BG1

@Horton OK. You need a substitute ski tester for days you can’t ski. Are you taking applications? I will ski for food.

@Horton Anything new to report with the 2014 A3? Thanks

@bogboy I had a large (250lbs?) ski buddy who tried the 70.25. He had no luck with the ski and went back to his 69" Goode. It was very hard for him to come out of the water on it and he spent a lot of time swimming around 2 and 3 ball. I checked the width and a found it to be narrow, about the same as most 67" skies. Ski may have been developed just for CP skiing 36 and super short. I think CP skied his best Goode rounds on a 69” but don’t know that for a fact. Just what I remember reading. I’m sure there is someone on here that knows which Goode he usually skied on back then.

@6Balls You and all of your siblings are very blessed to have such a dad. I don’t know you but still I’m very sorry for these tough times you’re going through.

That's bad news. Has anyone heard anything more?

Chuck Norris ran it at -43 and 0 MPH. The course came to him.

One year at nationals I was getting my gear out of the car when a skier walks by dripping wet and says to me “Watch out on the starting dock end, their pulling gates left and right!” He was not happy. This skier was a former regional EVP. Judges are going to call it differently and differently on each end. In this case if a skier has a close cut by the gate on one end of the lake he is done. One of his competitors has a close cut on the other end and he keeps skiing. It is impossible to be fair with or without video when you have multiple judges making a very important decision with something as arbitrary as “give the benefit to the skier.” Not to mention they can’t really tell anyway when it’s close. Shane is not going to the nationals because of this rule and I can understand. It’s a lot of time, money, and effort to gamble. Just think how mad he would have been if they had pulled his gate and he had to swim to the bank knowing he had made them. One of my old ski partners had this happen to him 3 times at nationals and 2 of those were on his opener. He no longer skis. Another one bites the dust as the sport dwindles and we clench on to this useless rule.

Senior judge. Ready to test for senior driver and reg. scorer.

@ RAL I’ve seen a many jumps take 2-3 minutes then the jumper has to take another jump because of some technical problem. This may be good or bad for the jumper and their competition depending on how far their jump really was. This goes all the way back to the wide “triangle days”. It happened more than once at this years Masters where you have the best running the tournament and equipment. There is no better system to score the event so jumpers have to deal with it. Do you want the slalom skier to have to rerun there pass when a decision can not be made promptly? What a waste of time that would be for something that does not even score.

“Barney” As in Barney the purple dinosaur. As in the purple 11.25 meter loop on a slalom line. “Let me have a shot at Barney.”

@alex38 Fixing the gate problem is simple and there is only one real solution. Stop trying to call them. I would think the technology used in golf and tennis to follow the ball could be adapted to waterskiing gate judging somehow but at what cost and what’s the gain? And if this worked as well as anyone could ever dream you would still be getting down to the fractions of an inch! They’re not even scored! There comes a point where you have to say uncle. I know I’ll stop helping put on our tournaments if our sport gets to be that much trouble. It’s hard enough to find enough officials to conduct a 3 round class C tournament and pay expenses. For the technology to be there and put to use the money has to be there. I saw on the news there are 300,000,000 cell phones in the US with up to $100 or more per month on top of the cost of the cell phone. How many ski sites put on tournaments? 200 would be my best guess off the top of my head. The smartphone would never have gone to market if there were only 200 potential customers. Tennis and golf have millions of viewers on TV and waterskiing has 0. Gate judging and reviewing will always be a problem. We need to stop doing it.

Yellow, green, blue, and other colors. Colors used in a sentence to describe the length of the ski line. “Let me feel the blue steel.” “Give me some yellow fellow.” “I want some of the mean green.”

The first time I “felt” short line slalom was at -22 back in 1922 but I think true short line slalom starts at -32/13 meters. That is where the pros start and there is no way you can call any pro tournament skiing long line. They start with a short line and continue to extremely short lines. To the individual, it’s all relative to the individuals skill level I guess.

For the skier, having their gates pulled/reviewed can be anywhere from a distraction to the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” provoking the skier to stop tournament skiing. It’s a high stakes decision for the skier made by others. As a judge I understand this and take the responsibility very seriously but at the same time I’m trying to be consistent/fair. I have been put in a tower and given a 30 second lesson on how to operate the video equipment and then the next skier comes through the gates. Between passes I would be going over and over in my mind how to operate the equipment hoping we didn’t have a gate review because I might make a mistake and stop the tournament. Different equipment has different controls which can lead to mistakes/delays. You can’t blame these mistakes on the officials every time. So do we need to make this $200-300 DVR the worldwide standard? Do we need to require it at every site? Do we need to require that every official attend a clinic to be trained on this equipment to insure proficiency? For those of the “technologically challenged” generation, that might mean the end of their thankless, volunteer judging career, rendering us with even fewer officials. And after doing all that, you still can’t make consistent, fair calls when it’s close, regardless of what standard you put in the rule book. Center the right-hand gate buoy, touch the left side of the right-hand gate buoy, not touch the buoy at all, can go the right of the right-hand buoy but you have to touch it, it still can come down to inches or even less than an inch and the resolution/pixel or frames per second are not even close to giving the official the view required. Give the doubt to the skier? The official can still be faced with “It looked like skier A might have been out by 4 inches so I gave it to him. It looked like skier B might have been out 6 inches so I pulled his.” Lighting from one side of the lake to the other will be different which could also lead to inconsistent close calls because the official could see it differently going each way. So, you’re back to the very expensive equipment that @disland is talking about. But those NFL officials using said equipment have tons of hours of training, are paid up to $160K/year or more, and are the best of the best. And even with that, you still would not be able to tell when the wake/spray covers the buoy. You can’t split a hair with a sledge hammer (current cheap DVR) and you can’t split a hair with a razor blade (super high-tech video equipment) if you can’t see the hair. Gate judging and reviewing will always be a problem. We need to stop doing it.

Gate judging and reviewing will always be a problem. We need to stop doing it.

It’s for hanging the ski from a hook so you can beat it with a stick like a pinata after a bad set. This new feature will be standard on all manufactures skis in 2014.

The hole is a targeting porthole. You should spot the right hand gate for the next buoy through the porthole at the same time your free hand touches the handle at the end of the turn.

@MS That's what Chuck said.

@MS Dang that’s funny

@Wish Any of the products listed in the posts above will work. Even just a drop of oil is better than nothing.

Aluminum tends to “bond” with other metals under pressure and friction. It can be drilled out and re-tapped by a skilled machinist on a milling machine. Some may charge as much as the new fin clamp. If you have a friend to do it then maybe you could get it done for free. Screw extractor is of no use in this case and in most others.

@Horton Would you mind telling us what size Connelly and how much do you weigh?

A full pass at -43. The CC 200 was having the oil changed so Chuck dove in, rope in teeth, and pulled the set. All the times were in the 15.9’s. Chuck does nothing slow.

Listen to @mlusa He’s got it figured out.

The longest anyone should use a rope for slalom skiing is 2 years regardless of the amount of use or care taken with the rope. I get a new one each spring (ML) and keep an eye on it all season. Any injuries from a rope breaking after 2 years should be considered self-inflected. Used ski ropes become brittle with time.