SkiJay

@tjm You bring up a good point about the new Vapor. Where the previous model tended to favor long/shallow setups, the new ski is more indifferent between long/shallow and short/deep. And as short/deep setups go, the one you've listed from Brooks is a good example falling into the aggressive side of the range. So without knowing how you ski, do you occasionally find the ski's tip bites harder than you'd like?

@JAS Move the fins leading edge (LE) forward by either moving the whole fin with DFT if you also want more smear, or by increasing FL if you want less smear (cause this also increases fin area.

@ballsohard I don't know what you are trying to achieve with a DFT move. Your fin numbers are definitely in the ball park, but your bindings may be too far forward. Binding location isn't about keeping the tip down, it's mostly about adjusting the radius of your turns by changing how much ski there is behind your feet. Moving forward increases how much ski you have behind you which reduces smear and increases turn radius. 29¾" is about as far forward as I'd go on your 66" Vapor.

@C5Quest FD and FL is the same for all Vapors, so the FL numbers I've listed are also for all sizes. DFT and binding settings changes from ski to ski, so I've listed how much to add or subtract from those numbers. I also included a link to the stock numbers for your convenience.

@"Mateo Vargas" I do video analysis for a wide range of skiers and not surprisingly, their personalized setups fall into a range, not a single set of numbers. The following numbers are a generalization of that range. If the skier doesn't habitually use a lot of tip or is not comfortable with a lot of tip pressure: Wg: 9° Bf: ⅛" back from stock FD: 2.450 FL: 6.955 DFT: .010 longer than stock If the skier likes using a lot of tip: Wg: 9° Bf: ⅛" forward of stock FD: 2.450 FL: 6.960 DFT: .025 longer than stock The Stock numbers can currently be fount at: Radar Factory Specs FWIW, Radar's current factory specs are an excellent one-size-fits-most compromise falling somewhat mid-range.

Fast skis are wonderful in the way they sprint across the course for a nice, early approach to the next ball. But there are usually two tradeoffs for this easy acceleration. Fast skis are more likely to arrive at the next ball with too much speed riding precariously high in the water, and their flat rocker profiles require a lot of smear to achieve tight turns. High-speed, sliding turns are simply less reliable than the turns of slower, deeper riding designs that have more rocker. Enter the 2018 Radar Vapor, the mullet of slalom skis. And by “mullet” I don’t mean “making a disturbing fashion comeback;” I mean all business in the front and party in the back. While accelerating, most of the any ski’s tip is out of the water, so from the boots back, the Vapor’s design delivers fabulous acceleration. Then when the front of the ski gets driven into the water through the pre-turn and turn, the Vapor’s tip goes to work in a way that is somewhat unique among current water skis—if the skier knows how to use it. At rest, the new Vapor has significantly more tip rocker (upward bend) than the previous model. So the more the skier loads the tip in the pre-turn, the more braking effect there is. This ski has a huge set of brakes if the skier has the skills to approach the ball with the water breaking more than eight inches ahead of the front boot. Then as the skier drops into their maximum lean around the ball, 2 G’s of centrifugal force load more rocker into the Vapor’s soft tip (one of the softest tips ever delivered on a modern ski), so less smear is required to deliver spectacularly tight turns. Here again, the water-break needs to be about eight inches or more ahead of the front boot to deliver this mind-bending turning power. Admittedly, using the Vapor’s tip this aggressively takes a fair amount of talent, power and courage, but it’s there for the taking for intermediate to advanced skiers who understand how to work it. This all sounds wonderful, but what about the rest of us mere mortals who are still sneaking up on the tip; a ski capable of delivering such high levels of tip pressure can be skill testing. Here again, this unique design delivers. So long as the skier isn’t stuffing too much tip into the water, the Vapor is “merely” a fast, great turning ski with the potential for even higher performance as technique progresses. Knowledge is the key to getting the most out of this ski—regardless of skiing ability. I you understand how the 2018 Vapor’s tip works, you can strive to tailor its performance to your current needs. Want a quick, nimble ski that doesn’t require a ton of effort? Ride your Vapor with consistent balance over your front foot and it will deliver in spades. Need a big set of brakes and crazy-tight turns for those last few colors on your rope? Just move further forward on this ski to fully unleash the beast. SkiJay

@Canuck44 The more the tail of the ski drifts sideways relative to the tip while turning, the tighter the turn will be. Moving the bindings forward will increase the area of the ski behind your bindings and restrict how much the tail slides. To get tighter turns, move your bindings back, and keep them as close together as possible.

Yup @Horton, what you said.

@Jody_Seal It's widely believed that wing angle helps keep the tail of the ski pulled down into the water while turning, and that this helps avoid blowing out the tail. But this photo shows the water flow hitting the bottom of the wing, not the top. The wing is actually adding lift and support to the tail, not pulling it deeper. What causes the tail to blow is trying to turn too tightly by yawing too much tip into the water and/or too much speed into the ball. If taking off the wing causes the tail to start blowing, it's likely because of too much speed and cranked turns, and the drag a wing adds might be exactly what you need at -35. And if you like the extra speed you have without the wing, experiment with lower wing angles. 9° is just a widely used norm, not a requirement.

The skier is totally in control of when their ski changes edges. But the difference between a late edge change well past the second whitewater and a proper edge change through the second wake often comes down to the skier's understanding of what is supposed to be happening during the cut. If you think of a crossing as having distinctive separate parts like first I'm going to cut, then I'm going to change edges, then I'll be in the pre-turn, your edge change is going to be late. There is no time to pause in any static position during the cut. Every moment you spend frozen in cutting position is making your edge change later and later. If you strive to move your ski and hips past the rope as quickly as possible from the moment you first feel the load from the boat, your ski will automatically change edges as it passes you behind the boat. Moving your hips and ski through the cut like this is a physical, proactive move that takes core strength. If it's new to you, you'll know when you are doing it and you'll love what you see in your videos. In essence, an early, fluid, edge change starts right at the beginning of the cut, not as the next step after the cut.

@jimski Good on ya for trying it. FWIW, I agree that less wing feels better than no wing. But I love that you tried it, cause there are insights to be gained from some wingless skiing. Two related thoughts. One, there is still a meaningful amount of drag all the way down to 5° if you are looking for more speed without giving up all of the stability of a wing. And two, are you too fast in the pre-turn because a) you gained so much more speed before crossing the second wake? Or b) because you tend to pull long into a late edge change? If it's "b," skiing wingless builds more speed before the late edge change, then scrubs off less of that extra speed before the ball—a worthwhile insight into an issue worthy of attention for future progress. There is a school of thought that spending some time without a wing forces skiers to do things that are good for their technique; things like moving the ski through the edge change sooner so a longer pre-turn can have more time to scrub speed off before the turn, and climbing more up over the front foot to better stay ahead of the ski around turns. Riding wingless can actually make it easier to change edges sooner because it takes less core effort to move the ski past the rope behind the boat, and it makes getting over the front foot a little more challenging. Getting used to earlier edge changes and learning to proactively ride balanced over your front foot are both essential skills. I was doing some fin testing with a top coach this spring, and he went out without a wing by accident, and ran an effortless set full of sweet, wide, early -32s. He felt something was different, but thought it was the fin I'd given him to try. Going wingless was a non-issue for him because he already changes edges well before he is out of the second white water, and he always climbs all over the tip of his ski into and around the ball. With his excellent technique, the wing's braking effect wasn't remotely necessary for him at 32 off.

@escmanaze Both are true. The wing adds stability at all speeds, AND you don't need wing-drag until line lengths get shorter. Both are true because stability and braking are two distinct benefits of wing use. Stability doesn't refer to the ski's directional stability. It's more about having some extra drag to push against for improved feel and balance. The slipperier a surface, the more likely we are to lose our balance on it. On a ski, this "lost balance" mostly shows up as the ski squirting out ahead of us leaving us on our back leg in the cut or wheelieing out of turns. Being able to stay well balanced over our front foot can be made easier by adding drag with wing adjustments. This adjustable force feedback can benefit all skiers at all speeds. BUT ... while more wing-drag makes balance easier, it also puts on the brakes. The reason we often hear it's best for novices to take the wing off is that shortening the line beyond -28 doesn't happen until a skier learns to generate serious amounts of speed behind the boat—excess speed that needs to be scrubbed off before the next ball. If you can barely make it across the course in time for the next ball at 30mph, excess speed is not your issue. Generating more speed is the goal. So the last thing you need at this stage is to ski with the brakes on. So here's another way to approach this wing debate. Is you goal to get as many balls as possible every time you ski? If so, then removing the wing will help you get across the course faster and to carry more speed around each ball. It will also fine tune your sense of balance on the ski in the process. You'll know when you need a wing. It will be when your pre-turn starts at the second white water, and you are still so fast at the ball that your ski keeps blowing out. For some, this wasn't until -38! If, on the other hand, you really struggle with staying balanced over your front foot, or your goal is to develop your power to accelerate as quickly as possible, regardless of ball count, maybe a more stable ski will provide some extra confidence and consistency to your efforts. Skiing with the brakes on may cost you some balls early on, but it can also force you to develop the technique you need to generate true power a little sooner. I don't think there's a right or wrong here. Some people are born gymnasts with cat-like balance and reflexes. Others are blessed with abundant aggression and power. Regardless of your approach to skiing, the end goal is to develop enough speed that you actually need the wing's braking effect. So the real question is "which philosophy best suits your personal approach to getting there?"

@C5Quest You pretty much answered your own question when you said you'd prefer to deal with one variable at a time. Ideally, that's the case. But while micro adjustability on both bindings is ideal, the fabulous Mikro-Just system is not cheap. And if I were only going to use one (which I do btw) it would definitely be on the front. If you turn around the the ball with most of your weight on your front foot as you should, then the precise location of the front binding has a tremendous effect on how the tail of the ski smears. The rear binding affects this smear too. But with good technique, the rear binding mostly affects your access to, and posture over, your front foot. And while getting the rear binding as close as possible to the front is nearly always preferable, micro adjustability isn't as critical on the back as it is on the front, ideal – yes, critical – not as much.

That was immediately what I thought when I heard Correct Craft wanted to keep MicroTuning's settings a secret @Horton. Why bother Correct Craft, it's going to be a very short lived secret.

@DW The MicroTuner was turned on, but I'm not sure if that means the points were engaged or not. The MicroTuner programming is complex, and Nautique is keeping the details hush hush for now. All I know is the triangular gates and the wake gate are all tied to the boat's wake management system. And both the triangles and wake gate engage and disengage in varying combinations that depend on the boat's speed and rope length.

@CBR51 I only skied one set of –28s behind the new boat during a lesson with Matt Rini. I was totally focused on what the master had me working on (and a little baffled by the 8-ball course gate), so this isn't a proper review. But I did notice two things: 1) I was completely unaware of the pull or the wake, which I suppose means they are either as good as or better than my '15 CC200 6L. If anything unexpected was going on, I would have seized the opportunity to blame it for making me ski like a doorknob. 2) I was wider and earlier than expected virtually every pass, even with screw-ups. Was this because the wake shaper works at —28, or because skiing for Matt makes me try harder? I can say that I didn't get a single decent gate, so there's a good case to be made for the wake actually being helpful.

I own a 2015 CC200 6L and I love it. But having driven this new Nautique for the first time yesterday, I have to say it's a clear upgrade to the previous boat. The tracking feels the same (which is a good thing) and the the controls are silky smooth with good feedback. Yes there are lots of nice little features added like the cell phone cradle etc., but the two biggest changes I noticed from the driver's seat were the steering and the new touchscreen. The steering is really nice. It feels slightly quicker, with smaller inputs delivering bigger corrections. And this was achieved without the steering feeling any heavier. But by FAR the best driver-related upgrade is the touchscreen. It is light years better than the ridiculous interface they'd settled for up until now. It's big, bright, and well laid out. You can use it as a touchscreen, with the conveniently located i-Drive type control Knob, or any combo of the two that feels most intuitive to you. Until now, the screen in the ProStar was vastly superior to the Nautique's glass plank in every way—not anymore. I wish I could retrofit this big beauty.

It's complicated. Phenomenon #1: The wing affects how the ski behaves in a number of subtle ways. Its least subtle effect is that it adds drag—a little drag while accelerating and more drag while decelerating into the ball (due to an effective wing angle change when the ski rocks forward in mid pre-turn). Phenomenon #2: The more we can safely load the tip of the ski (i.e. stay ahead of the ski, move our balance over the front foot, etc.), the faster it will accelerate, the better it will decelerate into the ball, the tighter the turn's radius will be, and the better the tip will stay down while transitioning from the exit of the turn into the cut. All of this is good, but ... Phenomenon #3: All skiers have a limit to how much tip pressure they are comfortable with. Getting too far over the tip of the ski makes us feel exposed to going out the front (learned through painful experience), so we form subconscious limits to how far over the tip we tend to stand on the ski. Shrinking this "tip-avoidance comfort zone" is a big part of technique improvement. If we add wing angle, most skiers will immediately ski better—regardless of water temp. This is because the additional drag causes the ski to be dragged more behind us (making us load the tip more) in response to our habitual technique. But most skiers will only enjoy the benefits of having moved further over the tip for only a few passes or sets. Our subconscious self-preservation instincts don't like the new feeling of being more exposed to going out the front, and cause us to move back to our habitual balance point over the ski. In short, the benefits of being tipped further forward on the ski are temporary, but the additional drag remains indefinitely. When skiers REDUCE wing angle for cold water, the benefits can be less obvious. Reducing drag to what it normally is during the season feels good and adds width, but the reduced drag can cause them to fall back on the ski—not a good thing. But here too, subconscious adjustments are made quickly, returning the skier to their normal balance point over the ski. So which wing change is better? Cold water is more viscous than warm water. That means more drag must be overcome to get wide and early in the course. And since we quickly compensate for wing changes in either direction, my preference is dictated by the long term effect of the change. Cooling water increases drag, so I reduce that drag by using less wing angle. Keeping drag relatively constant avoids jacking up the effort required and minimizes challenging balance changes. Wing angle changes can't address all of the issues associated with cooling water. Our muscles are still tighter, and the water is still firmer making the ski carve more, smear less and ride higher—but we can't adjust for these things. All we can do is strive to adjust athletically so we can ski more precisely through a less forgiving fluid. Why further complicate this challenge by adding even more drag?

@DW In the definition I described yesterday, a pure sideslide would already disqualified by the reference to "any turn where ...." But your question raises an interesting point, alluding to a possible scale of efficiency in a carve. This "scale of efficiency" could range from 100% efficient for a train where there is zero drift, right down to but not including a pure sideslide, like a hockey stop. Assuming drift at the front and back are equal while turning, skates, snow skis, and snowboards probably grip with somewhere around 95% efficiency. Water skis would drift more and be way less efficient; maybe somewhere in the 50% – 80% range depending on the radius of a fully carvable turn (there's some numbers for debate!)

We can probably steer clear of right vs. wrong in this thread by simply acknowledging that we’ve all built models in our heads that help us make sense of these concepts. And the same holds for the terms we individually choose to describe our models. So for what it's worth, it'n not my goal here to imply that anyone is wrong. I'm just sharing my perspective for the consideration of anyone interested. Carving is yet another example where we clearly don’t all share the same definition. From one perspective, the definition of carving would be the tightly held line an ice skate or a downhill racing ski can scribe around a turn. And by this definition, no water ski will ever perform a purely carved turn. Fair enough. But to be clear, this definition is using the magnitude of sideways drift as the qualifying feature of a carve. If we look closer, neither the skate nor the ski is 100% efficient, and both drift sideways to a small degree. So now the question becomes, at what level of sideways drift does a carved turn cease being carved? I believe that so long as the front of the skate, snow ski or water ski is drifting sideways at the same rate as the back while arcing around a turn, then that skate or ski is carving—the magnitude of the sideways drift being irrelevant. And since a water ski is perfectly capable of scribing a big round freeskiing turn using nothing but the ski’s flex and rocker, then water skis can indeed carve turns. The question then becomes, how tightly can a slalom ski be made to carve a turn before smear has to contribute to achieving an even tighter radius. All skis have flex and rocker, so every turn is part carve and part smear. So when I write that it’s my goal to get any given ski design to carve as much as possible, I’m not saying that I think the turn can be achieved 100% through carving. I’m just saying that I’m trying to get as tight a turn as possible with the minimum amount of smear. For clarity, when I’m using the terms “carve” and “smear” in future posts, this is what I mean: Carve – any turn where the sideways drift of the tip and tail is equal. Smear – any time the sideways drift of the tail is greater than that of the tip. And finially, that I believe all slalom course turns are a combination of both carve and smear.

My primary goal with the whole Fin Whispering project has always been to elevate the craft of ski tuning. An essential component of that pursuit is the establishment of a common language. Regardless of how the term smear has roots in snow skiing's schmear, and schmearing cream cheese onto bagels, and despite who was first using the term in water skiing and what they meant by it at the time, I chose to use the term "smear" in the book to describe a concept that is fundamental to the understanding of how a ski moves through water. With over a thousand books out there, for better or worse, "smear" is now a fairly common term. So in the interest of establishing a common language, we need to remain clear on what smear means. It's not meant to replace great descriptive terms like skidding, drifting, sliding, hole-digging, hockey stops, etc. Rather it's meant to be a catchall phrase for any event where the sideways drift of the ski includes a rotational component, e.g. the ski is smearing so much it's digging holes. In his post above, @Chris Rossi said that "Smear is done with two hands on the handle while Skid is done with only one hand." If the definition of "smear" is to stand up, then a skid turn is an example or subset of "smear." It's still legitimate and descriptive to call it a skid turn; but since it's a sliding rotational event, I'm suggesting that a skid turn is an example of smear. With this in mind, I'd like to respectfully ask @Chris Rossi himself to weigh in on this definition for the sake of future clarity. Chris: Do you think at this point that it's fair to use the term "smear" as a generic catchall for any sliding rotational ski behavior?

There seems to be a belief that it's within the skier's ability to get the ski pre-rotated before reaching the ball. While this is an option on snow ski's, it really isn't on a water ski. I say this having spent months with @Rossi pursuing this specific goal. What we found was that while it's possible to get a tiny amount of extra smear right before the ball, the setup also caused a significant loss of width and space before the ball. Slalom skis simply have too much directional stability to allow any significant pre-rotation before it's time to turn. @Deep11 - The reason a skier can get the ski smearing (and turning) earlier at longer line lengths is because it's possible to start turning earlier when there is more width on the course. As the line gets shorter, any attempt to get the ski sideways before the ball will just make the skier turn narrow into the ball. Smear isn't necessarily bad at shorter line lengths either, so long as it's timed properly to go around the ball. If the ski is a flat stiff ski, this turn may need to turn with a significant amount of smear; and that can be just fine. Smear isn't all bad. Highly smeared turns just tends to scrub off more speed with slightly less consistent finishing angles. They also tend to generate more tail lift with a slightly elevated exposure to blowouts. But skiers capable of taming these characteristics can benefit from the increased acceleration, space and width created by the same flat stiff ski—not all bad.

@Jordan - You've got it. Theoretically, it would be best if the whole turn was pure carve. But in practice that's hard to achieve. Besides, we're lucky to have some smear. Smear is more adjustable than the carving component of a turn, and we can adjust smear so there's just the right amount to exit the turn with perfect angle—when we're not busy screwing up. @Ed_Johnson - I like how you've differentiated these two examples of smear, but smear is smear regardless of acceleration or deceleration. Smear is just a descriptive term for events where the sideways drift of the ski includes a rotational component—a condition met by both circumstances you've described. FWIW, I usually call hockey-stop hole-digging smear "over-smear," but your terms are better cause they're more descriptive. For those just scanning this thread: Smear is just a descriptive term for events where the sideways drift of the ski includes a rotational component.