The Revolution - Зе революция (переведу, когда время будет) Инфа со
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But the real breakthrough came from out in left field. Jurij Franko graduated from the University of Ljubljana in 1983, with a degree in engineering, and joined Elan in ’87 as a lab manager. In 1988, he had an idea for a deep sidecut ski, and his colleague Pavel Skofic caluculated a suitble flex pattern. They organized a project dubbed Sidecut Extreme – SCX – and set out to build prototypes. (Jurij Franko is often confused with his school-mate Jure Franko, whose successful World Cup career was capped by a silver medal in slalom at the Sarajevo Olympics.)
Over the next couple of years some very strange skis emanated from Franko’s lab. Former Elan racers were sent wide research skis, slotted along the centerline through the shovel and tail. Across the top of each slot was a jackscrew, so the skier could adjust the width of the shovel and tail and thus the sidecut. It was a crude experiment, but it produced data that helped Franko and Skofic zero in on a new sidecut shape. Franko's calculation was straightforward: "Choose the radius of the turn -- 10 meters, for example. Choose the speed you want to ski -- 5 meters per second for example. Calculate the centrifugal force and the lean angle, as for a bicycle. This is the angulation of the ski. Imagine a ski of constant width bent to the radius of the turn and penetrating through the snow. 'Cut' the ski with the snow surface, and there you are!"
By 1991 Franko and Skofic had finalized a 203cm mold for a GS race ski with a 110-63-105mm profile – that’s a 22.25mm sidecut, three times what most racers were using for slalom at the time. Sidecut radius was just 15 meters – about 35 percent of Jure Franko’s medal-winning Elans from ‘84.
The SCX was blazingly fast on the GS course. In its first local races, skiers on the SCX took eight of the top ten places. The new ski conformed more easily to the actual arc required to carve a clean turn in the racecourse. For any given turn, the racer needed less edge angle, and could therefore stand on a straighter, stronger leg. Folks on the World Cup circuit woke up.
In the Austrian Tyrol, Kneissl was trying to scramble back into the international market. In the late ‘70s the Tyrolian factory had tried to streamline production by converting to injection-molded foam-core construction for all its skis. The result was a marketing fiasco and bankruptcy. The company went through several ownership changes, and from 1986 to 1989 was partnered with Olin and Trak as part of Tristar Sports. Kneissl designers may have seen the Albert drawings. By 1990, reduced to being the local Tyrolean brand, Kneissl had resorted to making the “Bigfoot” novelty ski, a strange 80cm snowskate pitched at casual skiers. The Bigfoot, which featured a tip shaped like a set of toes, could strap to ordinary shoes as easily as to ski boots, and had a snowboard-style deep sidecut. Early in 1992, designer Wolfgang Wagner thought the deep sidecut might make an interesting recreational ski, and came up with the 180cm Ergo at 100-62-100mm – 19mm of sidecut depth, with a radius of 14 meters. Kneissl took the prototype to ISPO, the European trade show, that spring.
26.10.2007, 18:29
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