186 Rocker Review Thread

[pechelman]

available now from what i understand
email or PM pat about placing an order

quantities i think are very very limited

[skifishbum]

I'm probably the least techy ski tech out there so I'm just gonna say
These skis FKNA kick ass
Upon further testing I'll try and elaberate
Splat sorry for hoarding that pair, I had a vision and they spoke to me.

[slavebro]

available now from what i understand
email or PM pat about placing an order

quantities i think are very very limited

Not quite yet. We made 4 pairs or so for testing. skifishbum got to test some.

I'm probably the least techy ski tech out there so I'm just gonna say
These skis FKNA kick ass
Upon further testing I'll try and elaberate
Splat sorry for hoarding that pair, I had a vision and they spoke to me.

I'm guessing he liked 'em. BTW, skifishbum, thanks for the bluebird tour.

Pat's in Vegas right now at SIA. He'll be there for much of the week.

Once he gets back we'll begin pressing skis. We need to do a couple of other lay up ideas before production.

It will probably be at least 3 weeks after that before they would possibly ship.

Haven't decided on a price yet, but it will be closer to the high end PM Gear skis (think 192's).

That's where we are right now with that ski.

Stoked there is so much interest.

[squirrelmurphy]

From the above, I'd guess that I just skied the noodles yesterday at Soli. Brown 192 FKNA topsheets. HO LEE FUUUUUUUUCK.

I'm 5'10", 180 lbs, good skier. I really like to go fast, but have never been able to really fly in pow. I've skied 100 days on a first gen 188 Bro stiff, 2 days on 192 stiffs, 15 days on Ninthward THA, and no previous time on any rockered or reverse sidecut ski. Soli reported 6" at 6am, and it probably snowed 2-3"/hr until noon. Honeycomb was amazing, we skied 6 untracked runs before anyone else realized it was open. This was about as light blower as I've ever skied. Less than 2' on the ground and we were hitting bottom a bit, whether we had 100 or 136 underfoot.

The BROckers fucking roooooool. On my first run I was perfectly comfortable taking Honeycomb from the Powderhorn gate in about 5 turns. The skis were stable, effortless, floaty, perfect. No tip dive (they weren't on top, but I never got the 'boat anchor' effect), no hookiness.

I thought a bunch about this thread and what I would change if I could, but there isn't much. I'm not positive they need as much sidecut as they have underfoot. It wasn't an issue, but I would be interested to see what a slightly larger radius would do. The tip rocker was absolutely perfect. Tail rocker was fine, I might flatten it out just a hair. A couple landings i felt the wheelie effect, like I was rolling backwards. For the conditions and the terrain (somewhat tight trees, perfect for GS turns, just wide enough I never really had to speed check) they were pretty much the ideal ski.

My last two runs Infantile Egomaniac and I switched, and I tried his 185 Praxis. The BROcker was my first rockered ski, the Praxis in the afternoon my first reverse-reverse. I felt there was a slightly more difficult learning curve for the Praxis. They skied a bunch shorter. I did have a problem with tip dive in the same conditions on the same run. The praxis were a bit more stable feeling in chopped pow. I didn't think the Praxis were much more pivoty than the BROcker. The BROcker had an enormous advantage on the way back to the lift. The sidecut and flat underfoot made it feel like a short carving ski on hardpack, while the praxis were pivoty, squirrely, and somewhat painful to keep on edge.

I really do think this ski is a winner. The 186 felt absolutely ideal for the conditions. I think I'd probably want a bit larger version for wide-open pow fields or some more open inbounds areas (backside at alta would be a good place for a 196). Now I want to try them in slightly more varied conditions to assess their performance as an all-mountain almost-every-day type of ski, because the only thing we skied yesterday was the kind of blower I can usually only dream about.

This might be the most thought-out gear review I've posted, but I'm sure its still lacking. Any questions, please go ahead and ask.

[pechelman]

awesome!

thanks for your time spent typing that out and glad you enjoyed them

did you happen to encounter any breakable crusts?
any idea where they were mounted?
how would you compare the flex to other skis? (ie marshals scale)
edit: we're thinking about beefing up the production cores a tad, so as specific as you can get would be helpful on the flex.

[squirrelmurphy]

breakable crusts?

ha! nope, just pure, face-deep blower maybe next time...

mounting point?

these are the Brown topsheet Soli demos from Dibbs, so he would probably know.

flex?

wow i feel useless. I don't know. I actually never picked them up and flexed them. Chairs were spinning, snow was falling, i just had to get out there. They weren't stiff, maybe a 5 or so? Just from skiing them, I'd say similar to the Ninthward THA, maybe a bit stiffer underfoot and a bit softer in the tip.

Given the conditions, I didn't want them stiffer. The float was just perfect. In more variable snow, I bet I would want them a bit stiffer. However, If they were gonna be stiffer, I'd probably also want them 5cm longer (not 10cm).

EDIT: just saw in another thread, skifishbum referred to this pair as "stiff highly-rockered protos," so they could certainly be stiffer than I indicated above.

[splat]

Squirrelmurphy - Stoked you got on them! Sweet fukkers is right, especially for blower that's deep. We will make the final flex a bit stiffer (don't worry, even the I beam version floats beautifully) with a 3-5 mm positive camber and a slightly stiffer tail for landing hucks. The tip will be a bit stiffer with a little less rocker (doesn't need it to float, just to better engage effective edge).

Glad you made it, dood!
The noodles.....I thought about how we had to leave for Vegas and how much I wanted to get those out in the deep-ass blower that was falling as we were leaving.
FYI - I'm 210 lbs. and 6-1 and those noodles were schweeeet.
pechelman - I skied the noodle version in a breakable crust and they did exceptionally well.

Overall, we will change skiing with this ski. The S7 will charge nowhere near as hard as the 186 Bro.

[splat]

EDIT: just saw in another thread, skifishbum referred to this pair as "stiff highly-rockered protos," so they could certainly be stiffer than I indicated above.

We had a potpourri of flexes we made to test, sm. Dibs prolly was referring to one of the other pair we had. He didn't really like the noodles.

In Honeycomb, I thought they just fukkin rooooled.

[squirrelmurphy]

Pat, just my thought, but I would recommend against reducing the tip rocker. I don't think it's detrimental in harder-snow performance, and its benefits in soft snow are what put this ski ahead of anything i've ever skied in pow. I know you want to make it a useable everyday ski, but I think reducing tip rocker would unnecessarily compromise soft-snow performance, which I personally think you absolutely should not do with this ski. More than any other BRO to date, this ski has the potential to be perfect in soft snow.

Keep the rocker, stiffen the tip. The tail is probably fine either way as long as it stays nice and tapered

[splat]

The reason it has to be reduced is the rocker was over-extended back behind the widest part of the base, thus reducing that front of the effective edge's contact to the snow by a cm or two. In order for the edge to operate as designed, the widest point of the base in the tip must be engaged on the snow for optimal performance on ice as well as soft snow. The reduction will be very minor, as the low profile tips on the blue pair of rockers Dibs likes so much float just fine - and they are very low in comparison to the brown tops. This is just a fine-tuning, nothin more, that will result in a tip height loss of only a few mm's. But the overall performance enhancement will be exceptional. We can't do this any other way without changing the entire design and milling new molds, which isn't necessary to perfect the ski.

[squirrelmurphy]

OK, thats a good explanation. I understand where you're coming from.

My consumer's point of view: Just make sure you don't get caught up with the hard-snow performance. ANY loss in float I think would be significant for this ski. Going from the BROcker to the Praxis, I wonder if having the fattest part of the ski rockered off the snow is what gave these so much more float. As a BROsumer, it's FKNA awesome that these ski pow like anything but also get you safely and comfortably back to the lift, but I buy this ski for the first part, not the second. I see the 186 as the first model with the chance to shine in pow and rip everywhere else, as opposed to the 188s and 192s which shine in denser pow, chopped pow, crud, and everything under the sun except bottomless pow.

just my $.02. or is that $.05?

[eunoia1]

relpy to all: from a skifishbum slave: skied em this am in BCC, imho...this is a Leap in engineering of POW skis; (pat thinks rossi might have their version out next year???((as of last week)) as i made a full force initation of a turn, in (1.5'-3' of 5% UT GOODS) the tips drive up to heaven, begging for another weighted (237lb) driving turn. what a blessing, in the deep stuff. groomers = no fun, pow pigs. thanks pat and dibs. Beautiful thinking R U L E S!!!! FKNA is for so real...........

[cdlv]

me: 5'10, 170lbs. i'd like to think of myself as a good skier
thanks to the skifishbum bro demo program skied the noodle soft rockers saturday cat skiing ,so all fresh all the time. great ski for fresh .point em and go. these skis like 3 turns per 300 feet of vert. only drawback was loss of power on big slut turns. nothing major but noticable.
skied the less rockered stiff version on sunday @ solitude. lot more stable on the crud and didn't loose much power on the big turns. wish i got to take out the really rockered stiffs out and try them out to see the difference between the soft version.

all in all a great ski for those who want to rip deep powder really fast.

excellent job Pat

[splat]

Schweet, dudes. Thanks for taking them out for a spin.
Next batch will likely be similar flex to the blues but with the higher tips of the browns.
Looks like a glass/carbon layup will bring it in light enough for good skinning, too.
I have a few other skis to press first that people have been waiting for but, honestly, all I want to press is 186s and then go ski the shit out of them.
Did you guys get in the trees on them? I love the way they just swim through trees.

[cdlv]

Did you guys get in the trees on them? I love the way they just swim through trees.

oh i tried em just a little bit in the trees

[splat]

I guess I can safely assume you know what I mean...........

[squirrelmurphy]

Just like a dream, effortless floating through the trees in Honeycomb with a face full of snow, taking the whole slope in 5 turns.

[nhtele]

Pat - Could you post approximate weights for both all glass and carbon/glass layups?

[splat]

5 lbs, 4 oz per ski in all glass.
4 lbs, 12 oz in carbon/glass


Over the summer, we're going to work with hybrid carbon/glass cloth and different core thicknesses on many of our layups in an effort to lower weights.

[nhtele]

Nice, thanks for the info.

I'm thinking the carbon Rocker with dynafits would be the perfect addition to my touring quiv.

[Phoenix Dark-Dirk]

Bump back up for Brocker history.

[lax]

how long til a rev/rev PM gear ski? or a PM gear jibberific ski? i understand you guys are perfectionists, but why don't you guys have a ton of rockered skis? are you not fully sold on rockered skis, or does it just not fit the PM gear demographic?

[volklpowdermaniac]

186 Bro-ckers


full specs, when can i buy, these are so dope. end of transmission.

[splat]

140-112-122

Anyone can buy now, but we don't start pressing until August, shipping Sept/Oct.
The all glass is $789, plus $30 shipping.
Glass/carbon is $889, plus $30 shipping.

You can get a place in line by sending via PayPal to:

sales@pmgearusa.com

The Lhasa Pows ski great fully rockered. We did every imaginable camber, rocker, layup and flex last season and they all skied great. We simply settled in on the one that performed best in EVERY condition and still kills pow insanely We'll prolly do a more rockered version called the Lhasa Pure Pow.

A lot of time and effort went into these skis. We weren't just designing and crankin out skis, hoping people liked them. They are maggot tested through and through, over and over. 35 pair of prototypes. We perfected them and know every nuance of every possible layup.

Isn't that what maggots expect? We're the all-maggot ski company.

cdlv - Thanks, I hadn't seen that clip for a while. Great tune!

[volklpowdermaniac]

hot damn! i need to get some more cash flow.