Gus

@dchristman Brilliant!!! I just did the same, 20 seconds of work, and its so much better now! I hope Reflex is listening, they should adapt their mold for this.

lol - indeed, its about the the 50m from the car to the boat, when the car is parked optimally. I do have a cover for the ski, but that is to protect the bottom from scratches, not to carry it. I find the most logical and natural place to pick it up is at the boot. It's a symmetry thing. And every time again I get punished by the hard plastic cutting into my fingers. There must be a way.

..to carry the @#$@# ski. I'm happy with the quantum trick ski. Happy with the Reflex binding. But it feels we have a little design flaw still left to fix. So I shout out, hoping that someone listens, French or any other language. I would like a way to carry my ski by the booth without incurring these: Thank you. Looking forward to the first decent solution there :)

In my experience, there are two things that can help you make real progress with tricks: 1) plan at least one full week (the more the better..) with tricking at least twice every day. And 2) during such a week, next to the fun stuff and next to the consolidation of the tricks you know, really keep attacking the next trick; or the next few similar difficulty level tricks in your progression. I'm pretty sure that after such a week you'll see a jump in your skills. It's worth the investment!

@klindy Thanks! It doesn't look completely foolproof the way it is formulated, but as long as all the judges understand that failed wake spins should not be counted as surface spins it'll be fine I guess. Or maybe add something like: "Surface turns that cross the crest of the wake are considered wake turns and will score zero." to be less ambiguous.

Is there anything in the rules that prevents a wake (spin) trick that doesn't get enough air from being counted as a surface spin trick?

Looks like a trick ski especially designed for the cable park and its obstacles and ramps etc.

I also made DIY PVC ones, they perform reasonable, but I'm starting to think that for tricks anything pylon mounted is unsuitable. Anyone tried filming tricks using wake-eye cylon? Maybe the solution for tricks is decoupling from the pylon.

Has anyone ever heard of a drained block getting destroyed from freezing residual water?

@eleeski 3th! Congratulations Eric!!

One really nice discovery for me this season was that I can do the 'simple' toe tricks (TB,TF, TS, TWB, TWF) without having a release person in the boat, using a 'barefoot front toe handle'. One that doesn't have the so called 'bear trap'. Another advantage of that handle is that they are usually quite wide, good for the reverse back wrap :)

The reason to do the WBB (and W5F) from inside to out is air. Its way easier to get air, you are falling off the wake, kind of. So just by moving sideways 'a bit determined' you get air already. Somehow that's easier than getting air by moving sideways uphill and trying to get lauchhed into the air. I think.

TS (a quick 130 pts) might seem scary, but its not. Reverse TS is. TBB? Doesn't that require reverse TB? I wouldnt bother about the 540 and 720, you have to drop O and RO for those. Slow, boring. Instead of the O's, the BB's are faster, and you can do them fast without being able to 'hold' a reverse backwrap. Having said that, i'm still doing the O's myself :( The WBB starting from wrap, landing backwards, inside to out is easier than a WO, or similar. And once you got that, the step to doing a W5F, inside out is also quite small.

Olivier Fortamps has a nice shop: http://olivierfortamps.com/categorie-produit/slalom-en/?lang=en

Here's what came out: Its not very lightweight due to the battery, but easy to carry, loud, I hope quite robust, and versatile. It has a 5A fuse. And it looks a little bit like Orac, if you ignore the red beauty case I got from from a recycle shop, but not many people will know Orac. I ended up using two of these little timer relay devices, one for the 20 second countdown and 5 seconds of light, and another, triggered by the first, to keep the beep/car horn limited to 0.5 seconds. Its fun to use in the boat, although there were some concerns about hearing damage from the ones operating it. With just the beeper activated, not even the car horn. I didn't tell them they could disable the sound, yet.