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T-Rob, I got loads of respect you based on other posts of yours that I have read. Here I have to disagree with you. True, any jump can be overshot, but some jumps are unsafe because the margin for error is too small. If you build a 75 foot table with a lip that goes close to vert, no matter how fast a skier is going, they are never going to clear the knuckle. That's pretty obvious, but the unsafe setups that I usually see, are when the takeoff is too shallow and the landing hill is too steep and short. On jumps like that, it is tough for the best skiers to nail the landing because you need enough speed to clear the knuckle, but just a hair more takes you to the flats. That's the type of jump that was built at SP.
I have built thousands of jumps and I have the scars from double hernia surgery to prove it. I really understand the physics. Feel free to look at the diagram on my profile called the Science behind Huck and Splash. What they had at SP was a jump that looks like about a 30 degree takeoff and a short landing hill which was probably closer to 40 to 45 degrees. Break out a drawing compass, set the point so that the rainbow arc will go up from the top of the jump at the same angle as the steepest part of the lip. Then rotate the compass to the landing hill. You will see that basically the skier would need to have a parachute to be able to slow forward momentum enough to land in the sweet spot of the landing hill.
A lot of this stuff came out during the Snoqualmie lawsuit. Ski areas had to take are harder look at their methods and the science behind jump building. Bottom line is that the guys who built the jump for TGR screwed up, not once but twice. It was unsafe when Wiley went deep and they made it more unsafe by narrowing the gap and apparently shallowing the takeoff. I'm not pulling this out of my butt.
Props to you. There are definetely some artisan builders out there who can eyeball something and know it's right. Unfortunately those guys are not the only ones building jumps for public use or for use by the pros. I haven't skied europe and I don't know who Jon learned from. Maybe there are guys in Europe that are better than Jon. I'm sure there are, but he has managed to build huge stuff, that Schiller and Co described as the most air they had ever had. All that and the only guy who got hurt was PK. That was serious, but he got hurt because he got cross rutted on the landing hill. He did not out jump it. Jon's stuff is huge, but also very safe. For that reason, his methods are pretty good to emulate.
As far as the laser disto goes, I am not suggesting that everyone needs to go out and buy one of these things before they hit a jump. I don't think they are necessary for coaches unless they are building big hits. When you start building features that are on the scale of what they built at Steven's Pass, you better have something like this. With that tool you could have figured out in seconds that it was dangerous. The one I have is a Leica Disto D3.
I'm going to post this on the Builder Forum or Cult that papa mentioned too. The reason I like the Leica so much is that, it is about the size and weight of a cell phone. It can instantly and accurately measure distances and slopes by pushing a button. That way you don't need to be lugging around a tape measure and an old school angle measure. I get pissy when I have to schlep a radio around. I think that every park crew should have at least one of these devices. $500 for a ski area is nothing, and if it helps crews build safer features, it's worth its weight in gold.
