Post
by get!em » Tuesday 23 February 2016, 14:47
Used material:
EC Gen4, 175M
Binding: Titanium Race
My sizes:
1.92M, 84kg, shoe EUR45/46 Mondo 30,5 interior.
Exp: 25 years ski, 16 years snowboard (allround), 6 years alpine snowboard
Previous/current alpine boards:
Burton Factory Prime Asim, F2 Speedster SL (2 boards), F2 Silberpfeil
Testing conditions:
Czech Republic. Groomed pistes. From -5C in morning (8PM) to +3 at 1PM. 4 days almost same weather pattern (moist/fog, snowy/rainy). Started with frozen groomed piste. After 10am, piste was heterogenious, after 11am, soft pistes underground, wet snow.
Used fo 4 days now.
Compared most to my Silberpfeil, is my most recent use for years.
First look at EC gen4: At home: whow, a big wide board, is it manouvrable on the piste?
Attached my bindings: central stance, with front 55, back 47 degrees in goofy. Compared to my SP: front 66, back 57 (yeah, almost monoski with feet behind each other). Huge difference.
Boots in freecarve mode (flex in the boot is on, but limited on min and max, so not comparable to walking mode).
First ride on piste:
Standup from sitting position is easier then my silberpfeil, mainly due to the stance.
First turns, easy. some skidding turns, easier than silberpfeil. The EC feels smaller, lighter on the piste then my (fysical much smaller) silberpfeil under my feet.
First Carving turns on lower and higher speeds:
EC has wide turns. Have to get used to these wide turns in my planning the track ahead with other skiers and snowboarders and some irregularities in snow on the pistes. Carving turns are easy, after 2 rides down, a slalom/GS style carving is giving me a nice carved track on the piste. Tried longer/wider turns on higher speed carving. With the Silberpfeil it immediately railed, lock-in, on the turn and derived my stability from it. With the EC, I could get the board better on the side, but did not get a lock in and stability from it. After analyzing, i had to do better and more effort to keep on track/rail with the EC. Then analyzing again: the stability derived from the lock-in on the SP allowed me to have a wrong pose/stand on the board with different balance. After training a better stand/stability on the EC, I was able to get the same feeling as on the SP. Still have to improve my stand to have a more reliable stable carving turn, but on most turns I succeeded after day 2.
After day 4 I had the feeling of easy carving, less stress on my legs. Easier going on snow that is pushed into small bumps.
After day 4 I still have to improve my stand to carve extremer. But I could not improve or do layed down turns on the snow in the circumstances: the snow was too soft, wet and unreliable bumpy. And as bonus, after 10am it was to crowded with skiers to follow my own carving path. From material point of view: the topside easily scratches. A nose protector would be really needed in the crowded line for the lifts. The nose of my board now has more rounded edges on the topsheet...
For now, conclusion: good buy for me. Stable and nice carving board. The extreme part i have to learn yet.
Small question, maybe should open a topic for it, but for now it is small: I have a lot of (eg 10) lines in the transparent topsheet that look like cracks in glass. They are not scratches but cracks. They are from side to side (perpendicular to the length of the board) and are unequal distributed somewhere between nose and front foot, and one on the tail. With a nail you can feel them. Not sure when they did show up first. Question is: does it influence quality of the board? Sorry, i have no pictures (next year I will have probably), because the board is still at my holidayhome in the skiresort, and I am at home now.
Swoarc Dual 2 175 / softboot
Swoard EC 4gen 175 / race titanium