Vauhti hfC15 liquid wins again (yawn…). It’s not even Thanksgiving, and it’s already getting old that the hfC15 liquid keeps winning our tests. Of course, given the hype we’ve given it so far, it’s probably a good thing!
Today Amy ran a fluoro test with three powders, two liquids, and a “control” ski with yesterday’s paraffin winner, LF Green. Unfortunately, the test hill she used yesterday was closed for a biathlon race, and she had to find a different testing location. Good test locations are hard to come by out there, and the hill she found was fairly short, and the speeds were pretty low. So we need to consider those circumstances when we assess the speed trap results, and bear in mind that what’s being testing is really the low-end speed – not necessarily the most important for picking race wax. In general, we like to find longer and faster speed trap hills.
| Rank | Powder | Base1 | Time | % | Sig |
| 1 | hfC15L | LF Green | 6.560 | 0.00% | 100.00% |
| 2 | hfC21L | LF Green | 0.138 | 2.10% | 98.29% |
| 3 | LFGreen | LF Green | 0.140 | 2.14% | 54.82% |
| 4 | C330 | LF Green | 0.407 | 6.20% | 68.97% |
| 5 | HFC21 | LF Green | 0.419 | 6.39% | 93.35% |
| 6 | HFC15 | LF Green | 0.437 | 6.65% | 96.91% |
What is most notable, at a glance, is that there are BIG differences in these results. With a short (six seconds is pretty short) low speed test this serves to emphasize that the low-end static friction response was notably and categorically different. Very clearly the liquids were much more free than the powders at low speed. Also, the LF Green was better than the powders at low speed.
However… Low speed, half-weight test results always need to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s clear that the differences measured were real – the significance of the data is clear. The question is whether they’re the right differences. And so we need to lean pretty hard on the results of testing by feel in a case like this. Feel-testing is always an important part of the testing process, and I usually rely on it more strongly than speed trap results in any case. In this case both Amy and Tom found the liquids to be clearly superior to everything else – no surprise there since they won the trap testing. But the LF Green did not do well in feel-testing. It was the worst ski on the snow by feeling. Tom’s ranking by feeling was hfC15 liquid, hfC21 liquid, hfC15 powder, hfC21 powder, 330C powder, and LF Green.
In this case feeling testing focuses on full-weight glide and performance in active skiing. I think a high speed trap test would closely mirror the feeling test, and I believe in the feeling test to guide our recommendations. Tomorrow Amy will do a check on hfC15liquid alone, versus hfC15 liquid over a powder. She’ll also run the LF Green paraffin against the HF Blue to recheck that test. Those tests will be on single skis, for feeling.