GregHind

A genuinely good slalom and surf boat would sell. I’ve never seen one yet, but there is a huge market. If it could barefoot longline, boom barefoot well as well it would be incredible.

@Lieutenant Dan thank you. Which one gives the bigger picture of the skier. Is there a noticeable difference in the size of the skier in the mirror?

Has anybody compared the ptm edge 140 vs cipa extreme? I bought a cipa vision 180 and don’t use it because the skier is smaller in it and I like to see the detail on 60ft and 75ft ropes we usually ski multiple kids at once on. I much prefer the cipa extreme all round than the cipa vision 180 for that reason It the PTM 140 image as large as the Extreme? Has anybody got direct experience with both?

@jstaab3 that photo looks like a breather blocked by ski ropes? What are you showing us?

This is the old record of 100 skiers set in 1986. It took 25 years and numerous different teams attempts spending many millions to beat it.

@Chef23 we had 12 full blown attempts between 2008 and 2012 to master ropes. The rope team was incredible and yes it was military precision. We don’t show video of the ropes methods or the boom design because they are two of the hardest most expensive lessons we had to master. We had a PA on the boat that could be heard 2.5 miles away (needed it to coordinate the skiers, ropes, helpers etc). The 145 video got taken down by YouTube because I used music... At about 1:45 to 2 minutes this video shows the crunch of skiing between the double wakes

@chef23 here is the video of our 114 then skier world record from 2010. Keep in mind the boat was full throttle for 10 seconds before the video started and the footage is real time as it switches from the skiers to the captain. It took 100 seconds, more than one and a half minutes to make power and pull us up. We practiced 100 second drags endlessly for our 145 skier record. @jercrane the easiest positions by far were behind the boat as the prop wash got you extra thrust and let you up earlier and the far left and right because it was clean flat water. The hardest positions by far were between the boats double wakes on either side. Between those double wakes you get skiers either side of you crunched at you as they surf them, the space gets narrower as you get up to speed and crossing them Is hard so you have to survive while each person to cross does that one by one. Once the boat finally gets everybody up it runs away and is much too fast. No zero off on a tour cat! Once you survive the start and get through the first 20 seconds after everybody stands up, it’s pretty easy. For the 145 skier run we did some hotrodding work on the boat and it made more power than we expected. It ripped 154 of us out faster than we could have imagined. We lost 9 skiers which was very few compared to others percentages. I’ve had a few messages this year about pulling a 100 person pyramid and helping another team break the 145 record.....

I was in position r8, just to the right side of directly behind the boat. 3150hp. One hundred and fifty three other skiers others started with me. Incredible. Didn’t try barefooting behind it....

You need about 200 litres per second to run a ski boat v8 at 4000rpm. That is a lot of air, a 5 amp 75mm fan hooked up to a Flexi duct would never move that much. Clearly the testing has proven it helps so it must be to do with heat soak more than air volume Still it would be very interested to measure the difference in air pressure at 4000rpm with the engine cover shut vs ambient. The negative pressure could be significant and looks like it would be with the way these engine covers seal and such long paths to get air in. All that supply air restriction is “negative boost” the opposite of turbo charging. Easy to measur for any aircon tech who has a decent manometer.

The CIPA extreme is really good too. The cipa vision 180 makes the image too small for my liking.

@nam1975 the spring setup there is wrong. It should be fighting the servo, not helping it. The spring needs to be as long as practical because you want the extra help at low throttle, without too much at high throttle. At high throttle there should already be a sufficient return spring in the engine. A long spring which is strong enough to make the engine return to idle reliably but only just is what you want. A short, strong, spring will be too much. Mount the spring as close to the joint of the servo/hand throttle cables as possible. Not miles above or below it but as close as you can Post both the servo test videos I described.

Looks like you have it backwards but very hard to see. Show us some more photos zoomed in and out plus a video of 1/2 throttle and full throttle, with the engine NOT running, with PP running in servo test mode. The spring should be mounted near where the servo cable joins the throttle cable. It should be trying at all times to pull the servo cable back towards idle. The servo never pushes back to idle it just loosens and allows your return springs to pull the throttle back the required amount

Is there anything limiting the size of your lift. If not can you just build a big lift which includes a walkway between the two boats and lifts them in and out as one structure. Get it in, get it grandfathered and you’ve got it forever. Would be great for resale one day too

That rule about needing to maintain a controller skiing position in the slalom course at all times came about because Brett Wing had time to ski around a buoy, crash, tumble turn, cut to the next buoy, ski around it AND complete the slalom course. If you haven’t seen his video you need to.

@DaveinPa the suspense! how did you go?

If you try one leg start, have the driver be GENTLE on the throttle. Make sure they are a skilled driver than can get off the throttle smoothly and quickly. 20mph or so should be fast enough until you get your back foot in. Slower is much more stable. Then speed up once your foot is in If your boat lifts the nose up on takeoff then I suggest you skip the one legged start or use an inboard Physically a one leg start is a lot easier but technically it is much harder for most people to learn and it makes a big difference how it is driven. You need acceleration but slower is better. Also your 150hp engine has a low gear ratio, lots of torque and can be way to strong for you if you use full throttle. I suggest getting up on doubles and slowing the boat speed down to the slowest you can comfortably lift a ski. Then drop in the water. Loosen the binding. Get back up at your slow speed drop the ski, put your back foot in and speed up. Enjoy your ski! If that doesn’t work then I suggest a deep start two feet in Most older people drop a ski and keep skiing by avoiding deep starts. I know a guy in his 70’s that can’t do deep starts any more so he does a dock start instead. Might as well learn how to drop a ski now and enjoy skiing into your 80’s!

My lake would be about 44 today... (6 degrees C) on its way to a winter low of about 40. This summer it was the warmest I've ever seen by a lot. No rain in a hydro lake so it didn't get used, just sat all summer. Top was 82.

Mighty hard to compete against the engine ECU maker who already now has the dominant position in the industry. Zero off has so many technical advantages because it is integrated in. No need for a seperate computer. Any external device like a Perfect Pass must communicate via throttle commands. Integrated is so much more powerful For example, we are in jump mode and the skier hasn’t now jumped yet. Zero can instruct the engine to leave the throttle open a bit, but reduce power thru retarding timing or not injecting fuel. Then when power is needed, the throttle is already part open, timing can instantly be put back to optimum. Rpm information is live. I do not know exactly what they do, but you can bet that integrated speed control is MUCH better in terms of response time, accuracy and control.

Well I think Zero off saved the sport. Back in the global financial crisis 2008-10 when all the boat makers would have given up on 3 event, zero off forced a lot of people to new boats. The hulls hadn’t changed but speed control forced people to upgrade. People cried about it but they upgraded. From that foundation, when things recovered, we still had the big 3 in 3 event and we even had centurion carbon pro as an extra. That gave us the competition to turn the average waked LXI into the TXI, the not popular 197 wake into the new prostar and the old Nautique into the 200. All big upgrades but we may have had none of it, probably would have had none of it except for zero off forcing new boats when the market would have otherwise been dead.

I often use a short rope about 40ft on the tower to teach people slalom it makes starts a LOT easier. My boat is an outboard and holds the lake record for the number of skiers deep start behind one boat. At the limit, the tower does lift the nose up and reduce pulling power, But the question is are you near the limit? I don’t think a ski pole will help much but it should be a lot nicer to ski behind once you are up. Have you ever tried dropping a ski?

@"Steven Haines" yes. And Notice the zbx number is set seperately for each skier weight.

@6balls i assume he selected trick mode to lift the hydrogate and get the bow up not speed control

@"Steven Haines" the zbx setting just adjusts how hard the engine responds to accelerometer input. To little and it won’t rev up and down much. That would mean the boat would be pulling long. Too much and it would accelerate too much. The settings have to be adjusted by trial and error to make your boat match zero off. It would be nice if PP was able to set these values itself in autocalibration and between gps and accelerometer it should be possible but the master module ram is basically full and so no room for more code without a new design of master module.

@gt2003 yes

Yep @acmx sound like it has the original zero off software. Update it to current and happy days. Also that early engine might be dual speed control compatible. Add pp and keep zero off