It looks like you are using an ad blocker. That's okay. Who doesn't? But without advertising revenue, we can't keep making this site awesome. Click the link below for instructions on disabling adblock.
Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post.
Register to become a member today!
Help: What am I doing wrong with my backyard setup?
So my friend and i are building a ramp and we finally finish it and we are stoked to hit it. We water down the turf and waxed down the middle of it. When i go down it, i barely make it to the top of the jump. It's really pissing me off and we put a lot of work into making it. I have pictures, i just don't know how to post them
The transition from down to flat and back up is too long, you should take that whole thing out and just leave a transitioning jump, also the jump might be a little to big. Try the orange fence stuff. If that doesn't work looks like you will have to buy ice bags and crush them up and pour it all over the set up
Plastic fence is great for speed! I would suggest making your jump not as tall and steep also. Try making a better transition too to help with the speed! hope you can fix it!
Lattice fence does wonders for speed. Ive tried the orange construction fence and found it didn't do much. The only issue with the lattice fence is sometimes you slide out but if you just put it on the down part it should work pretty well. Also the transitions are really sharp, the down to flat might be alright but the lip is way too steep.
I personally have much lower in run than yours and can still jib fine. the trick for us was not using a lip, we built a sort of flat down feature that was a good 2 feet off the the ground and we get super good speed from it, dispite the 3 foot drop. Look like you're already committed to the design though so good luck!
I would add, the less your ski comes in contact with the sliding surface, the faster it will be. Lattice will help, but I would use construction fence for your lip so you can get a little more grip to set spins.
I would also agree with other posts regarding the transition being too abrupt. Lay your ski down at the bottom of the transition from down to flat and at the bottom of your lip from flat to up. If you can fit more than 3 fingers in between the base of your ski and the turf, your transition is bad and you are going to lose tons of speed, even if you used real snow.
bjc28Use detergant it works better than wax and also put PVC at the top of the run in thats what helps me atleast
Completely agree, I had the same problem so I threw some dishwasher detergent on it and it slides much faster. But I also agree that it needs to be higher up and more curved. Also lattice fencing slides well, you can get it at home depot or lowes for like $15. It's just kinda sketchy because it has 0 traction.
Theres too long of a transfer, and the lip is a bit big. I've never heard of using wax... I think that would make it worse actually. It's just like when you don't get all the excess wax off your skis and you actually go slower. But yeah take a few inches off the lip maybe like 6 inches and take a foot or so off the transfer? And use pretty much any kind of dish soap and water. Thats just want I would do based on the picture. It's a pretty cool set up tho, just gotta get it working.
I have a summer drop in also and Mine is 9' 8" and we had to curve my plywood to fix the transitions. It is basically he same thing as yours just bigger. I dont use constuction fence but if you have an extra bottle of hair soap anywhere that stuff makes great a great sliding surface. Good luck
horizontally mount skinny pvc pipes (around 1 inch should work) on the drop. the drop on my first setup had the same problem when it was turf, but when i added the pvc i was flying off the lip. my new setup utilizes the same basic idea but the down is 75% pvc-25% turf and works better than any other setup that ive hit so far.
In contrast to these 9' drop ins, mine is only 6'6" and i get enough speed for a 12' rail. We can add 1' of vertical and hit a much longer rail as well. We use some old carpet, it works wonders with water and some dish soap. We also have shit for transitions, I'm talking a 2' piece of ply wood to smooth out a 35 degree ramp. We tried wax once it actually slowed us down. Also depending on how you pump through the transitions, you may lose speed.
What you need to do has already been said...
-Construction fencing
-Dishsoap+water
-less steep take off
-Better transitions
my setup looked sort of similar, i found that the transition was too steep, I lost all speed with 181 skis. Ended up making the transition two feet longer. Also copped some orange construction fence, found a roll in a field and ran off with it. Works much better than straight turf
Make it bigger, add some transition. Add some lattice to the drop in if you still need speed.
Seems like you slam into the flat and then flam into a steep kicker.
It really never hurts to build it bigger. The more speed you can get out of it the better. IF you throw something like lattice or pvc rungs on the drop that'll also help hold snow for spring seshes or if you get rink snow.
I've already seen the comments for the orange fencing for construction sites, but I would recommend the cross-hatched, plastic, white fencing that used to cover the underside of porches and other outdoor builds...
