Author Topic: Re: New Approach to Binding Mount position; split from Stockli Laser SX review.  (Read 3291 times)

HighAngles

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Skier stance likely plays a role in this too, I would imagine.  My wife, for example, has as her natural stance a rather forward, low and aggressive position, brought about by years of power skating since childhood.  Our daughters, OTOH, are much more upright, albeit still driving the shovels with shin to boot tongue pressure.  But their fore-aft weight balance is clearly going to be different over the skis.  In your experience, does this have any influence on where your final mounting mark settles? Have you set up skis in this way for others, or just your own? In other words, have you mounted according to measurements, only to find that it didn't work for a particular person because of stance peculiarities?

**Correction: I just re-read my own review of the Stockli's, and found a note that, while the bindings were indeed set up at the BoF/CRS mark, there was also a riser plate of 8 to 10 millimeters thickness placed under the toe piece, but not under the heel.  This would doubtless have influenced my impression of the bindings being mounted too far back.

Svend - As noted in your correction, binding delta and boot ramp angles clearly impact fore/aft balance.  It's a system; boots, bindings, and skis work together and if any one of those elements are not matched well to the skier then the performance will suffer. 

I try not to include fore/aft balancing considerations when determining or experimenting with mounting locations.  My assumption is that the fore/aft alignment has already been sufficiently handled between the correct meshing of the boot forward lean, boot ramp, and binding delta.  Determination of whether or not you actually have this dialed in though must be determined through video or by an instructor skilled in assessing fore/aft alignment.  Skier "feel" is not sufficient to figure out if you have this element appropriately setup.

Ski flex patterns can also have an influence over whether a skier feels balanced (dialed-in) on a ski with a specific binding mount location.  Some skiers prefer softer tip/stiffer tail setups, some more balanced equally, while a few even like a stiffer tip with a softer tail.  Once again, I do not include those variables in the data I've been tracking for binding mount location preferences.

Most of my mounting experiments have been on myself.  I have done this with all of my kids and a few friends, but I have not had to experiment much with them to get the feeling like they are dialed-in.  I know that the PMTS crew in Summit County (Geoffda, JMD, SteveS) regularly experiment with binding position when they swap skis, but they haven't been actually tracking the data like I have with my own quiver.  I still have close to 30 skis in my house and I started investigating binding mount location options in 2004.  I'm still not 100% sure about the mounting position using the boot midsole over the narrowest point of the ski.  It's still very early in my research and I cannot guarantee that it's a fail-safe method yet, but the more people that are involved in the experimentation and reporting back with their data, the better.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2013, 08:58:26 pm by HighAngles »