Other Forums - Trash Talk

[Old MS Accout]

Thats skifly. Lets hope that we can keep this forum on the up and up and no negitive crap like that.

Even the waterski forum had a few noname posters today. Complaining about spelling and carring on sentences.

Without trial and error we get nowhere.  

[Horton]

Trust me, it will never be like that here because I will not allow it. I am sure we would have more readers and participants if I allowed that kind of thing but  . . .  No

 

[lkb]

Thank you for your efforts...the BS that the no-namers post needs to stay elsewhere

[Horton]

I am unsure the trash talk is good for anything. I can not see that SkiFly does anthing good for water skiing.  What you have to remember is that a lot of people read the forums and may not get it. I think that post on Kent's board is designed to cost Radar money and grief.

 As for you and all the regulars, you all get it.

Picking on MS is different. I mean the guys icon is "Hello Kitty"!

[Horton]

A reminder of why I make you guys register before you can post: 

What is said about Radar over at that other forum really makes me mad. A lot of skiers filter though there every day and read what is said. It would be easy for the casual reader to think that Radar is an evil company with an inferior product. I would not care what is said except that it could cost Radar a substantial amount of sales. I like the guys at Radar but would stand up for any reputable ski company.

 

Do you think that thread could affect 100 ski sales? That is approximately $100,000.00. I do not think that is funny at all.

Anonymously suggesting  that a ski is dangerous is kind of like suggesting that someone is a . . wife beater (Ok not really that bad but you get the idea).  No matter how untrue it may be, once the idea is floated you can not take it back.  

 

[Ed_Obermeier]

It really pisses me off too John.  What is being posted on SkiFly is especially unbelieveable, I can't believe the nerve and the ignorance of some people.  The Ellis brothers must have absolutely no shame to allow such crap to flourish on their web site.  That or they need whatever income it generates so badly that they've sold their souls.  To me their professional reputations have been permanently damaged by the lack of control they continue to exert over their web site.  Same for Steve Schnitzer in my opinion.

At first I thought that it could possibly cause Radar some damage.  Perhaps a few uninformed, uneducated wanabee types (the type who frequent SkiFly) who don't know any better who are looking at their first top line ski may decide not to go with a Radar due to that crap.  However I tend to believe that with the target market for most Radar product being knowledgable, mid to higher end skiers who do the homework and know how to separate the crap from the fact, to those folks it won't matter because they know and understand what's going on.  I think in fact that some may be pissed off enough by that crap that they might even take a harder look at a Radar if they weren't considering one before.

So I tend to think that over time it won't cost Radar much is sales, and like most things I think it will in time blow over and be forgotten.  Especially once we get back into the skiing season and people again start boasting about how well they're skiing on their Radars (I've never been more consistant than I am on my MPD) after two or three seasons on one.

Those of us who know what's going on need to do what we can to offset the idiots and character assassins with factual information.  Rolling in the muck with the idiots on their turf serves no good purpose, we'll find other ways to get the info out.  Serious skiers won't allow this to go unopposed, they'll continue to speak fact to those who really want fact rather than unfounded mud slinging and outright lies.

Ed 

[DW]

I am always amazed at posts like that, IMO if you can't say it face to face, don't post it.  A couple of comments to think about in no way incriminating the ski in question because I have no experience with one.  Perhaps we should also realize where in the product segment most of the skiers on these forums reside, the very upper end, high performance area of the product mix.  At that end of the spectrum, when the product is used at it's extreme's sometimes failures will occur.  Sometimes those failures are related to the manufacturing of the product, but the reality is the failure rate on a high end ski will be higher than that of the average ski.  It is in all other product lines.  That is not an excuse for a defective product, but I certainly can't imagine any company that is passionate about thier product intentionally sending out something defective.  I certainly don't condone sending out a defective product, but I also realize what I am getting in to when I strap on the ski and push it to the limit.

What positive items can come from this incident:  What caused the injury and how could it have been prevented assuming the ski broke?  Should we mandate a binding plate to force bindings to stay together?  Has the company been able to analyze the broken ski to determine root cause?  If not, why not?  Would a change in binding type have prevented the injury? 

[Horton]

The reason that I am so picky about what is posted here is because I know that these forums are not only read by informed, high end skiers. A few hundred skiers came though here in December. I assume that a few thousand skiers read SkiFly in the same period. Newbie skiers are surfing around taking the pulse and they make decisions based on what they read. The ski companies need to sell as many skis as possible to survive and any bad press is going to cost them money.  Again 100 skis = $100,000.00 worth of sales. Radar wants to sell skis to everyone. Does Ez-Slalom want to only sell courses to one kind of skier?  

As for the Ellis family, it is father and son, not brothers. I do not really know them but if you meet them, they seem like very nice people. I do not know anyone who knows them personally and does not like them. Scot is one hell of an athlete.  Besides that, I do not understand their thinking with the web site except the controversy brings in readers. The more readers they have the more they can charge for ad space and the more influence the site has (Wild Assumptions).  I am kind of amazed that PerfectPass sponsors it. I have heard that USA-WaterSki had asked them to clean it up.   

Maybe it is a free speech thing?  I do not know what they are thinking but I do not think it is good for water skiing.

[Horton]

I surfed the other two forums this morning as was really pissed by some of the leading questions and innuendos about Radar and the whole deal with Ed Neil. What happened to Ed was a horrible but this is a dangerous sport. All of the ski companies have had some breakage. Luckily there have been very few substantial injuries. Ed was terribly unfortunate.

If you want to be sure that you never get hurt I suggest that you never leave the house.  If you are going to ski you need to realize that it is at your own risk. If you insist on skiing and you want to be absolutely sure that you ski does not break I suggest an EP Stiletto.  Personally I suggest best PPO and AFLAC you can get.

To continue to malign Radar for this one very unfortunate incident is just bullshit. What really got me mad was posts on both forums that look as if the author knows exactly what the deal is and went on to ask leading questions to restart the conversation to hurt Radar. I suppose these could be honest questions but after years of reading SkiFly I generally assume the worst.

Horton

[HO 410]

John,

    Your forum is an environment that fosters the kind of conversation that you would expect to have at the starting dock. This is great, considering that we only really get to talk to a limited number of skiers on a day by day basis. I don't know how much you've had to patrol the forum to keep the discussion as though they were being had face to face, but the effort is not lost. I believe that this is the critical difference between ballofspray and a great number of other internet forums.

On a positive note, it seems as though a good number of the equipment questions that used to be posted over at skifly have gone over to Kent's board or the waterskimag forum.

[Horton]

Thanks 410,

There is not much that I have had to do. I think in 3 years I have seriously banned 1 poster. (MS does not count.... that is mostly just fun) The thing that made me start this forum is I am a total ski geek and found it hard to generate thoughtful discussion at SkiFly and that was when SkiFly was way better then it is today.

If you want to help with BallOfSpray all you have to do is use it more. No I do not want anyone to make up topics for no reason but the more good threads that are here the more readers we will have -  then it will build on itself.

 

[skibug]

Not to belabor a really touchy subject; but, I can tell you from first hand accounts that Ed Neill holds Radar and Andy Mapple accountable for the horrible incident.  I ski on one of Ed's lakes, in North Carolina, that he leases to our club.  On the starting/boat launch dock, he has a sign posted that says "NO RADAR SKIS ALLOWED" and trust me, it is not meant as a joke.  As a coincidence, two of our members had skis break this year and luckily there were no injuries that occurred.  Both of them were in 2005 model year skis.  One was an HO Monza; the other was a D3 X5.  The two ski companies, HO and D3, handled it 180 degrees opposite of one another.  I will let you guess on which company handled it which way; but one company gave my ski buddy #1 a brand new 2007 or 2008 model and the other company basically told ski buddy #2, using an appropriate cliché, "go jump in the lake!".  Ski buddy #2 was even willing to buy a new ski from the company if they would have given him the "Nationals" pricing and the ski company wouldn't even do that.  Now ski buddy #2 is skiing on a ski made by the same company as ski buddy #1.  Unfortunately, I have a ski made by the same company as ski buddy #2.

 The moral of the whole story is acknowledgement of accountability.  The ski Ed was on was still a semi-prototype.  Radar changed their construction techniques somewhere in that time frame from what I am told.  We all assume risk with this very aggressive sport; but, it is a slap in the face when someone doesn't acknowledge that they made an error, intentional or not.

As far as skis breaking, for some reason all the companies quote a general failure rate of 1% - 2%.  If that is true, then why wouldn't they take care of those 1% - 2% to ensure return customers; as well as, premotion of that act by word of mouth.  When I purchase my next ski, in a year, I will be ready to spend $1000 - $1500; and, I will probably won't consider a company that won't stand behind their product. 

 As for which company above handled the identical situation which way.....if anyone wants to know......just ask me.  

[Horton]

SkiBug,

I appreciate your first hand comments. I have not doubt that what happened to Ed is horrific and I do not want anyone to think I am making light of it. My issue is with simply inflammatory posts made by those not directly involved. The idea of an open forum is only valid if the members can stand behind their statements. My gripe is with bomb throwers who post anonymously.  

 

[skibug]

I agree with you about the slanderous comments and the anonymous bomb dropping.  I am not one to condone that type of behavior.  However I do look to ski forum(s), this one in particular, to allow the honest exchange of information, industry news, and events.  In a constructive way, I would always like to know where the character of a man or company I am dealing with stands.  So as far as service and/or product related inforamtion, good or bad, I would hope we could talk openly here and solicit other members for their valuable input.

 I appreciate your efforts in keeping this site a one of intergrity and solid ethics.  Let's hope it can bleed over to some other sites that may need a dose. 

[BillBarton]

John, you should have jumped in on that thread (Kent's site) back when it started and we might have been able to shut it down. I was just as pissed as you are because there was no other way to take that message other than a personal attack on Eddie and Radar and I didn't think it was right. Ed jumped in and took over the fight while I was out of town, but it sure couldn't hurt to get a few more folks on there who don't appreciate this kind of baseless attack on one singled out person or company.

Bill 

 

Skibug - I'll bet you dinner that HO had a ski in the mail to ski buddy #1 before the end of the day.....

[skibug]

GalaxyToad,

I would be foolish to take that bet.........

[DW]

Trying to think positively, the HANS is now mandatory for all drivers in many series because of, particularly one of them, but actually 4 fatal accidents.  There has not been one since with a HANS.  In open wheel racing, moving the drivers legs behind the centerline of the front axle pretty much eliminated lower leg injuries.  What is the device or innovation for waterskiing that will reduce or eliminate the lower leg injuries.  That is what we need to focus on going forward.

[Old MS Accout]

Skibug,

Can I get some more info on the cracked Monza? Did it split down the center lenght wise or break in half? I just like to bank this type of info for future refrence.

I do not like the tone of the postings lately over at Kents site. We are starting to see more skifly tupe of stuff. No name posters being pretty critical without signing their names. I like what JTH has going on here except for my Kitty moniker.

The Radar Rocks.     

[skibug]

The Monza broke cross-ways or I guess in half; between the bindings.  The X5 broke in the same manner.

[Ed_Obermeier]

In response to your statement John "Does EZ-Slalom only want to sell courses to one type of skier?"  And I'm only going here because I think this goes to the heart of my earlier statement about the intellegence level of most "serious" skiers and what they base purchase decisions on, and how that may (or may not) impact Radar's sales.  Note that I said "serious skiers", not necessarily "good skiers" (there are a lot of skiers around I'd consider to be as serious as I am who wouldn't necessarily be considered to be good at it).

My experience with my little piece of the watersports market indicates to me that IF you'll provide enough fact-based information and make it easily-enough available, most "serious" skiers will make a value judgement based on the available information rather than rumor and inuendo.  Which is why I think it's critical to attempt to offset the crap and disinformation with good fact based information as much as is possible.  Agreed that the newbies who have no other basis to go on other than the crap they read on Skifly i.e. may not get it and use that as their basis for forming an opinion.  I tend to think that group is going to be relatively small and probably not a significant percentage of the group that would buy a Radar anyway, plus the longer they stay in it the more aware of other factual informational sources they become giving them more perspective to go on.  That's what I'm basing my statement on that I don't think Radar sales will be too negatively impacted over time by this.  Maybe I'm giving the uninformed masses more credit than they deserve but my own experience would indicate otherwise.

I kind of jumped into the WMB discussion with both feet because I was so disgusted to see ER and Radar getting such an unfair shelling and wanted to attempt to interject some perspective into the discussion.  If I shot my mouth off in such a manner that anyone here was offended by that I appologize.  I consider what is taking place there unfair, wrong, and nothing more than an orchestrated smear champaign and I just couldn't sit silent and watch it go on.  Keeping my damn mouth shut doesn't seem to be one of my strong suits...

Ed 

[Old MS Accout]

Thanks Dana,

Mark. 

[BillBarton]

"Keeping my damn mouth shut doesn't seem to be one of my strong suits..."

Ed

 

Come on Ed, don't apologize for that, it's one of the things we dig about you man! :)

Bill 

[Ed_Obermeier]

Thanks Bill.  I think I sufficiently clarified the point with the last post, I'm done with it.

I maintain that anyone with half a brain will separate the crap from the fact and make an educated decision on whether or not they think Radar skis are dangerous.  Mine is a low number early production copy, number 0028, I have a full season of hard use on it with two airplane trips with it to boot, and it's perfect.  I'm out.

Ed

[lkb]

 I really wish that our sport could somehow produce a TRULY reliable, predictable and safe binding which among other things would instantly get you off a broken ski. Does anybody know for sure what kind of bindings Ed N. was using when the accident happened?

[BillBarton]

Is the double six on a single plate or independent plates?

 

I guess my question really is: What makes them especially good for this situation? 

[lkb]

Skibug,

Can you give details of the accident? I know nothing other than his radar broke and he was severely injured.

Is he a big guy? What line length was he at? 34 or 36? What kind of bindings? Did the ski break completely into?

I'd like to know these things to help get a handle on my exposure to an accident like that.

Thanks

Lindsay Burgreen

[kstateskier]

I never really got involved in the shitstorm that was the ER bashing on Kents site but geez it pissed me off...  The unfortunate thing is that I know Schnitz to be of above average intelligence (well about skiing that is) but it seems like he talks out his ass...  And anyone that reads his posts on Radar can see the guy has a vendetta with Radar or Mapple or ER or something.  Its unfortunate that stuff has found its way off SkiFly and onto Kents board.  I've basically stayed post free on SkiFly for the past two years after I got ganged up on about a Ron Goodman Trick Ski that was mailed to him and almost never heard from again. 

 

on another note John I left you a VM - if you could give me a ring when you get a moment I've got a question for you... 

[HO 410]

I would not be surprised to find out that the vast majority of the flaming,

from unregistered users, is coming from three or four IP addresses. 

[skibug]

lkb,

I am not sure I should or can comment accurately on all the details.  What I do know are the views and comments Ed N. expressed about the whole situation, already stated in the earlier portion of this thread.  Sorry, I don't want to overstep my bounds or put any bad juju out there.

   

 

[Horton]

I would be happy if we shelved this topic unless there is really something new to talk about.

[Roger]

Skibug said "As a coincidence, two of our members had skis break this year and luckily there were no injuries that occurred."

 Is the leased lake where Ed was skiing when his ski broke? What are the odds of three different ski manufacturers skis breaking in the same way at the same lake?

 I ski at a very busy ski site (Okeeheelee) and I know of only two total breaks (between the bindings) in my time there (since 1996), both were Goodes and both were (fortunately) on the deep water start.

 

[Roger]

No problem John. I guess I was looking to see if all three skis broke at the same place. For example, if we (Okeeheelee) had three different skis break at the entrance gate to course #3, we'd be pulling up the entrance gates there to investigate rather than pointing to manufacturing defects. I have no interest other than it struck me as strange to have so many skis break at the same site...

 I'll not comment further on this subject.

 

[Horton]

I see where you are going and  think that SkiBug was saying that 3 skis broke, not three skis broke between the bindings.

The fact is: As the ski companies push the boundaries for higher performance, skis have gotten more fragile. Some skis break. It is a fact of modern skiing. What most skiers do not seem to grasp is that many elite skiers and designers do not believe that lighter is always better.  Skis are getting lighter because (we) skiers think it is better and think less of a heavier ski.

These are subjects to be discussed. Let’s start a new thread and talk about breaking skis or what ever. If there is something really meaningful or informative about Ed Neil’s injury lets hear it but if we are just beating Radar I do not want to hear it.

[Horton]

 

Full Disclosure: I ski on a Radar and have known those guys all my life. I am pretty sure that Herb and my dad knew each other before I was born.  I have skied the best of my life on an MPD (I have 3 of them). I really try not to be biased but it is hard in this case. I am sure that if ugly things were being said about anyone else in the industry I would stand up for them too. The day that I am sure that an industry player did something really unacceptable I will also be the first to point it out (CarbonWorx).

 

[skibug]

Just to clear thing up a little.  Ed's ski break and injury was on a different lake in a different year.  The two skis that broke on our lake this year were about a week apart at different points in the course.  There were no external factors involved.  They did both break between the bindings.