Plates... Naked truth :-) PART 2 (season 2011-2012)

[tali]

It is not true that You can't ec with a simple hard board or even a (hard enough) softboard. Usually at a proper skill level it can be done.

Yes, at a proper skill level one can play hockey using skates for figure skating. But I presume that if we see a hockey player on such skates, the most natural reaction will be astonishment and surprise - we won't be necessary praising his skill?
What is the difference about extremecarving? Why cannot we just ride Swoard - a board designed specifically for extremecarving, by the very guys who created this style?

[harald]

I have no experience with plates at all, but after reading the discussion and description of plates it seems that the wole idea is to make riding easier under some conditions. However, adding one more (expensive) gadget appears to make it more complicated. The trend for all successful innovations is to make things easier, more convenient and less complicated. Therefore, I doubt the success for plates, but as I said, I have no experience. From sports that I know (skiing, windsurfing, bicycling) the plug and play innovations have succeeded and survived, the complicated other ones, in spite of their good intentions, have been for the very special interested. But in the end, the market will decide and pick the winners. So go on and let us see what happens.

[Abrax]

And the other point of getting better edge-hold (on ice) for EC is to buy another softer Swoard instead of buying a plate... Seems that the price is similar...

[pokkis]

And pack-bag
So you could switch board quickly when you find icy slope

Or you could build small mechanics to keep them so that other one is against snow and other above that,
and voila, then you have built specific Swoard-plate

[Abrax]

I do already take 3 boards always with me... Just after I meet the slope I can see if the conditions are good enough for carving crowded carving or extremecarving tries... But I carry them in a Thuile on the roof of my car.

But take this as an example of choice which is made on our wonderful one sloped snow curorts... You have possibilities to go to uncrowded place somewhere there in the valley. We usually use one slope...

[pokkis]

So you think, this is my home resort longest and steepest run, from top to bottom.

http://www.pensnowboard.com/zap.mp4

[Abrax]

OK, so consider plate as a isolation between board and a binding.

The edge hold is increased because the board bends more naturally and it's flex is not connected with leg tension. So this is good.

On the other hand there is a plate, already tested system, which needs special board construction and a very high price to really benefit from it.

ECarvers needs more grip, but does not need any more cost or specific board construction. Anyway, torsional stiffness distribution provided by Swoard has proved to be good enough. But anyway, if there is a possibility to better the edge hold, why not to try?

Swoard team says that they use flexible boots and flexible bindings, which is not really a plate but works similarly... But I'm one of those lazy guys who prefer intecs... Sorry, no chance for any change in this place. I'm not perfect, I'm lazy and I don't like classic bindings at all.

So I want to isolate my super stiff bindings connected with my super stiff boots from my board and I don't want any plate which costs way too much. I don't want more weight and I don't like the snow underlaying under the plate.

Did You consider a 4x4 to 4x4 pad with a pivot? I mean isolated forward/backward pivot and 2 plates? Lower plate would be screwed to a board and the other part of it should be connected to a binding. Keep it simple, it should be about 1cm high to make it possible... ?? What You think?

It would be much cheaper and should work just as good as a solid plate. What You think?

[Abrax]

Of course there is a question how to connect the 2 parts. But this is yet under development... Please discuss just the basic idea behind this...

[Fin]

Good stuff and good conversation.

-----Fin, it's interesting to see that you are experiencing things similar to what we (the Swoard team) experienced in 2003 when we introduced our wide board Extremecarver Gen1 (while the market was focusing on narrow boards). We could not give our board to the people without any explanation, without any advice, etc. It was a lot of efforts, and apparently you also need now to spend a lot of energy to change people mind. The labor is never over, and after 8-9 years we still have to explain and demonstrate basic things.

Ha, you said it brother! Resistance to change is a human event. Not that all change is good, but if we did not try, it would just be so damn boring!

-----For me, using a (stiff!) plate WITH modified boots (springs, etc. making them softer) AND flat bindings giving good lateral flex, is a big paradox, a non-sense at extremecarving. But I'm ready to make some serious tests!

This is one of those issues that is hard to wrap ones head around and for sure a paradox. The plates are essentially "stiff" (as compared to the snowboard under them). But this does NOT translate to a stiff ride. Funny enough, what universally happened was it was found that a plate "softened" ever board it is put on. The plates ability to allow the board to flex freely without the rider trying to stomp it flat, made all boards feel softer. Right away all the board manufacturers that where making boards to be used with plates had to make their boards slightly stiffer (about 10% was a number I heard, but cannot confirm). And more so in the nose area. We confirmed this ourselves when we took some old "planks" off the wall that where considered too stiff and put a plate on them. Absolutely made them softer. So if you do try a plate on the Swoard, it might be necessary to go one up on stiffness. Only trying will confirm this though.

That said, we do find plates ADD torsional rigidity to the snowboard. This make sense when you look at how it is mounted. Of course this is only the area between the feet.

-----For good extremecarving we recommend riding flat (no canting). When stopped (or in his sitting room), the rider may feel uncomfortable. But when riding, there is a natural canting because the board is bent. (See this very old thread from July 2002!)

With a plate, which is totally stiff, there is of course no natural canting. The extremecarver may feel uncomfortable and can't balance his weight from one foot to the other as he is used to. Some adaptation is required I guess, and this may imply a return to bindings with canting?!

Correct observation, Fivat. Look at the picture below. This shows what happens during a turn with a plate on top. The board is decambered in a nice un-effected arc. But the riders is on a flat unaffected surface. With a plate, there might be an advantage to use cant/lift as your board is not bending your feet towards each other. The essence of the isolation of the plate.



Admittedly, this effect is kind of spooky and strange when you first ride it. How many turns have you made where your feet come together each turn!? No you dive into a turn and......feet are in the same spot! Like I said, strange at first.

Here is a great video Sean with Donek Snowboards made showing the effects of a plate using some very effective visual tools:

https://youtu.be/9xKE0xcN0Oc

----- and actually less than 1% of the alpine riders are *really* racing

Shoot, is more like .25% race in the US! The majority of our business is free carvers and frankly the future of the sport.

----- From sports that I know (skiing, windsurfing, bicycling) the plug and play innovations have succeeded and survived, the complicated other ones, in spite of their good intentions, have been for the very special interested. But in the end, the market will decide and pick the winners. So go on and let us see what happens.

Agree and I have always been a fan of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). But there is always room for improvement. Using your bike analogy, if you have been riding Mnt bikes as long as I have we went from no suspension, no disc brakes, 10 speed based bikes. They worked and they where fun. But now that I ride full suspension, hydraulic disc braked, and 20+ geared mnt bike, I'll never go back. And the kicker is today's bikes are even more reliable and better built, and in some cases even LIGHTER than those bikes of 20 years ago. You can have your cake and eat it!

Abrax, not 100% sure what you are showing here but if I understand right, it looks like the system does not have a connection between each foot? If not this has been done with the Hangl system and F2 also has something similar. The HUGE difference between this and a single plate based system is they still allow the feet to move toward each other or twist in a different plane. So a large part of the isolation function is just not there.

Once again, plate are NOT for everyone and I think they are not to be used to attract people to the sport. Adds too much to an already "involved" set-up. It is a specialized tool to be used for the right reasons. Up to you if those reasons are what you are looking for.

[Abrax]

Fin, I like Your approach... This is what we're used to do, we search for even better solutions to already known problems...

So, YES, my idea is not to isolate the rider from the board (which generally plates do)... I was aiming rather at allowing the board to be isolated from the leg tension/different direction leg movement.

I find it quite hard to describe... I am not sure if You will be able to get my point of view clearly enough...

Anyway we (carvers) are used to loose bindings, and softer shells because we want this looseness to let the board bend more freely (in a way that plates do but actually not with a use of a plate itself) . I understand it this way, that EC rider, who is already used to the loose binding/boot feel, would not really feel it that dramatically as a race driver. For us, letting the binding to bend is already something we want to achieve by all this looseness. Till now it was made with loose bindings, not stiff bindings, soft shells and so on. We've even designed our own spring systems to dampen the board a bit.

I hope that You get the idea now...

Anyway I didn't know that it was already developed...

[hotfrontside]

last season i did alittle testing :mounting different bindings on the same board to find out which was best
1) lowest bindings gave the best feeling-- on the contrary, if you put a plate ( wood 2cm ,size equal binding-contact area ) under your binding feeling gets much worse
2) small contact-area between binding and board gives best ice-grip, feeling is different but not worse.-- on the contrary, if you put an aluminium-plate 3mm-25cm-18cm under each binding ice-grip is much much worse .
this means to me: have your feet as near to the snow-surface as possibe and dont have the bindings stiffen any area of the board. IF a long-plate + bindigs combination can give me this, why not.... by the way, i dont think that the power of my legs influences the behavior of my board that much..... i admit that my testing was mainly foused on riding icy slopes

[Abrax]

Interesting,

This generally confirms our thoughts on lose bindings...

The truth is that if the board is not perfectly bent, there are areas which carve a turn and other ones which slide through the turn. And any part stiffening a board locally (the 3mm aluminum plate 25x18cm for example) is working against our will, which is very simple:

We want this perfect situation when always, every inch of the contact edge carves the same turn.

VSR boards always have a part of the contact edge sliding, not carving...
And this is why I find constant sidecut radius best for EC...

[pokkis]

When user twist boards with his boots, even then perfect constant arc of Swoard is distoyed.
You can see this occuring for photos. Note that this is affecting for all boards not only Swoards.
This is one of the reasons why plates are developed. To gain something one need to sacrifice something (weight&height)