J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

Trencher wrote:

Wouldn't the history prove the point about racing slowing down innovation ? Smaller sidecuts were not accepted in skiing until the race skis had them. Snowboard designers may not have invented the small radius sidecut, but they demonstrated how effective it could be in a way that no ski manufacturer had befor.

Trencher

I don't think it would as, Dick Durance I mentioned particularly as he was a racer. To an extent, it's a matter of interpretation though.

The reason skiers were slow to see the benefits was all down to skiers, those Olin skis were released to instructors to rave reviews but dealers couldn't shift them. Pretty much the same with Fischers as well I think. But that's just down to interpretation.

Another way of looking at it is to try and fix the start of commercial snowboarding, wouldn't that be around 1984 or thereabouts? Ski manufacturers were trying bigger side-cuts by then.

I know Burton were releasing snowboards in the late 70's but take a look at the pictures, you'll see no pronounced side-cut there. Indeed, here's one from 1987 (from snowboard-mag.com), not much side-cut )



I don't recall anyone at the time saying carving skis were based on snowboards, we'd all seen snowboards by then and no one particularly thought they had a high side-cut. This is an idea somehow that's come along much later as a reinterpretation of history, that needn't be inaccurate but it's odd at least.

& I should also say, you can do this with your ski poles and, a bit of our old favourite, trigonometry )

Put one pole vertically in the snow, put the other pole touching and at a right angle to first pole pointing up hill. Now move the horizontal pole down until the uphill end touches the snow.

Now you've a right angled triangle (the 90' is where the poles touch) with the hypotenuse formed by the slope itself. Now just do the maths )

Seriously though.... you'll work out that if the horizontal pole is at the top of the vertical pole then you've formed a triangle with equal sides, and you'll remember from school that must mean the slope is 45'. Some other angles are :

1:1/2 ~27'
1:3/4 ~37'
1:1 = 45'

Over 45' and we move the horizontal pole horizontally, when half its length is moved you're looking at around 63'

You can put some tape on your ski poles and/or write on them to remember this as my handy hint of the day :D

who knew there was so much maths, engineering and fluid dynamics in skiing :?: :lol:

freezywater wrote:
Ise, how does an inclinometer work and where can you get one from?

I have three, the one that I just dug out is a BCA one from a Snow Study skit I carry :




I also have a lifelink one and a one builtin to a Recta compass I carry. All available from Telemark Pyrennes or FaceWest I'd think.

You can see the red marked sections there and that's showing the critical angle for avalanches. The other stuff is a snow thermometer and measuring rule for measuring temperature profiles in the snow pack, magnifying viewer and crystal card for analysing snow composition and some assorted risk evaluation tables.

Trencher wrote:Easy carving sidecuts came from snowboard design, not skiing at all :wink: .

Trencher

That's a good example of something everyone knows and is so often repeated it must be true ) At the least it's massively overstated, Fischer for example had a pair of high side-cut skis back in the early '80's which I think had a lot to do with their active effort to transfer knowledge from their aviation business and marked a different way of thinking about ski design that took a long time to catch on. By 1990 or so Elan and Kneissl were producing high sidecut skis as well.

If we looked yet further back in ski history we'd see skiers like Dick Durrance as long ago as 1939 with a 74-54-62mm ski. Even in the 60's side-cuts on race skis were around 7 or 8mm, that might not seem a lot but it's a side-cut and then it's just a question of degree. Olin also had a ski back in 1983 with an 8m turn radius but it looked so outlandish people wouldn't buy it.

We can go back even longer, in the 1800's as people began to make tele-mark skis for resale for the first time it was realised very quickly that pinching the waist would give an easier turning ski. If you go to a ski museum you'll see side-cut progressively increasing from the early 1800's right until the 1930's or so when it stalled for decades.

So the easier turning that a high side-cut gives has been known for a long, long time, and why not? It's an obvious piece of engineering after-all. At the least it's pretty clear that snowboard designers didn't originate this idea, they may have embraced it a little more enthusiastically but it wasn't even a little bit original.

Trencher wrote: Bad idea, as racing in any form is always out of date because the specifcations of equipment are so restricted.

I can see why that might appear to be so but it's not entirely true, the trend to high sidecut skis started with racers. In part they were exploiting some new technology and a loophole in the rules gave some guys a first mover advantage. We know how true that is in formula 1 motorsport, the technology is at the leading edge and continually pushing the rules leads to product development.

What's odd in skiing at this moment, and some other areas, is that a series of trends have come together to stimulate innovation, most notably cheap manufacturing, cheap computer aided design and modelling, slow reactions by some large manufacturers and just a whiff of zeitgeist where everyone wants something special. Nevertheless, most skis used by most people owe more to race skis whether it's slalom or skierX than they do to some dude in the Tetons )

& yes, that did sound a bit short to me as well :)

vampyre wrote:

Didn't seem like 78 degrees to me like, but do I win a prize for the artistic license?

:twisted:

I thought we'd done that to death, 78 % or 38 degrees )

Admin wrote:Now we've sorted that out - who's going down it (head) first?

or for that matter the Swiss Wall which I believe is measured around 80% or more depending whose figure you take

Tony_H wrote:The bottom line is there is a sign there, and details on the website, stating the slope is 78%. Your opinion on the use of that sign is not really important to be honest. Perhaps you should contact the website and ask them to withdraw the 78% statement if you feel it is so useless?

it's useful to me, I know what it means )