in practice on the slalom ski. It took a gifted athlete to accomplish those performances on the skis he was using but far below his abilities. He loves the people and loves the sport. He always had a smile even though I'm sure he knew that he would have won 3 more medals at the 66 & 67 Nationals on any other skis. So keep on tuning your fins and bindings.

 

At 17 years old, a Mixed Doubles champion with Vicki Van Hook.

Currently in the USA Water Ski Foundation "Legends Program" and skis the western mountains about 20 days a season.

 

@Bruce_Butterfield You talked about the skier as one of the variables . . I haven't skied for a long time but am committed to do as well as I can in M9 by every means available. The ski's I had configured over my final several years in various men's division were far from stock. When I borrowed or tried any other ski I couldn't ski on them at all in the limited time I gave to them. My problem was the same on all stock skis. I expected them to snap turn, not making each turn a long drawn out process. I have heard and can see on pro tournament video that modern skis are much more interested in turning than the old skis.

 

With the improvement in ski's, I have confidence that there are stock skis that work out of the box . . so its up to me to learn how to ski the ski . . and then work on the fins, boots and boot positions.

@Bruce_Butterfield @Nando I will get the book - I appreciate the recommendation. Bruce mentioned Theories and Explanations. What makes ski tuning a black art . . ? When I told Dave Saucier or Karl Roberge that my new Saucier or new Kidder ski was disinterested in turning on my On-Side turn, they would round the bevel more on the right side in the binding areas . . when they did that to my skis it didn't work . . but that was just me I guess. The way my other skis were setup I would make the bevel smaller and edges less round to get the mid ski to help initiate and complete a turn.

 

In 1967 Merrill LaPoint was helping run a local tournament in Marin county and I dropped in after seeing the event from the highway while on a vacation. Merrill loaned me Kris's Maharajah because that's what I was using that year and I had talked to Merrill at the nationals a couple of week earlier. Kris's ski still had the small sharp 45 bevel from the factory. All sorts of things can work that appear to conflict with prevailing tuning frameworks.

@eleeski @Bruce_Butterfield and others

FINS . . I experimented with edges of skis and binding positions constantly for 30 years, making skis work for me, but what I learned doesn't mean anything with the new skis which aren't constructed with surplus non-structural sidewall material like the old skis.

 

We never experimented with fins decades ago, except in the 60's everyone learned that drilling a couple of holes would prevent the ski from turning sideways after crossing the wake, throwing you out the front apparently because of a vacuum pocket behind the fin.

 

CAN SOMEONE ELABORATE ON FIN ADJUSTMENTS ?   at least of few of the basics.

@eleeski @The_MS I wasn't mocking Bondo. for relevance, I was referencing eleeski's practice of adding material to ski edges as part of ski tuning process. @eleeski uses Bondo or similar, I layer spray coats of colored epoxy. No Mocking here . . tournament scores are what count.

@Horton I won't be touching the skin of my new D3. When the blank ski only weighs 3 pounds you know the ski's structure is its skin.

@eleeski Tuning Addiction ?    re: Bondo . . When skis made of aluminum, foam and composites started being built, I used multiple coats of catalyzed automotive paint to replace material that was "tuned off". It was easy to build thickness with the epoxy paint. I had a spray booth with infrared lamps setup just for skis. I rebuilt and reshaped the edges of my EP and Kidder skis endlessly. The ski always looked like new and occasionally worked better. But tuning is like gambling . . when you have a "win" you bet again, never know when to stop. All that matters is being ahead for the season "finals".

@Horton The designs were crude and the wood skis could completely stop working when they sat around in the dry winter air between summers. The wood Obrien which was my best ski ever at the time, didn't work at all the next spring.

Some dates are wrong

1962 - Minnesota slalom skiers used Northland slalom skis. Warren Witherall, who had his signature on the ski cut 1.25 inches of the back of our skis and moved the fin forward. As a high-school student, I felt felt pain when he extended the fin slot forward with a big hand saw.

 

1967 - Just before the Texas Nationals I was trying to make a Maharajah ski work. KLP could make the ski work, but other skiers would just fall over into their good-side turn when they were on their difficult rope lengths. To widen the ski along front foot, I used a band saw to cut a slot down the right side of the ski from the tip to the back of the front binding, then spread the gap and filled it with resin. It worked pretty good. The 1967 Austin Texas Nationals were on a river during a Texas flash flood with logs, branches and huge rollers in the course. Jump champion Chuck Stearns won slalom, I think I placed 7th. Many of the top seeded skiers fell in the rollers . . Floods are an equalizer. When Merrill Lapoint saw my Maharajah ski, he thought the saw cut was to fix a manufacturing defect rather than to "tune" it. I declined his offer to send me a new ski.

 

1968 - When Dave Saucier wanted to get a skier on a Saucier ski, he would meet you at Lake Saucier in a woods in the middle of a farm somewhere. Before you ever tried the ski, he would fill his boat with white dust as he made the very large round bevels larger and rounder.

 

1969 - When Leroy Burnett was the slalom sensation on a wood Obrien, running 30 off (or was it 36 off ?) at every tournament, I drove to his house in Northern California to get a ski. It was the best ski I had to date after I widened the ski with epoxy about 3/32" on the good side turn from the front heal forward. Later MasterCraft-Obrien built in the same asymmetry with their La Point Radius ski, which was sold in 2 versions, for Left or Right foot forward.

 

Fast forward to 2021 - as an outsider trying to start over in M9 in a few months, I have the impression that sandpaper, saws, resin and files are no longer part of breaking in a new slalom ski. I just spent $1200 on a blank ski, where would I start with carpenters tools? But Finally, it looks like manufacturers have figured out that all the older skis were too narrow under the front foot. Now the top 66-67" skis (such as D3 EVO and ION) are 3/16 to 5/16" wider than the universal 6 9/16 width from the past.

@GaryJanzig The boat is new to me so I have no experience with PP. Can factory support with the PP upgrade purchase guide the boat owner with tuning the upgraded system.

@klindy Using poly rope as a limiter may be helpful. The buoys are 60% submerged by design, so the extra 40% to sink the ball doesn't stretch the shock cord that much further. I want the length of the shock cord to provide some consistency in the skier buoy submersion after a heavy rain. Thanks for the creative suggestion.

On a new submersible course that I am installing this week, I was planning on using 5/16" shock cord for the top 4' connected to skier and gate markers. When the course is submerged this particular shock cord is stretched to 160%. I have adjustable shock-cord hooks for making large adjustments, but the day-to-day 3" water depth changes would be evened out by the shock cord. If it lasted 5 months that would be good enough for me. My concern is that it might forget it relaxed length when its stretched to 160% almost all the time.

@pregom To answer your question, this is the illustration from my 1983 article in the Waterskier magazine.

On the original 1975 version of this course, the horizontal ropes that pull all of the anchor lines over at an angle were attached to existing sub-buoys on an existing course. On the new course that we are installing - today- I have all the connections at 44 feet above the bottom of the lake, so the horizontal rope connection varies from 11-25 feet below the surface. This keeps the lines further down from fisherman and creates a uniform horizontal "pull" distance to get all the buoys lowered the same amount. The specific value of 44 feet was governed by the shallowest water depth - 55 feet- so the connections are 11 feet below the surface on the the 55M gate buoys at one end. The geometry of a 14 foot differential in the 'altitude' of the connections only creates a trivial difference in the length of the horizontal ropes.

 

The sub-buoys are 7' below the surface with easy adjustments if the water level goes down a significant amount, the horizontal pull ropes are lower on the anchor line at 44' up from the bottom of the lake.

 

You asked how much winching to pull the course down. 18 feet pulls it down 7 feet. On this course we have switched to coated 3/32 stainless cable to the shore because its 630 feet and poly-rope has too much stretch for that distance.

 

Another revision from the original course. To prevent the network of ropes from distorting the course because of friction from 600 feet cable going through plastic tubing, there is a single sub-buoy pulling straight up from the center anchor so the buoyancy of the slalom course isn't powering the extraction of the cable from the winch as the buoys approach their final position.

 

To minimize the use of the plastic tubing, we profiled the topography of the lake bottom with our own through-the-ice depth measurements from the center of the course to my dock. Only 350 of cable needs to be in tubing because the last half is not in contact with the lake bottom. We may use more tubing length, but that won't happen til June.

 

Manual or Electric Winch This isn't my primary place to practice, so to keep it simple we are using a manual winch. Its a common boat trailer type of winch modified by using a 15" john-deer lawn tractor steering wheel. The original hand crank on all of these winches is too unbalanced and the winch unwinds at very high speed. The wheel is a better human interface for pulling in about 20 feet of cable with the very low gearing on a manual winch.

 

On the original course which had to pull in more than 20 feet, it took 3 minutes to wind the course down and 30 seconds for it to pull itself up, spinning the winch wheel 6 times faster than when I wound it down winding as fast as I could. When we added the power winch it slowed everything down, but we could let the course surface or submerge from the house, so slow didn't matter.

 

There are no inexpensive electric winches with programmable limit switches based on winding or unwinding progress. On the original winch I had a 10/32 threaded rod connected the winch hub somehow and positioned switches that would trigger when a threaded object would travel on the rod to reach the COURSE UP position and COURSE DOWN position along with some crude logic using electro-magnetic relays. It worked for decades, but I would rather be skiing than trying to do that again. Its the Men 9 perspective changing priorities.

For the course I am installing through the ice today, I just located a 180 degree stainless steel 3" tubing for $51.00. Its a single piece to replace the PCV parts in the drawing above. The stainless steel is from a performance automotive supplier. It shorter but that isn't a problem and the rope won't wear through SS.

 

I am installing sub-buoys at both ends for the pre-gates, but may only install the surface buoys on one end. I'll be able to figure out if the pre-gate is useful to me or not.

@Horton I just added the 55M buoys to my drawings for the course I am laying out on the ICE on Sunday. Maybe there is no single precise answer to this question . . how does the skier use the 55M buoys to assist with his setup ? Looking at it on paper I don't see the answer to this question. Thanks

THANKS FOR YOUR RESPONSES . . . ok ok ! >> I will setup the 55 buoys along with the rest of the course. This is a lake of 95% weekend homes, so there will be a lot time when the 55s can be installed and nobody would care.

 

From memory I recall building in a safety factor to avoid missing the gates back when the 55's didn't exist. I was inconsistent at getting-wide-early at ball 1 at 38off because my speed to the wake was sometimes too slow because I was too cautious approaching the gates. Maybe the pre-gates will help with that.

I am installing a new submersible course next week through the ICE. The additional length caused by the end alignment gates extends the course into territory with owners who are adverse to change. (even though the course is 600 feet off shore and submersible to be as low-profile as possible) I skied in tournaments from age 14 to 42 when their weren't alignment gates. I am starting over in M9 and don't have first hand knowledge of their value to the skier.

 

The boat which is new to me, has Perfect Pass which will be upgraded with ZBox and Star Gazer . . my next winter project. Does this system require alignment gates ?

 

How big a deal is it to not have alignment gates on a practice course ? I am inclined to not have them until the course becomes familiar to the lakeshore community.

@Nando You asked if there was wear on the lines from the course going up and down. The only problem we had with "wear" . . . After 12 years of very heavy use, one of the ropes finally cut into the 3" PVC coupler on the Center Anchor. The anchor was about 85 feet down, so I dragged a replacement anchor into position using Copper pipe instead of PVC. About 20 years of use and none of the 5/16 AWSA rope needed to be replaced.

 

The 3" PVC pipe in this illustration was changed to copper after 12 years of heavy use.

 

@ghutch Thanks for you valuable comments . . .Did you replace the servo and linkages on your 04 boat ? I just posted another question about using the old 2004 mechanical components - or not.

I am going to upgrade Perfect Pass and add Star Gazer in a 2004 ProStar-TT that is "new" to me. I can use the current Servo and mechanical linkages and save about $400. We have all experienced the effects of aging on steering or throttle linkages. Do PP mechanicals get old, sticky, sloppy (or other problems) with 16 years of use ?

 

I know the current PP mechanical parts work, but I only used the boat 1 day before putting it in winter storage. I don't know if they work well.

There isn't much vertical space from the top of the doors to the plate where the roof members sit. There is a lot of roof load so a large enough engineered wood header may not be available to fit. If necessary, your local contractors steel company can size the steel beam you need for nothing. (if the engineered wood provider says he can't get something big enough in the space) In either event your supplier can specify (engineer) the necessary header so you don't need a 3rd party engineer . . unless your building inspector requires it. Just give your supplier(s) the list of conditions MickeyThompson provided above.

This Prostar 190 is for Slalom practice for M8 & M9 skiers where 38 off is their first difficult practice pass . Another local M8 skier installed Stargazer and ZBox in his 2001 Nautique. He practices 35/38 off behind two boats . . his 2001 Nautique and a friends 2018 Nautique with ZO. Both boat owners have no complaints about practicing behind the older boat with Stargazer.

 

Is that the consensus about owning StarGaser for short-line tournament skiers ? For divisions at 32 and 30mph.

 

Another Question . . anyone installed this on a 190 themselves ? The Nautique guy said he did his own with no problem.

 

 

Boats keep getting wider; add flexibility to your course . I used 1.5" PVC spacer 5 feet down - The PVC pipe had holes drilled for a variety of widths. Used zip ties through pipe and around the anchor line. To insure a stable vertical position, stick the zip tie through the braided rope.