Jonathan,

You won't have any problem wearing your Pilot boots on your "backup"
skis. The feel is not quite as nice as the dedicated Pilot system or the
dedicated Profil system, but after 10 minutes you won't even notice it.
This is due to the fact that the bumper gets squeezed a little bit more with
the Pilot boot since there is not a toe piece made to accept it.

When the Pilot first came out, they wanted all of us on the Subaru
Factory Team wearing them, even though they could not ship any bindings to
us. So we spent the bulk of a season on Pilot boots with Profil bindings.
No issues.

-Nathan
www.nsavage.com

"Jonathan Shefftz" wrote in message
om...
I knew the answer to this once, but have since forgotten, so I need a
refresher, and perhaps the conventional wisdom has changed since then
anyway based in additional experience:

A pilot boot will work in a profil binding, but what are the
implications for skiing performance and for wear&tear/durability?
(I recall that the answer has something to do with how the front of
the pilot boot bumps up against the profil bumper, yet can't recall
the specifics.)

Detailed background in case it matters:
I've been skiing in the Salomon 9.1 RS (i.e., pre-pilot
top-of-the-line model). They're still in very good condition, but I
just found a pair of the bumble-bee pilot boots for a price that
looked like a misprint, and I have a friend who could use my old
profil boots. I will buy a new pair of skate skis with pilot
bindings, and relegate my old skate skis with profil bindings for
dirty conditions. But since we often have such dirty conditions here
in Boston (yes, we actually have a ski area in the city complete with
snowmaking, grooming, lights, and Tuesday night time trials series)
because of our air pollution, and since my old skate skis are still in
pretty good shape after three seasons, I hope to use them fairly often
. . . if that doesn't cause significant problems. Hence the inquiry.

thanks in advance for any feedback!