What I am saying is that I applied DPS Phantom 1.0 to my skis and it worked ok, better with a course structure. After getting a very bad tune on vacation my ski has to be fattened and they ran it through the their Winterstager about 4 or 5 times. After that my ski no longer experienced the benefits of DPS Phantom. Now perhaps my cure was not as good as what you get in shop these days and the Phantom did not fully penetrate the base. The other possibility is that if you grind your skis too many times the Phantom is less effective. Personally I believe it is the later case as all my other cures worked.
ok lots of typos above, but that is what I get for responding to a post while riding a chairlift lol. Machine that tuned my old skis was a Wintersteiger over at World Cup Ski Shop in Bellevue, WA. Tune = Base grind. These guys were great as they went the extra mile to ensure I had a flat ski. Will not name the shop that did the lousy tune but they are in the Sun Peaks resort area and they rushed things and the ski was not flat when they finished.
All three of my kids compete in Freeride. That means ski gnarly terrain off piste pretty much all the time. Joined my eldest daughters group for a couple laps on Shot Six at Alpental yesterday and watched my girl not just hit, but pop off every boulder, drop and small cliff she possibly could yesterday, while some of the others in her group purposely avoided the larger features and rolled the smaller ones. Half way up the lift for our third run, I get call from my middle child and she says dad I just wrecked my skis ... seems she was skiing down Adrenaline and hit some rocks (she did not see them) hard did a somersault and somehow recovered after which her skis were not skiing properly. When she got to the lodge she saw a big chunk of the base hanging loose and exposed metal. Skis were not broken, but she did get core shot and also broke off a chunk of the mountain which was lodges in the base.
My point to the above story is that the way my family skis, we are regulars at our local ski shop for tuning. Two weeks ago my oldest cracked the core and blew out the sidewall of her Mindbinders on a drop. This week my other child got a core shot ... simply put with our style of skiing it is not unheard of to get a ski tuned several times in one season. For that reason I have moved away from Phantom and other permanent glide treatments as I do not believe it holds up well to multiple base grinds. Also the biggest challenge for us honestly is warm temps with sticky snow and for that your really need a warm weather wax to ensure optimum glide especially in variable warm weather conditions. Having a faster glide time in the flats is not really a concern for us.
So long story short I think Phantom is a good product. It works and will be more than enough for most skiers, especially those who do not wax. It is also good for those who do wax as it can cut down on bench time and lower your frequency of waxing, but to be clear it is not in my mind a replacement for waxing. In fact if you really care about performance with or without Phantom you will want to use temperature specific wax ... and the new liquid waxes make this a breeze. Phantom will also not prevent your bases from drying out and turning grey ... you want to wax to prevent that. If you ski rough terrain and damage your bases, that will require repairs and tuning which over time will limit the effectiveness of phantom. Long story short is that once you have your on waxing setup at home you can wax a lot of skis for the cost of one phantom application so you have to decide if Phantom is worth the investment or not.
My local Swix rep is not a fan of Phantom and debated it with me once. I am sure you have all seen the Swix propaganda against permanent glide solutions. What was interesting is that he said you could spray your skis with RainX and get similar results to Phantom ... I may actually try this on an old pair of skis just for kicks, but for the time being I am going to stick waxing, alternating between traditional hot wax and liquid wax as that seems to work best for us.
www.skinnyski.com
despite the killer deal they are offering.
