Great stuff. Puts the Sender Free 110 high on my list again (in spite of some of the stuff in the Blister reviews).Like any ski, the Sender Squad, Free 110 or Blackops 118 will get more easier to initiate turns but the Rossignols and it sounds like the Pettitor have a very long range where their min sidecut stays very constant.
Found on the Sender Free 110 and Blackops 118, when I set a digital gauge for their min widths, I can move the gauge about 16cm total before the increasing widths towards the Center or tail start to resist sliding the gauge. That’s much more than most skis and the reason you can move the mounts on these skis quite a bit without running into issues.
Add the very symmetrical rocker length tip/tail on the Sender Free 110 and Blackops 118 and you can move mounts more forward than most skis without being forward of the camber running length Center.
The Sender Squad is more directional in shape and in rocker profile(tip length Vs tail) so you can’t move its mount as close to Center without running into “too much of a good thing.”
Was just playing with the Sender Free 110 before putting all the other skis away and its sidecut, shape and flex pattern are shocking similar to the Blackops 118. The increase in stiffness is just a step up everywhere which makes sense as it’s for harder snow. Feels like an “in between” flex of the CT 3.0 and Blackops 118 on the tip/tail and a hair stiffer than the BO underfoot. Really liking their Goldilocks flex pattern.
Like the Sender Squad, the Sender Free 110 seems to be another outlier of the Sender line.
There were some days I wanted a more lively ski than the BO 118 that was more damp than the 184cm CT 3.0 and hoping this might be it. Now we wait for snow……lol
BTW-You’ll have to time stamp a “Pettit turn” on a video sometime. Have watched lots of videos over the years but still don’t know what constitutes his signature turn.
I was initially told about the Pettit turn by K2 reps/associates, without any videos, just friendly associates doing it on the slopes;
I mounted up the 190 pull Pettitors and moved them forward to experience it for myself, and found it a distinctly different feeling turn
(all without ever actually seeing him do it).
An amazingly distinct turn, in feel/dynamic. (The only other ski besides those three, the 118, the Squad (I'm told), and the Pettitors,
that have it, that I've found, was a pair of DPS 112 Wailer(?) skis I demoed from half a dozen years ago at least,
only a few years after the Pettitor came out. But that ski got tossed in crud, unlike the K2 and later Rossi two, that are all tanks,
including the 118 B.O. for not too large skiers. AHEM, THEY STILL NEED TO COME OUT WITH A 191 ROSSI BLACK OPS 118.)
In most videos, Pettit is doing extreme things on extreme terrain, so it's hard to tell his signature turn when it's happening,
in such extreme terrain/conditions, on surviving videos.
Once you've experienced it for yourself, you can then spot it, in very guarded/careful versions, in conditions that mask it, partly.
(I know I posted a few such videos last time the subject came up, that have some admittedly harder to spot turn versions, shown pretty well.
But it's kind of underwhelming to see it, in those video situations that actually de-emphasize it - it's too ordinary-looking for the camera)
(Some of the milder, more casual and thus more "easy to spot it" videos, had been taken down, last time I looked.)
But I'll try to find a good example, if I can, from his old videos that are still posted. Ski season's over, after all.
That Pettit turn, great for K2 reps/associates at the time who followed Sean Pettit's lead, Seth Morrison's, and Pep Fujas' lead also,
lost the interest of the bean counters and rubber maid execs newly overseeing K2, and they plowed those skis under, in just a few years.
Then Pep Fujas the freestyler sort of took over, and his new replacement skis got more freestyle-like and noodly
(which Sean Pettit too liked, because he was sick of extreme skiing by then, seemingly);
and K2 fired the wrong pros (Seth and finally Sean).
Thus the fatter lines of K2 skis lost their magic, for me (and for some associates).
And Sean Pettit switched to mostly snowboarding, but also skis he could do more tricks on at slower speeds, on more normal slopes.
And Seth Morrison had long since switched to mostly backcountry skiing, so he was by then more interested in lighter weight skis he could carry,
rather than his signature resort tanks.
Much later, Rossi stepped in, with its original Black Ops 118 knock off.
(You can still easily get my K2 associate friends to reminisce about the good old days, of Seth and Sean Pettit skis.)
Last edited: