What is Long / Shallow? What is Short / Deep?

[Horton]

There are a couple of problems when we talk about Long Shallow vs Short Deep. What is deep? Or Shallow or Long or Short? To me long shallow is anything a lot shorter and deeper than the old school standard numbers like roughly 6.850 / 2.500 / .75.

 

In my mind less than 2.475 is shallow but maybe you think that is normal. To me anything longer than 6.8999 is long-ish but again maybe you think that is moderate.

 

I know that at one point @MarcusBrown ran a fin that was maybe 2.53 deep. Now that is DEEP.

 

[bigskieridaho]

I run my fin at 2.52. So I guess you would say that is deep? It just works for me.

[Horton]

2.5200 IS DEEP!

[Bruce_Butterfield]

Fin settings are all relative. I was skiing with a friend, probably 15-20 years ago, and looking at his ski, thought his fin was on the deep side. Just for grins I stuck my calipers on it - 2.740. He happened to be running 39 consistently at 36 at the time and was able to tune the ski for his specific style.

 

Certainly that depth is an outlier, but it goes to show that fin settings are a guideline, not absolute.

[skibug]

@Bruce_Butterfield do you remember the length, just to put it in perspective.

[Bruce_Butterfield]

I don't remember the length, buy I'm pretty sure it was short. He also had a history of running his binding way back from factory. 1-2" back was not unusual for him.

[Horton]

@Bruce_Butterfield PerfectPass and heavy skis days? Freaking Crazy.

[liquid d]

 

I had metal welded on the top, so i could go deeper. This is a KD 7000 at 2.74 and 7.0 length. Unchanged from I don't when they came out..haha. I had to weld the metal on, because the fin was so far out the bottom, it wouldn't hold. So many sets, and time to try things back then; it was half the fun!

I think I might mount that badboy up in the spring and see what she's got!

[dchristman]

Maybe @santangelo could provide some statistics based on his FinDB app. Mean and median numbers and trends based on model years would be interesting.

[Drago]

I was thinking deep= more than .01 deeper than published stock #s. Then the need to go shorter is in relation to depth. I had a string of running 39s with 2.535, a short ski for my weight,and bindings way back.

@Bruce_Butterfield maybe one of those short fins cut straight up the back (stiletto style)?

[lpskier]

Joel Howley (and a few others) run their Connelly GT fins at 2.530. When I was riding a Prophecy, I ran 2.512. Slightly off topic, KLP ran his DFT at greater than an inch for a while.

[BobF]

I'd put myself in the deep/short camp with 2.515/6.915 since the factory length for my Quest is 6.930. I don't consider the 6.915 as a long setting.

 

Interesting thing about my numbers is that after reading @SkiJay's book, I calculated the LE setting of all my past adjustments and found that I settled on numbers that are within .002 of factory.

[Horton]

@"bf`" I would call that Long / Deep. What level skier are you? If the rope is very short I would think you are working pretty hard.

[BobF]

@horton - I thought you might based on your original post. I open at 28, make 90% of my 32's, and get most of 35 on a good day. On an exceptional day I can take down 35, but it's rarely pretty. 34 mph skier.

 

Factory #'s I have for my ski are 2.510 / 6.930. I tried them, but ended up at 2.515 / 6.915 after a couple of years on the ski.

[Horton]

@"bf`" No idea why D3 older stock settings are so big. If it works...

[Deanoski]

To me any thing over 2.500 is deep and anything over 6.865 tips is long

 

IMO

[santangelo]

@dchristman , I do have the data, but it can be taken out of context for many reasons, but sharing the data, is part of my eventual goal with the app. There is not enough data, or more importantly, segmentation by criteria, to really read anything into it. For instance, I would never compare a setting of the same brand, model, and length of a ski to someone who is riding double hardshells with someone that is riding rubber and a toe plate. My experience says these two settings should be very different.

 

With that said, I took a sample snapshot of the most popular ski in the system for a specific length (67) and here are the results. This is the difference FROM STOCK:

Front Binding: .221 forward of stock

Fin Length: .003 less than stock

Fin Depth: .001 more than stock

Fin DFT: .002 forward of stock

Wind Angle: .74 degrees less than stock

 

I do have an opinion on what this means, but this is not very valuable data to any one user, simply because I don't have enough criteria to segment it. Ideally, all the users would fill out their user profiles so I can user their ability level to condition the data with like skiers. I didn't require this data to use the app, but it will be required for users to input this data in order to search data in the future.

 

So there's more work to do with finDB to get to this point. I hope to do some of it over the winter and offer useful data to users in the spring/summer of 2018.

[Horton]

@santangelo i think for the data to really mean anything you would also have to segment skiers by ability level. I have to imagine you would need a huge data set to extract and meaningful.