mwetskier

whats the story on the cabin in the background of that photo? is it floating? or on piling of some sort?

ive seen reference to the kris lapoint article a few times but it took a while for me to find it. for anyone interested it can be found in this thread about 27 posts down from the top. http://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/4794/bob-lapoint-on-wings/p1

heres the definitive answer before revision r http://www.schnitzskis.com/zerooff.html

your skiing just wide enough to squeak around the ball so theres no way for you to backside it. at your widest reach point which is the apex of the turn your already too far down course and too close to the ball. watch this video below of chris rossi where he apexes well up course of the ball at 32 off and thats 10 feet less rope than you have. you need to carry your angle out bound longer and reduce the delay between the end of your pull and the beginning of your turn. brooks wilson once told a group of us there are only two positions in slalom and those are pulling and turning. so when your done pulling start turning with no delay. if you turn in side or up course of the ball then make your pull longer or work at staying out bound longer. but change the point where you decide the ball is the right distance away to start turning and make a mental commitment to initiate the turn earlier than is currently comfortable for you.

you dont know what truly late gates are until you find yourself missing the gate on the down course side and if you havent experimented until you do miss that way then you cant know what the limit is. use up a long set skiing only the gates and 1 ball trying to go later each time until youve found the failure point. by then youll know exactly how late you can go and how much angle you can get into 1 ball which will tell you where you actually want your gate to be.

footloose42 - 'Well the way set screws work is by digging into the fin, so there's really no way to know if your turn of the screw is moving the fin x inches or digging into the fin x inches. ' if your using a caliper to check the measurement thats a really good way to know. in fact if the caliper is in place and your increasing depth you can actually watch it change one thousand inch at a time.

works fine for depth and dft but wont translate in any linear fashion for tip / length.

according to thans chart i need to get a lot taller.

another possible solution is for skiers to realize that closely brushing the right hand gate ball which sometimes causes a miss is not actually the very best path at shorter lines. as evidence of this the current mens and womens world record holders tend to split the gates instead.

hey as soon as i posted it made the link live automatically so there you go.

gator1 - on steve shnitzs website he has a link to many pages of analysis by david nelson who I think maybe has a phd in physics. not sure how to make a live link, but heres the url for some of the articles: http://www.schnitzskis.com/davidnelson.html one point he makes is that at the shorter line lengths the skiers point of crossing the wake is much more up course at the gate then at any other point in the pass. from that and other things he says ive kind of concluded that aiming just up course of the left hand gate ball might be a better strategy.

good way to never have a pass cut for a gate miss. plus david nelsons studies on shnitzs site seem to suggest that a shortline skier doesnt benefit from aiming tight for the up course right gate ball but might do better skimming the more down course left gate ball instead.

seanh ' So we took .005 depth out to give the onside some more slide at the finish and take tip pressure away from the offside. ' this confuses me cuz the shnitz fin tuning guide says to much tip pressure off side can be fixed by *adding* fin depth which seems the opposite movement here. are the rules different now with zo?

first generation monza

i think a flat surface would resist being submerge under impact a lot more than a ball-shaped bottom half which is pretty streamlined. that's prolly why my canoe paddle is flat and not sperical

if a buoy cost the same as a airbag Im sure just as smart a solution would be developed since auto airbags cost $600+

gregy, so would you agree that if a ball can be easily dis placed to where its fully under water its about as safe as its going to get because no greater force is needed to move it farther? if thats true then it seems to me the quest should be about making a ball that can be fully sunk by the least amount of force or impact

gregy, you said 'when submerged deeper' but its not really 'submerged' until its fully under water after which more depth doesnt make it more buoyant. size and weight of the ball determine its buoyancy which is why half filled with water is less buoyant and there for = safer. the archimedes thing came from a friend who lurks here but doesnt post but i trust his opinion on stuff like that.

'One problem with any buoy is that buoyance force is increased when submerged deeper. So when you hit it with your ski and push down on the buoy its going to push back with more force the deeper it goes.' gregy, archimedes established over 2000 years ago that this is not true. buoyancy is determined by the weight of the liquid displaced by the ball minus the weight of the ball and that doesn't change with more depth

isnt the water line supposed to be half way on the ball? if the ball is real soft the way most skiers like how could the top half stay sperical if the bottom is a cone? i would think the air inside would distort it toward a ball shape the same way a air bubble or a rain drop works.

gregy this was explained to me by my brother in laws best friend who is very up on the physics of the water in ball thing. he says the mass of the ball is only increased on dry land but in the lake the water in the buoy adds no mass becasue its water just sitting in water. the air in the ball is floating on top of the water and when the ball is sunk by a ski the air is pushed down ward exactly like it would be in a bubble buoy. the water inside moves down ward with the ball due to gravity and the air sitting above it in the ball. even if the ball was completely full of water you"d still just be pushing water through water and the resistence of the outside shape of the ball would be the main resistence which is the same the same with or with out the water inside. supposedly this has been pretty fully tested.

first turn island i ever went around was in a tournament and i drifted inside the wake and ended up coming to a sudden stop ankle deep in mud. only then did the boat crew clue me to stay right behind the boat.

first turn island i ever went around was in a tournament and i drifted inside the wake and ended up coming to a sudden stop ankle deep in mud. only then did the boat crew clue me to stay right behind the boat.

one thing not mentioned but worth considering is islands at each end of a long skinny lake look cool. especially if they have vegitation on them.

for what its worth, andy mapple showed us a wally buoy at his shop and seemed to be quite impressed with them. i think he uses the wally buoys on his course in orlando.