david_ski

A hernia operation before I am cleared for the ski.

@ski6jones: My best coaching was this last summer from Makayla H. I have had several coaching days in previous years from others. Makayla identified my lack of stack issue very concisely with a plan on how to fix. It was worth while having a 34mph skier coach vs a 36mph skier trying to coach a 34mph skier. We will resume coaching in the spring once ski muscles are back in shape. I need to have my last lesson plan drilled in before our next lesson occurs.

1. Fin Whispering 2. Annual lake membership 3. AWSA renewal 2. New Camaro Top 3. Eagle vest (or now Masterline). My old Eagle vest shrunk over the winter. 4. ???

COM and a strong pulling position. I started sking in a course when I was 40. 15+ years ago. With muscle and fitness I used to get to training PB 1 @38 with majority of 32's and some 35's. With age the muscle/strength ratio cant beat good form. I should of put more emphasis on proper pulling position behind the boat. I took last year off with no tournaments just to work and improve on pulling position. 3 weeks before my seasons starts. Target fIrst ski day March 7.

@Dirt first ride of the year? I thought you skied year round?

I ski in stock boots Reflex with R-Style rear, but I added a wedge under the rear boot to compensate for limited ankle flexibility. My ankle was injured in a 2004 crushing OTF fall with double HO Animal bindings where the rear foot only partially released. Reflex were new in 2015. I skied on Fluid Motions for 10+ years with the heel built up inside the bindings to aid for lack of rear ankle flex.

Less than 120 is drysuit time. Less than 110 the camero top goes on beneath the drysuit

I lubricate all springs/latches on my Reflex hardshells at the beginning of the off-season (Dec-Feb). during the off-season after the new year, I take ski out and clean lake film off top of ski and check all screws/bolts.

@DefectiveDave Great info, thanks. I picked up some 3/16 wire rope at neighborhood big box store. I have a couple of pieces of HDPE blocks. It is time to start tinkering around in the shop. Today the rain for winter season started and the ski window is going to close shut pretty soon. Only problem is that with rain starting and lake closing down for winter, it will be hard to test and tweak the setup.

@DefectiveDave Thanks for the pics and the link. The wake eye mount and smart phones are the desired end goal. Each skiers video is on their own personal device. No need to have one person doing video editing each day and distributing USB flash drives back and forth. Cloud storage for massive numbers of videos is not free. Resorting to video camera is the backup alternative. We have tried GoPro, Liquid Image, and the Sony Action Cam this summer all with disappointing results. Smart phones deliver exceptional video when hand held. Goal is to modify a pylon mount to be almost vibration free. We get similar results from the wakeye mount on different boats so it is not a particular boat issue. It has been a long time since I played with diff equations. I will get my son to work the math. I want to work on an isolator for the phone attachment mount. GoPro mounts on top and bottom. I will probably need to add some mass to the top plate to make this concept work with a smart phone. I might make it out of HDPE to eliminate any wood and add some mass.

@DefectiveDave show us a picture of your custom made isolation adapter for the wakeye

@skibrain the O'Brian Mach One was my first waterski. I still have it too.

@GOODESkier; Ditto. Private lakes a great piece of equipment. Public lakes, stick with USCG vests. I went from a USCG vest >> O'Neil Outlaw >> Eagle vest. Fits Great. Better flexibility. Easier to get handle closer to hips, and I can put on the vest before getting into my bindings.

I have had hard shell double boots for the last 11+ years and double rubber boots for at least 20 years before that. This year I switched to a R-style rear and I am liking it a lot.

@sfriis you may have a point. With my front binding up one hole and back back one hole, they might be close to neutral overall. When I had come up with the placement with my front foot forward one hole, that was before I got my rear heel lift squared away. I was struggling to get the new bindings right with the ski. Previous ankle injuries have limited my ankles range of motion and the solution was to add 3/4" lift to my heel. Otherwise I could not get my weight forward. For some unknown reason I did not immediately add the lift to my new reflex system that I had used in my old fluid motions. Now that I have the ankle lift dialed in, I should revisit my front binding placement. New ski and bindings this season. As of Aug 1 I have I made more 32off passes this year than I made entire last season. Ski is behaving much better than last ski overall. I still have not made a 35off this season. I was making 35off regularly back in 2010/2011. Back to binding placement. Moving rear binding back may be compensating for the front foot too far forward. The last set on Friday the ski felt like it my body was really well centered on the ski and the ski was floating and wanted to go from edge to edge. I have not felt that prior to adjusting the rear. More experimentation is required. Monday, I will move the front backwards and rear forward, back to a narrow heel to heel distance with the bindings in the neutral position.

This is a very interesting topic. I have been dialing in my new bindings (reflex and r-style rear ) from 10year old fluid motions double boots. i had to add some heel lift the the rear to compenstate for ankle range of motion limitations. Another story altogether and a another thread. Until I added the heel lift I could not get the reflex to work for me. Anyway. I am 6'0" with 9.5-10 shoe size. After reading article and links, I am thinking my foot spacing is too close. I have always tried to place feet as close together as possible without thinking about overall. This mornings Reflex heal to heal spacing was at 11.5". Front bindings are one hole forward from neutral on a D3 Quest. I moved rear back one hole to neutral to 11.75 heal to heal. On the ski I felt that I could get wide easy, much easier after the wakes, and my driver said I appeared much more relaxed and comfortable behind the boat. Rope lengths 22off - 32off @34mph. I felt a little more drag on the ski. The other feeling I felt was the the ski was skiing with more surface in the water. I did not expect that by moving the rear binding back. Amazing what one hole (1/4inch) does for changes. Tomorrow I will start at this setting for the first set. Tonight I measured my old Fluid Motion binding setup, the heal to heal (minimum spacing) is at 12.25". I still have some distance to play with to get to the distance on the new Reflex I skied with for the last 10+ years. Tomorrow goals: Start at 11.75" heal to heal first set, and try 12.00" second set.

@Horton that is what we are doing with the non gps phone video cameras. The only downside is that your driver gets the sequence backwards and you have great video of your down time at the islands and no passes. . It becomes a driver training issue. The other alternative is turn on the video at the beginning of the set and edit the passes of interest.

iPhone 6+ is completely unusable with the Wakeye App because of the built in image stabilization features in the phone. The iPhone 6 is almost unusable with the image stabilization features. The iphone5 works the best out of the iPhone's we have tested. The auto focus is also an issue with the IPhone's. After taking video and watching it frame by frame is very interesting. Skier is in focus, rope is in focus, shore is in focus, spray is in focus, then back of boat is in focus, repeat. When the frame is focused on the skier the image quality is incredible. Too bad every frame is not that quality. We have tried GoPro, liquid image camera. GoPro image was fuzzy. Liquid image worked pretty well but starting and stopping was not easy, and battery died in 2 weeks. Right now we are trying out a Sony Action Cam. Too early to tell if it will work out. I really want the iphone 6 and 6+ to work because everybody's ski videos get loaded to their own phone and we don't have to pass around MP4 files. Features needed in the Wakeye App to make it usable with Apple products: image stabilization disable, different frame rates settings, and fixed focus setting at a specific distance/zone.

I talked to my friend today that is still a member at Wake Island. He and his buddy ski at lunch time and they always have the lake to themselves. They skied on one Friday afternoon and evening recently and there were 3 other boats to share the rotation with. I don't know how many members Noel keeps on the lake, or what his limit is set at. When there were 2 lakes there was a 20 member limit on easy lake. Noel talked about a 25 member limit on the one lake, but that is when we left with 4 members.

LFF bike and ski. Countering on a bike is just like that on a ski. To turn right you start a slight counter to the left to initiate the right turn. Now if I could just translate that as efficiently on the water as it happens on the ground.

I was a member there until they turned one half of it into a wake board cable park. I know two people that were members there last year, but I have not talked to them in a long while. I have heard the the slalom lake is usually pretty quiet there with only a few members. It skies pretty well year round. A NW wind will blow it out with a wind cutting through the clearing where the owners house is situated. Typical SW summer winds are not a problem. Before we left the current owner had not done any maintenance/upkeep on the slalom lake while he was working on building up the wake board park. I am not sure what care has been done to the slalom lake. When we left the shore needed major work to repair the graded slope. There were several areas where shore errosion created wave rollers that propagated down the course. At the time the owner knew about wake boarding and did not understand slalom and the needs of course and lake maintenance. You would need to check it out and see if it is a place for you.

2000 Tahoe with 140k and 2015 V6 Tacoma with 5k miles. Both tow my 1993 Prostar 190 with ease. Most of my summer towing distance is 1/4mile.

Here a a couple of pics of the ball valves and the "T" fittings. Only in the fall are the valves open and the heater is used. Onece the valves are closed the plugs in the "T" fittings are removed and the water in the heater is blown out. I use a piece of rubber hose with a 1/2 in nipple screwed into where the plug normally resides. It is very easy to manually blow out the heater hose. BTW, the quick connect fitting just above the ball valve is to tap heated engine water. It is used in the fall/winter when you need a hot bucket of water on the dock to warm gloves or boot liners. We have even used it to fill a soaking tub on the dock. A little bit of hot water goes a long way, and much faster than the shower hose.

Napa 660-3100. I paid around $30 the last time I bought one. I put in brass "T" fittings in line with the 2 heater hoses along with 1/4 turn brass valves. I drain the heater core and blow air through the heater to flush during non operation periods. After it is clear close the valves and no more water in heater. We thpically only use heater in the fall. At the end of the season it gets drained. With the valves closed no water to rust out the core. I no longer replace the core every 2-3 years.

28off did take quite a bit of time to accomplish. However getting to 32off felt just like a short 28. The feeling and visuals seemed pretty close to the same. 35off is where everything changes. The pull in at the gate is different. The turn at the ball happens much closer to the ball. One only has to get the ski around the ball rather than your whole body. The visuals all change dramatically at 35off.