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Old December 22nd 04, 04:11 AM
gr
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Default Start Grip Tape Review

I got to try the new Start Grip Tape for the first time today. It is a
roll of klister like stuff you apply as kick wax for classic skiing. It
is supposed to have a very wide temperature range, and well suited for
someone like me, who doesn't want to mess with wax, and hasn't been able
to make it work often, and has variable type snow conditions often
(Eastern US).
So I sand the kick area of a pair of skis (seems like sacrilege to rough
up bases this much!) and apply 380mm worth of the tape (about my shoe
length) to each ski, then rub it on as instructed. They do not tell you
how long a strip is needed, just a minimum (I think that was 150mm).

I did hit as few spots where the tape unrolled and there were holes in
it. I was able to overlay a little more tape there and rub it in.
The actual skiing was pretty good, nice glide and decent kick. I need to
learn to kick better, so problems I had climbing hills were most likely
me and not the wax.
Conditions of the test were untransformed snow, some loose, some very
packed, some almost icy. Temp. around 25 degrees F. No icing occurred at
all, when I was done I scrapped the snow off the kick tape, and after it
warmed up, placed the peel off paper back over it to keep it clean for
next time.
No wear or damage was noted to the kick tape, even though the snow was
very thin and I went over dozens of icy and dirty spots and earth
clumps, and twigs.
Skis used for the test were 50mm wide old Fischer Europa Glass, 205cm long.
For comparison I then did a little skiing with a very similar pair of
waxless/fishscale skis (Fischer crown elite, 50mm wide, 215cm). There
was noticeable less glile, and of course the occasional annoying
fishscale noise. The grip was much better (remember that this is the
normal type of ski for me!) The grip pattern of this fishscale is easily
3 or 4 time the length of the Start grip wax, so maybe I was not using
enough grip wax.
gr
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