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Jacques

Workin' It on Skis Best I Can
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Sounds to me like a double dog dare ;). Honestly, I am not sure if it is Nth degree faster or slower...but it is on par..I think that is all you can really ask of it...especially waxing is not something you enjoy and you do mot want to deal with.

If it really works well as "regular" all temp. waxes, then for most folks it's got to be a winner.
I have spent countless dollars and time in the ski waxing arena.
 

Monique

bounceswoosh
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Some people are fine with taking their car in for an oil change, some will want to change it themeselves. Hell, I know some members here who prefer to shoot their own food, me, I think Costco has a reat meat department and i don't have to get up at 4 AM to get there. To each their own. Me? There are instances I like to be in the garage/shop with a glass of bourbon and waxing skis..there are other times I think, I wish all of our skis had Phantom on it.

Well, it sounds like you can still wax the treated skis if you WANT to.

Doesn't seem worth it for skis I already own - this may be a weird version of the sunk cost fallacy - but for a new pair of skis with many waxes to go? Sure. Of course, I won't know if they're my new favorite until I have skied them a few days ... so ...

It occurs to me that Phantom would save you a lot of time and "tracking" when you're driving skis around to demo. Then again, the cost of treating all those skis would be prohibitive.

I have to imagine that at some point, if this treatment is proven viable, most skis will be available pre-treated. Maybe not race skis? Unless the treatment helps race skis at some point midway through the run.
 

Ryan Dietrich

Getting on the lift
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Well, it sounds like you can still wax the treated skis if you WANT to.
Doesn't seem worth it for skis I already own - this may be a weird version of the sunk cost fallacy - but for a new pair of skis with many waxes to go? Sure. Of course, I won't know if they're my new favorite until I have skied them a few days ... so ...

Hmm, I typically get my skis waxed 2-3 times a season, and I go out between 40-70 days (Not every day is a full day, and I know I should have waxed my skis more often, I am lazy). My skis will easily last me another 2-3 seasons, as I am super careful not to hit rocks, tress, etc. Getting my skis waxed/tuned costs me $40 at my local shop. Now all I gotta do is learn how to sharpen my edges with out cutting my wrists and dying on the floor of my garage (ok, that got a bit dark, sorry about that). So, anyway Phantom is going to save me money in the long run for sure. You uber-hardcore people that wax/sharpen/tune your own skis probably see $100 ($80 on Amazon!) as a lot of money. Too bad, I think it is more than worth it just for the consistency (and the environmental impacts of course).

It occurs to me that Phantom would save you a lot of time and "tracking" when you're driving skis around to demo. Then again, the cost of treating all those skis would be prohibitive.
I have to imagine that at some point, if this treatment is proven viable, most skis will be available pre-treated. Maybe not race skis? Unless the treatment helps race skis at some point midway through the run.

I could imagine that phantom on rental skis would make sense if you could buy it in bulk. All I know is, waxed skis are only faster than my skis with phantom for half a day (based on a few data points). I'm heading up to Alta tomorrow, and will do some tests against my friends skis that are brand new (factory wax), he's only taken them out twice. We'll see if the *awesome* performance continues :)
 

Monique

bounceswoosh
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Hmm, I typically get my skis waxed 2-3 times a season, and I go out between 40-70 days (Not every day is a full day, and I know I should have waxed my skis more often, I am lazy). My skis will easily last me another 2-3 seasons, as I am super careful not to hit rocks, tress, etc. Getting my skis waxed/tuned costs me $40 at my local shop. Now all I gotta do is learn how to sharpen my edges with out cutting my wrists and dying on the floor of my garage (ok, that got a bit dark, sorry about that). So, anyway Phantom is going to save me money in the long run for sure. You uber-hardcore people that wax/sharpen/tune your own skis probably see $100 ($80 on Amazon!) as a lot of money. Too bad, I think it is more than worth it just for the consistency (and the environmental impacts of course).

I try to wax after every 3-4 days of use, maybe more often in spring slush. Note the word "tune" in "tune and wax" - two separate things. $40 is way too much for just a wax, but you'll still need to pay for tunes. You'll still need to tune/sharpen, though. Or not. I run a gummi stone over my edges when I'm waxing. If that seems like it's not doing it, I do bring it to the shop. I own the sharpening equipment but haven't had the guts to try it yet (I fear what happens if I mess it up!).

I don't know what this "careful not to hit rocks, trees, etc" aberration is, so I can't speak to that ;-)
 

Ryan Dietrich

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Hmm, I can see you guys are teasing me, that is fair, I went through a couple black diamond gates today at Alta. They got walloped with a good foot+ storm yesterday and last night. I can say I think I found the ONE weakness of phantom. I was merely AS fast as regularly waxed skis on low water content powder. This lasted from 9:00 AM to around noon, once the snow warmed up just *tiny* bit, the skis came alive with a vengeance. I think the hydrophobic properties of phantom has a hard time with SUPER dry powder, though I did a couple runs through ballroom (decently pitched powder run) and didn't notice anything different. It's funny to ski when you're trying to notice something different when you put this stuff on. I would say 99% of the time it just skis like a regular ski, minus the part where I am worried about not getting it waxed.
 

PisteOff

Jeff
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@ChunderBlunder and I had the opportunity to ski on some Phantom treated DPS Cassiars at Alta during the Gathering. We both found the glide to be very good. It was almost spring like conditions with temps around 40 at the base and in the 30's up top. They did seem a bit faster up top. Glide properties were really quite good overall. I would say that the FC739 Hertel that we normally run is faster, definitely. All of our personal skis ran beautifully during the Gathering but began to degrade at the end of the week. I would seriously consider using the Phantom on our all mountain skis or even our powder boards. The carving skis and race skis will always be waxed with the 739 and temp specific overlays. I'm just about sold on this product. Still giving it some time to let the last shoe drop, if at all.
 

dbostedo

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Still giving it some time to let the last shoe drop, if at all.

Someone at the Gathering (@Poolskier Vinny I think) asked why DPS doesn't offer pre-Phantomed skis if it works so well.

It's a good question, and my guess is that DPS also needs to look out for that other shoe to drop. From and engineering standpoint, no matter how much practical testing, modelling, accelerated life testing, etc that you do, you can't really emulate several years of real world conditions.

At a minimum, there are likely to be some small unanticipated effects - we saw that already with some folks having difficulty with curing. There could be other ones like certain skis that don't take it well, or certain conditions where it doesn't work well that weren't anticipated. Worst case, it could do something like degrade parts of the ski over time, or fail to last nearly as long as they think it will, etc.

So my guess (purely a guess) is that DPS isn't offering it yet, because they too are waiting for some other shoe to possibly drop. They've got months of real world testing now from their backers and various other sources. I don't know what "enough" data is - the rest of this season? All of next season? Several years?
 

Monique

bounceswoosh
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It's a good question, and my guess is that DPS also needs to look out for that other shoe to drop. From and engineering standpoint, no matter how much practical testing, modelling, accelerated life testing, etc that you do, you can't really emulate several years of real world conditions.

Other motivations:

1) They also don't want to turn off potential buyers who are suspicious of the new technology. I would wager that people who buy DPS are a little more savvy than the average skier and won't necessarily be sold on "waxless downhill skis" without some more data.

2) Their skis are already plenty expensive without adding the treatment - I'm sure there's markup on what they sell, but they would want to raise the prices, both to recoup the research investment and to avoid a devaluation of the stand alone product.
 

dbostedo

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Other motivations:

1) They also don't want to turn off potential buyers who are suspicious of the new technology. I would wager that people who buy DPS are a little more savvy than the average skier and won't necessarily be sold on "waxless downhill skis" without some more data.

2) Their skis are already plenty expensive without adding the treatment - I'm sure there's markup on what they sell, but they would want to raise the prices, both to recoup the research investment and to avoid a devaluation of the stand alone product.

Good points, but ... for #1 I'm not suggesting they force it upon people, but have it as an option when you buy the skis.

And for #2, their skis are plenty expensive, and I have no idea what their margins are, but I was wondering if it made sense it to offer it pre-applied when you buy skis, just to get people to try it. (Assuming DPS doesn't think that it's too much risk due to unknown long term effects.)

If the skis are $800, and you could get them for $825 with Phantom pre-applied, I'd think a lot of folks might do that. Perhaps they can't offer it that cheap without hurting their margins. If it had to be $900 instead of $800 that might not garner enough extra sales for the effort of setting up that process/flow/staff to be worth it. But from an appearance/marketing stand-point, it would certainly make sense for them to offer that, to show confidence in the product.
 

Started at 53

Making fresh tracks
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I bought a Kickstarter 2 pack for $160, I would guess that a typical markup is 75-100% of the cost. So if current retail is $100 (I am just guessing as I don’t know) then their cost would be in the neighborhood of $50-$65. Add in labor to apply and you are at about $100-$125 applied prior to delivery IF they want to do it.

They did say you can do conventional wax over the Phantom if you wanted a race glide.

I can say that my glide was amazing, but it changed a lot in the spring conditions the last two afternoons. I had never skied in springlike conditions before, so I have ZERO to compare it to. I was skiing with a friend for a while one day and they had a very hard time keeping up when we were poling across a flat, but that was in the colder/drier conditions.
 

dbostedo

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I bought a Kickstarter 2 pack for $160, I would guess that a typical markup is 75-100% of the cost. So if current retail is $100 (I am just guessing as I don’t know) then their cost would be in the neighborhood of $50-$65. Add in labor to apply and you are at about $100-$125 applied prior to delivery IF they want to do it.

They did say you can do conventional wax over the Phantom if you wanted a race glide.

I can say that my glide was amazing, but it changed a lot in the spring conditions the last two afternoons. I had never skied in springlike conditions before, so I have ZERO to compare it to. I was skiing with a friend for a while one day and they had a very hard time keeping up when we were poling across a flat, but that was in the colder/drier conditions.

If by spring-like you mean wet and slushy, then that always sucks. Warm weather wax helps, but sticky snow (and feeling like you're getting thrown forward and your skis are being held back) are kind of the norm.
 

Started at 53

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If by spring-like you mean wet and slushy, then that always sucks. Warm weather wax helps, but sticky snow (and feeling like you're getting thrown forward and your skis are being held back) are kind of the norm.

Then I guess I was feeling the norm
 

cantunamunch

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If by spring-like you mean wet and slushy, then that always sucks. Warm weather wax helps, but sticky snow (and feeling like you're getting thrown forward and your skis are being held back) are kind of the norm.

I really need to introduce you to spring structure.

If a 'norm' can be reduced by an order of magnitude by ski choice, structure choice, and wax choice, I'm not really sure we should continue calling it a norm.
 

dbostedo

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I really need to introduce you to spring structure.

If a 'norm' can be reduced by an order of magnitude by ski choice, structure choice, and wax choice, I'm not really sure we should continue calling it a norm.

Well a lot of folks gripe about sticky snow... so I guess I took that to be the norm. I'm not sure I do enough spring skiing with enough forethought to get my skis restructured and waxed for it. Maybe I need to buy another pair just to use as "spring skis". :D
 

Rod9301

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Other motivations:

1) They also don't want to turn off potential buyers who are suspicious of the new technology. I would wager that people who buy DPS are a little more savvy than the average skier and won't necessarily be sold on "waxless downhill skis" without some more data.

2) Their skis are already plenty expensive without adding the treatment - I'm sure there's markup on what they sell, but they would want to raise the prices, both to recoup the research investment and to avoid a devaluation of the stand alone product.
I wonder if it's true that the dps buyers are more knowledgeable than the average skier.

Why would they buy them then?
 

Monique

bounceswoosh
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I really need to introduce you to spring structure.

If a 'norm' can be reduced by an order of magnitude by ski choice, structure choice, and wax choice, I'm not really sure we should continue calling it a norm.

If you do a fresh structure twice a year (spring skiing and winter skiing), how long before you use up the bases?
 

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