This is some awesome info I ran across today about Skiers Choice AutoWake 2.0 technology used in their 2018+ Supra and Moomba boats. It's a super long read of multiple posts by him
in this thread he created. I simply consolidated his multiple posts into a single post. I haven't even read all of this yet but it's pretty cool tech! Read on below if you're a surf or wake geek. If you're not into reading how the system works or about wake shaping boat dynamics in general then don't bother reading any further
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Hey guys. Some of you know me, but I am Matt Brown and I am the Moomba product manager. I have seen several questions about AutoWake and thought I would start a thread on it to try and help. The first question I will answer is from 2 other threads about what is the new "Amplitude" bar or graph. We are launching the 2018 stuff in a few days so I can't go into too much detail, but the idea is for 2018 we have added a draft sensor that shows how deep the boat is really sitting in the water at any time. In the past all you had was ballast gauges (which are really timers) and you had to approximate how much passenger weight you had. Now for 2018, you can tell at anytime how deep the boat is really sitting in the water. Where that adds value is on Saturday when you go out and have a huge wave, you can now see what the pitch and roll is, but also exactly how much weight you are displacing. Think of it like having the X, Y, and Z parameters of the boat. On Sunday when you go out with only factory ballast and 2 passengers and you don't have a really huge wave, then you can again compare the pitch, roll, and displacement. You will eventually find the "magic line" of minimum displacement that you really need to get the wave size you desire. As always, your size, skill level, board shape or size will all dictate where that magic line needs to be, but at least now you will know really how much water you are displacing at any time. While the amplitude bar does NOT add to the displacement or make the wave bigger, it does give you a nice visual that you didn't have or don't have in other boats. Passenger and gear weight is the one variable that always seems to get overlooked. I get questions all the time about how to set up boats for wakeboarding or surfing, but no one ever remembers to say exactly how many passengers they have and where they are sitting. All I usually get is "where does my ballast need to be", or "where do my plates need to be". The truth is the X, Y, And Z axis (Pitch, Roll, Displacement) are ALL critically important and work together. Pitch and Roll make the shape of the wave. Displacement makes the size. And as it is often said, "There is NO replacement for displacement". You can't make a huge wave without displacing a lot of water.
In addition for 2018, the Amplitude bar also has an "AMP" setting beneath it. It shares a name and general location on the screen, but it actually has a completely different purpose. When trying to teach new riders or smaller riders, sometimes it is necessary to scale the wave back a little. Personally I have a 10 year old that loves to surf. As he was learning, sometimes when we got the wave too large he had a hard time keeping the board away from the transom. To fix that, we would reduce some of the ballast. That is where the "AMP" setting works great. If you are teaching a new or smaller rider, you can reduce the wave size by just reducing "AMP" from 100 to maybe 50 or 75. It also works nice for when you want to recreational ski, kneeboard, tube or other wakesports where 100% ballast is not always required, but you want AutoWake to hold a specific pitch and roll. It also works well when you want to cruise across the lake and not worry about where people are sitting. I think we can all relate to the time when you are trying to get back to the dock and 6 people are sitting on the port side having a conversation and the boat is running with a list. By reducing AMP to 5 or 10%, then AutoWake will level the boat with minimum ballast and allow you to drive back to the dock without completely filling your ballast.
Hope that helps explain the Amplitude Bar and "AMP" setting. I will continue to add helpful hints about AutoWake and how to use it as I get time....
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Random AutoWake tip of the day - displacement
I guess I really should have started with a better explanation of what AutoWake does and what it can do to add value. As I said before, the wave or wake of a boat is created by the water that is displaced by the boat as it moves through the water. To keep it really simple, the shape of the wave is defined by the pitch and roll of the boat as it displaces the water. (The Flow plates, wakeplate, and any other device of the boat that disrupts water does affect this shape but we will discuss that later). The overall size of the wave/wake is defined by the total water that is displaced. If you have 10,000lbs of boat, ballast, passengers, gear going through the water, then you will displace twice as much water as a 5,000lbs boat, ballast, passenger, gear boat. The 10,000lbs of water will generate a really large wave and obviously will be probably twice as big as the 5000lb boat assuming they displace water at same pitch and roll. While that seems like basic information, sometimes people don't really think about it that way. I get questions all the time about people having issues getting a good surf wave or not having enough push and they want to know where to put their flow plates or wakeplate. After asking a few questions, I find out they are in a boat that weighs about 4000lbs, they have less than 2000lbs of ballast and passengers, they are a 200lb rider and they are trying to ride a 4'6" skim style board. The truth is that just will not work very well. It doesn't matter where you put the flow plates or wakeplate or even what the pitch or roll is, the truth is you probably just don't have enough displacement to create a large enough wave with enough push for a rider of that size on a board that small. It reminds me of the Bee Movie and the theory that Bees should not be able to fly. (Side note - that Myth is not accurate, google it..) So, can a 200lb rider ride a 4'6" skim board behind a Mojo with only 2000lbs of ballast? Yes, they can. I have proven it. But I promise you it isn't easy and if you don't know how to pump like a mad man, it probably would not be fun.
So, that takes me back to AutoWake. You might ask what displacement has to do with AutoWake, but it is very important to actually understand how displacement works first before we spend too much time talking about pitch and roll. AutoWake is NOT a ballast system. AutoWake is a system that controls the "tools" on the boat to try and maximize where the plates are located, where ballast is located, where passengers are located etc, to get the boat back to displacing water at the same pitch and roll every time so that you can have the same shape wave or wake every time. What AutoWake can NOT do is make a 6000lb boat the same as a 10,000lb boat. Let me explain it this way, the 2018 Mojo has a marketed dry weight of 4,400lbs. The ballast system is 3,000lbs and the capacity of that boat is an additional 2,500lbs. So, if you took a 2018 Mojo, filled all the ballast and total capacity, that boat could displace legally up to 9,900lbs. Granted, if you have that much weight in the boat you probably would struggle to get on plane, but that is the full potential of the boat. If you took the same boat and filled the front to only 50%, port side to 100%, stbd side to 80%, and 1 driver that weighs 200lb, then you actually only have 600lbs in the front, 900lbs on port, 720lbs on stbd and 200lbs in passenger for total of 2420lbs in ballast and passengers. Add the 4,400 of boat weight and you are a total of 6,820lbs. Compared to the 9,900 potential, you are WAY less in overall displacement. AutoWake can move ballast around to get the correct pitch and roll, but AutoWake can not add an additional 3,000lbs of displacement. As we say all the time, there is NO replacement for displacement. Pitch and Roll do NOT generate size or push. Only displacement can do that.
Again for 2018, we tried to add that visual with the Amplitude bar. Now at anytime you can see what your real "Potential" is in overall displacement. Now that we all understand exactly how displacement works and why it is so important, then we can start to talk more about what pitch and roll are doing and how the system actually works to try and maximize ballast while doing that. Stay tuned for more tips later....
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Random AutoWake Tip of the day - Garbage In Garbage Out
Not sure if anyone has heard of that saying, but as with any computer based system, the output of the system is only as good as the inputs to the system. Our AutoWake system is actually a very complex system. While we try and make the system really easy to use, the truth is the overall system is very complex and includes many different variables. If you think about it, before AutoWake, we tried to get every driver to adjust port ballast, stbd ballast, front ballast, port flow plates, wakeplates, and stbd flow plates to the perfect spot. The driver also had to figure out how much additional weight was in the boat in terms of passengers and where those passengers were sitting. They also had to adjust speed and sometimes rope length to get each rider the perfect wave or wake for the way they liked it. While many of you are still living in that technology and doing a great job with it, you can see where this can be very complicated and intimidating for new users. That is also why if you look at our Surfing section, you will see hundreds of posts about "How do I adjust my ....." or "Flow plate settings for ...." or my favorite is always the way "Why does my wave suck so bad" posts. What happens is you can have 8 of the 9 parameters just right and it only takes 1 parameter to be off to completely screw up the wave. That one parameter might be an inaccurate paddlewheel speedo, an inaccurate ballast gauge, a flow plate that has not completely reset itself, and now you no longer have a surfable wave. In this case, an inaccurate input or sensor has totally ruined the output. You even had the parameter at the right number or setting, but the input was wrong to start with, giving you a bad experience.
Same thing can happen with AutoWake. With AutoWake, we take all the frustration out of having to try and keep up with the 9 parameters and we really reduce that to 4. They are Pitch, Roll, Displacement, and Speed. In fact, we try and make it even easier by giving you factory defaults that should give you are a really good starting point on Pitch and Roll. Now all you have to do is pick a speed and then the more displacement you add, the bigger the wave or wake. Sounds simple right?? Well, the truth is there is still one VERY important factor that has to be perfect. And that is the Inclinometer. The Inclinometer is possibly one of the most important components in the AutoWake system and it is probably the part we have talked about the least. The Inclinometer is a sensor that is mounted under the dash and it tells us exactly what the actual pitch and roll of the boat is at any time. As I said before, Garbage IN will always give you Garbage OUT so if your inclinometer is NOT sending the right information or calibrated correctly, then it will obviously not be changing the ballast to get you to an accurate pitch and roll. The first thing you always need to consider is if the Inclinometer is working properly and most importantly is it calibrated properly. We calibrate the inclinometer at the factory, but obviously sometimes we make mistakes. The best way to check the calibration of the inclinometer is to actually run the boat at wakeboarding speeds. For 2017, it was best to do that with 2 passengers that are close to same size. When driving at wakeboard speeds, it is really easy to tell when the boat is actually running level. If the wakes are symmetrical side to side, then the boat is running close to level. If the wakes are not symmetrical, have the passenger move around until wakes are level. Once you validate that, turn on AutoWake and see what the actual "Roll" is displaying. If you are displaying within .5 degrees of 0, then you are probably close enough. However, if the inclinometer says you are running at more than +1 degree or less than -1 degree, then you should recalibrate the inclinometer. To recalibrate, you can go to the Menu button, Vessel Settings, AutoWake settings, and then hit Calibrate Inclinometer. For 2017, you have to calibrate the inclinometer when the boat is sitting still because it resets pitch and roll to 0. If you did that while running, you might get roll correct, but the pitch would then be off probably 8-9 degrees. For 2018, you can calibrate pitch and roll independent of each other. So for 2018, you can actually calibrate roll while driving level.
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Random AutoWake Tip of the day - Why Does AutoWake drain ballast
AutoWake is designed to keep a boat at a consistent pitch or roll. If the boat is not at the correct roll, then it will drain ballast on one side or the other until it sees the correct roll. If the boat is not at the correct pitch, then it will drain ballast in the front to try and achieve a higher pitch. If you don’t want AutoWake to drain ballast, then you can use the actual pitch or roll numbers to tell passengers where to move so that the ballast can stay as full as possible. For 2018, if the system drains more than 20% of ballast in one compartment, then a popup will come up to tell you where to move passengers to better optimize more ballast in the boat.
Where this really becomes a problem is when you start trying to be "smarter" than the system. As I said before, prior to AutoWake, you had to adjust at least 9 variables to get the wave "dialed" for that day. Because of all the years of this, people have gotten in their head that certain things will "ALWAYS" make the wave better. Some have heard that if you just keep adding weight to the side you are surfing it will get better. Some have heard that if just keep adding weight to the rear, the wave will get taller. Some have heard that if you just keep adding weight to the front then the wave will get longer. Some have heard that if you are having a hard time getting a wave, move the flow plate down on the opposite side. While most of that is true most of the time, nothing "ALWAYS" works like you might think. While most will never admit it (including me somedays), a Microprocessor using sensors is actually smarter than all of us. While I consider myself a fairly advanced driver, I don't have an inclinometer in my brain. I don't have a draft sensor either. While I can typically look at a wave and have a general idea of what to adjust to make it better, I don't have a microprocessor that is calculating all the variables and doing the correct adjustment based on constraints and logic. What I have found is many users are using AutoWake to get started, but quickly start adjusting pitch and roll or flow plates because they think they are improving the system. Again, I will get into that later and how you can do that, but before you start doing that, you should make sure you really understand what AutoWake is doing, why it is doing it, and then that will help you learn how to adjust it later. Visualization always helps me, so I will try to explain with an example.
Lets say we are on the lake in a 2018 Mojo with 3000lb ballast system and 5 people. To get the day started, one decides to surf on port side and we turn on AutoWake. After about 6 minutes (because we now have 6 pump ballast system), static mode is achieved at 100% AMP setting. The ballast is 100% full on port side, 90% full on stbd side and 75% full on front. We have started with factory settings of 9 degrees pitch and -3 degrees roll and the flow plates are at factory default of 60% on stbd plate. Before we take off, static settings for that show the boat is currently sitting at .2 degrees pitch and -2.1 degrees roll. We have 1 passenger driving. 1 sitting behind driver, 1 sitting in observer seat and one sitting in port rear seat corner. Boat takes off and luckily static mode and dynamic mode are exactly correct and once boat hits surfing speed, we are AutoWake achieved at 9 degrees pitch and -3 degrees roll. The wave looks pretty good and all is well. But then the person sitting behind driver decides he has heard if he moves to port side, wave will get better. So, he gets up and moves to port lounge seat. If the driver is looking at screen he will notice this changes roll from -3 to -5. At first wave actually is still really good, but actually gets a little steeper. So now the passenger in the rear seat has heard to make the wake not as steep to move weight forward, so he jumps out of his seat and runs to bow. Again, if the driver watches screen, he will notice now the pitch changes from 9 degrees to 8 degrees. The wave does get a little longer and for now, we are better. Truth is 8 and -5 is probably not much different than 9 and -3, but everyone thinks they have improved the wave. However, AutoWake starts adjusting. You have now changed passenger location but not changed pitch and roll so the only thing it knows to do is react. So, AutoWake drains stbd rear ballast to get roll back to -3. It will actually have to drain about 400lbs because the 200lb passenger moving from stbd to port actually made a really big difference. In addition, the front also has to drain about 400lbs to get pitch back to 9. The loss of rear ballast AND passenger moving drastically change that. So, now AutoWake has removed 800lbs of ballast which is equivalent to about 4 people. This loss of ballast drastically changes amount of push, rider loses the wave and falls. Driver turns AutoWake off to see ballast level, realizes AutoWake drained ballast and he starts cussing AutoWake and says it doesn't work. Anyone had an experience like that??
Here is another one I have seen. Same group of 5 people go on lake. They have now heard that someone had a better experience with Flow plates at 85% and with default pitch of 12 and roll of -6. So, before they ever take off, they adjust stbd flow plate to 85%, change pitch to 12 and roll to -6. AutoWake is fine with that, so it adjusts ballast. This time they decide to sit differently. They want to try out the new sliding rear seat so 1 passenger drives, 1 passenger sits in OB seat, and 2 sit in the middle of the boat in the rear facing sliding seat. Because of where people are sitting to get to 12 pitch, the front ballast actually doesn't fill up at all. So NO ballast in the front. Also, to get to -6 roll with passengers sitting evenly the port rear ballast does fill to 100% but the stbd ballast only fills to 30%. In addition to that, with the plates now at 85% and with only about 1300lbs of ballast total, the pitch and roll of 12 and -6 do get achieved, but the extra lift from the plate being down so far basically makes a wave you can see, but has absolutely no push. Again, driver is now frustrated with AutoWake, turns off system, fills all bags manually and swears that AutoWake doesn't work. Anyone had this experience??
In both of these cases, in 2018 as soon as the rear ballast gets less than 80%, a popup will come up to tell you to move passengers to stbd. It didn't do that in 2017, but this is a nice improvement for 2018 to tell you that you are NOT optimizing ballast because of where the passengers are sitting relative to your pitch and roll numbers. Also, on the 2nd case, it will give you a warning that you need to move weight to rear because you have drained all front ballast. So, in order to have an experience like this in 2018, you have to physically tell the system that you don't care that it is draining ballast. While the popups can be frustrating, they will at least tell you know when they have drained more than 20% ballast. Also in both of these cases you have tried to outsmart the system by either making the system better by moving passengers or by adjusting factory defaults. Again, I will eventually talk about advanced users and how to adjust pitch and roll for when you add additional ballast or meet certain levels on the Amplitude bar but for today, the tip is trust the system. Try weighting the boat close to level with passengers. Try using default pitch and roll and flow plate locations. Watch what the system does and gain confidence. Also, try adding additional passengers or ballast and watch how the amplitude bar changes as passengers are added. Make mental notes of what the "Magic Line" is where the wave has good "Push" and then make mental notes of when the amplitude bar is so low that you don't have much push. I really think if you will trust the system and experiment with the new Amplitude Bar then you will find that the factory defaults actually work very well the majority of the time.
I will be completely honest, when we were developing AutoWake I was skeptical that the system could be a better driver than I was. I constantly adjusted pitch and roll and at first I used pitch and roll adjustments like I used to make ballast adjustments or plate adjustments. However, what I found was many times I would adjust the system just to find out I actually didn't make an improvement in overall feel. I would adjust pitch because I thought more pitch had to make the wave taller or give more push, but in reality more times than not that wasn't the case. To get the higher pitch it would typically drain ballast and less displacement actually ended with less push even with higher pitch. Same went for roll. I would think if -3 is good, then -6 HAD to be better. But that wasn't the case. Truth is to maximize push and overall energy of the wave, sometimes a less pitch or less roll actually worked better. With the right amount of displacement, the factory settings of 9 and -3 are really better than a modified setting of 11 pitch and -5 roll, ESPECIALLY if you have more displacement with factory settings and less displacement with "advanced" settings. I really can't stress this enough, there really is no replacement for displacement. If you have 10,000lbs of ballast, then it really doesn't matter what pitch and roll are. Think of the videos you have seen of people surfing behind yachts. It is just a matter of potential energy. With a big enough wave, the face can be all white washed and foamy, but if the wave is big enough, you can still surf some part of it.
Ok, that is all for today. Hopefully everyone will be talking about the New Max the rest of the day. I will try and post another tip before end of the week.
The key to this tip is to make sure your AutoWake system is working properly, you need to make sure your Inclinometer is calibrated properly. If you are having problems with calibration, then you can also talk with your local dealer about having them do it for you. Once you get the Inclinometer calibrated correctly, there is no need to recalibrate in the future even if you upgrade software levels.
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Random AutoWake tip of the day – Advanced users (part 1)
Ok, I am a little hesitant to even write this tip because I have found that many times people just skip all the basics when they see the advanced option and in the case of AutoWake, understanding and learning how the system really works is very important. While AutoWake is designed to be really easy to use and is intended to take the frustration out of having to “dial” in the surf wave, we have also found AutoWake to be a great learning tool. Like I said before, I would consider myself an advanced user. I have personally driven many professional wakeboarding events including the Masters, Nationals, and at Worlds. I have been developing boats for 17 years and I have been a part of most of all the surf development here. I feel like I can look at the wave or wake and take a decent guess at what needs to be changed to improve it. However, most people don’t have that much experience. Many of our consumers are first time v-drive owners and they just got the boat to spend more time with their family to enjoy surfing. With all the forums and social media outlets, I think sometimes they get “advanced” suggestions and think that these suggestions make them “advanced” users without really understanding the basics. So, without really learning how the boat or components work, they just go out and start changing plates, ballasts, passenger locations, and they end up actually making things worse the majority of the time. Again, I said this before, but just go to the Wakesurf Forum, or WakeWorld and scroll down a few threads. 90% of those threads are first timers asking for help and getting hundreds of DIFFERENT suggestions about what to change. Many times what actually happens is the users try ALL the different suggestions, then learn by trial and error what each component actually does, and instead of the “advanced” settings fixing the wake, the user fixes it themselves because they have learned the hard way how to adjust it themselves. Truth is I guess most things in life are learned the hard way, so maybe it is supposed to be that way. Haha
Anyways, as I said, if you let it, AutoWake can be an amazing learning tool. That is why my first suggestion has always been if you want to be an advanced user, first leave AutoWake in factory default settings. Watch how AutoWake works every time you use the boat and constantly look at the pitch and roll displayed on AutoWake and then mentally make a note of how the wake looks with that pitch and roll. Try to manually fill all the ballast to 100% sometimes before turning on AutoWake and watch how AutoWake adjusts. Try turning AutoWake on with 0% ballast and watch how AutoWake adjusts. If you first take off and the Wave is not formed perfectly, make a mental note of the actual roll. Then look at roll again once the wave is clean and see how much different it looks. Watch the length of the wave, size of the wave, and again compare that to pitch values when wave is good and when it is not. Also, with the 2018 Amplitude bar, watch how the size of the wave grows or ask how the push is and make mental notes of how that relates to location on Amplitude bar. Every time you stop the boat or at any time when you are driving, hit a ballast switch to turn it on, then right back off. That will toggle it out of AutoWake and back into manual mode without affecting cruise. By doing that, you can see exactly where the ballast levels are. To toggle back into AutoWake, just hit bottom left button again. By doing this, you can see how well you are maximizing ballast and how the ballast is adjusting relative to where you have passengers seated.
I feel VERY strongly that if you leave the AutoWake in factory defaults you will have a good wave every time. Will it be optimal or largest wave possible? Maybe not. But I promise you that if you watch and learn how the system reacts then you will better understand what a bad wave is and what a good wave is and how much pitch and roll had to be adjusted to correct it. You will also see how much passenger weight impacts pitch and roll. You will get an idea quickly that if you need to adjust roll 2 degrees, approximately how much passenger weight is required to do that without dumping a lot of ballast. You will get an idea quickly that if the wave is really tall and not long, how much pitch change might be required to lengthen it, and approximately how much passenger weight is required to do that. You will get a great idea of if you want a certain amount of push, how much total displacement is needed. And lastly, as you toggle between AutoWake screen and Manual Cruise screen, you will see when AutoWake is dumping ballast and then you can figure out how to help the system NOT drain ballast by putting people in the correct location. As I said, 2018 software will have popups to help you with that, but as you get to be a more advanced driver, you will actually start reacting before AutoWake sends a popup because you will actually understand WHY you are doing it.
If you will notice, at this point I never mentioned adjusting flow plates or wakeplates. That will be part of “advanced user part 2”. Stay tuned…..
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Random AutoWake Tip of the Day – Advanced Users (part 2 – Flow Plates)
The truth is when it comes to wakesurfing, it is pretty simple what effects the waves. Displacement is priority #1. It trumps everything. Displacement is only created by ballast and passengers. Without displacement, you don’t have a wave. You can adjust flow plates, wakeplates, suck gates, etc all you want, but if you don’t have displacement then you don’t have a wave and you definitely don’t have push. Once you have displacement, then it truly is the overall pitch and roll of the boat that shapes the wave. Roll has the most impact on shape, and Pitch has most impact on length. The flow plates and wakeplates DO affect roll and pitch, but NOT NEAR as much as displacement does. If you have 1000lbs of displacement equally distributed, you could adjust flow plates and wakeplate to get a wave, but if you have 3000lbs of displacement placed in exactly the right place, then you don’t need flow plates or wakeplates at all. 7 years ago wake shaping devices didn’t exist. People surfed by listing boats. Flow plates, wakeplates, Surf Gates, NSS, Gen 2’s were not developed to replace ballast systems. They were designed to allow users to surf easier with boats that were more equally weighted. In our case, we have located the plates and set factory defaults because that is what we found to work for most users. Again, as you become a more advanced user, then you can start experimenting with the plate locations and you can fine tune the waves even more.
So, the next step is to learn how the flow plates work. As I said before, any plate that pushes water has an opposite reaction on the boat. If a plate is deployed below the surface and pushes water down, then that creates actual lift on the boat. This is how the wakeplate and flow 2 plates work. Without getting too complicated, lets just say it creates lift and lift is actually the opposite force of displacement. When you surf left, the stbd actuator goes down moving water to a different location but also “rolls” the boat by lifting the stbd side. It is actually doing 2 things as it helps the “delayed convergence” of the water behind the boat creating the surf wave. Ok, so that is a lot of words, but what exactly does that look like? Sometime when you are on the water and NOT surfing, switch to manual mode and experiment with Flow plate location to see how that actually “looks” behind the boat. The best way to do that is with a slightly offset weighted boat. So manually fill the ballast in the boat to 100% on surf side, 80% on opposite side and at least 50% in the front. Have the passengers sit in the boat as evenly as possible. Now, without moving any passengers, turn cruise into manual mode and go between 10.8 to 11mph. When cruise is engaged, manually move the flow plates all the way to 0. You can move the plate on the controls screen with the up and down arrow. When flow plates are at 0, you will notice that the wave is not formed and unsurfable. Slowly add 5% plate at a time and watch how it changes the wave. You will probably notice that somewhere between 45-60% the wave will start to form. But don’t stop there. Keep adjusting all the way to 100%. As you continue to add plate, you will notice the wave “looks” like it is getting longer and possibly cleaner. But you will also notice that the wave will be getting smaller and eventually it will probably again become unsurfable as you get closer to 95-100%. The reason is because it will eventually create so much lift on the one side that it is really fighting the displacement that is trying to push the boat down. Do this on the port and stbd side and see how the prop rotation also affects how much plate is required on the port side relative to the stbd side. Now that you understand better how the flow plates actually work, then you can begin to understand when you might want to adjust them. My general rule of thumb is if I do NOT have a lot of displacement, then I can help the system gain a little more “PUSH” by actually running the flow plates a little higher than normal (Maybe in the 40-50 range). On the opposite side, if I DO have a lot of displacement, then I can actually run the plates a little lower (Maybe in the 75-85 range) to give the wave a little more length. If you like to have the majority of your passengers sit on the side that you are surfing, then you can also run less plate. This creates less roll by the plate and the offset weight creates the roll. If you have your passengers evenly weighted or even possibly a little to the wrong side, then you can slightly add more plate to clean up the wake without having AutoWake drain ballast to compensate. Again, as I said before, do NOT make these adjustments until you have first tried factory settings and experimented with flow plates and actually understand what you are adjusting. As with anything, all adjustments have tradeoffs. What might work for one application might make something else worse in a different application.
Ok, that is it for Advanced Users Part 2. Part 3 will be how and when to adjust wakeplate and also how and when to adjust pitch and roll for advanced users using high amounts of displacement.
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Random AutoWake Tip of the Day – Advanced Users (part 3 – WakePlate)
Ok, so now we understand what displacement is and how important it is. We also understand what pitch and roll is and how it shapes the wake. We understand how the inclinometer works and how important it is that it is calibrated properly. We understand how the flow plates work and when we might want to adjust them. But the last 2 adjustments we need to understand are the wakeplate and when exactly do we adjust pitch and roll. This tip is going to be specifically on the wakeplate.
One factor in wave and wake shapes is the “feel” of the wave or wake. We have discussed how sometimes a wave can be tall, or long, or have a lot of push, but one characteristic that actually has a lot to do with the push is the firmness or hardness of the wave. If a wave looks tall but feels “soft”, then typically it doesn’t have a great push. To create a more “firm” wave, think of it like compression. You basically want to displace a lot of water, but put a lot of pressure on it so that when it creates the wave, it has compressed energy. As weird as it may sound, the best way to do that is to actually fight that displacement with lift. That is where pitch adjustments and wakeplate adjustments can start to come in.
The wakeplate works under the same logic as the flow plates. When the wakeplate is down, water is forced down, pushing the boat up. When the wakeplate is up, water is NOT necessarily forced up, but with the plate in the up position, the rear of the boat can sit as deep as possible. The pitch of the boat can be adjusted several degrees by moving the plate from 100% down to 0% down (or all the way up). The factory default when cruise is on is 25% down. I guess in another tip I can talk about smartplate, but the short version of that is when the boat comes to a stop the plate goes to 100% down to help accelerate. Once the boat reaches a “cross-over” point, then the plate goes to 25%. We chose 25% because for the average user running factory ballast or less, a lower wakeplate number allows the back of the boat to sit as deep as possible allowing the boat to displace a good wave. In fact, for many people, you might even want to run the wakeplate at 0%. However, for some people running a LOT of extra ballast, they want to run extra weight in the rear and then “compress” that water with a slightly lower wakeplate of maybe 30-40%. But keep in mind that all of this works together. If you run too much weight in the back and then run the wakeplate down to 50-60%, then it will greatly reduce pitch. If you don’t change your AutoWake pitch values, then the system might actually drain water out of the front bag because the wakeplate would be fighting the effects of not adding weight in the front to offset the extra weight in the back. Draining water always reduces displacement and as we said in an earlier tip, displacement is the most critical component, so we want to minimize draining as much as possible. In this case, most users would not want to use the wakeplate to lower pitch, but instead use front ballast to affect pitch. That is why most users that add more weight in the rear, ALSO add weight in the front. That is basically doing the same thing of compressing the water. The extra weight in the rear pulls the back down. The extra weight in the front, pulls the rear up basically compressing all the displaced water.
One additional point that should be mentioned about the wakeplate is if you adjust the wakeplate too far down, it can drastically affect the wave. Once the plate moves past about 50% deflection, then it does more than just create lift. It actually starts to interfere with the roostertail coming from the prop. This deflection of the roostertail can drastically affect the wave shape and creation. To see how that works, fill your ballast to factory defaults, allow pitch and roll to adjust correctly, then once the wave has formed, move the wakeplate to 100% down. It is very likely that this will make the wave unsurfable.
The learning point here again is to understand what the wakeplate is doing, and experiment with it to see how you can maximize wave shape and length once you become an advanced user. As I said before, most users will typically want to maximize displacement by running the wakeplate between 0-25 and allow the boat to sit as deep as possible. However, if you are running really high amounts of displacement, then you might find that fine tuning the plate down a little could give you a more firm wave or possibly even a slightly longer wave.
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Random AutoWake Tip of the Day – Advanced Users (part 4 – When to adjust Pitch and Roll)
The last adjustment you need to understand is when to adjust pitch and roll. Unfortunately many people that don’t understand AutoWake immediately adjust pitch and roll. In the classic example of if 1 is good, 2 must be better, many people have adjusted pitch and or roll to extreme amounts before learning how the system works or even trying the factory defaults. Again, the thought process is if -3 roll is good, then -6 roll has to be better. Or if 9 pitch is good, then 11 pitch has to make the wave taller. Hopefully by now everyone understands that these are NOT good ideas. As we have discussed many times, only wave shape is dictated by pitch and roll. Wave size or push is always dictated by displacement. So, the answer to the original question is you should only adjust pitch and roll if you truly want to maximize ballast IF you are running more displacement than factory ballast. So the next question is how or when would you do that?
Let’s say you want to experiment with more displacement than factory ballast. You have already experimented with factory defaults, experimented with flow plates and understand how they work, experimented with the wakeplate and understand how that works. You have tried different boards, different speeds, and now you want to try and maximize what the boat can do. So, you get a couple extra friends, a couple extra fat sacks and head to the lake. My first recommendation would be to try and add any additional weight as centrally located as possible. Granted, you might surf on the port side all the time and the logical thought would be to add all additional weight on the port side, but we have learned better than that and we understand that overall displacement is more important than just displacing water on one side of the boat. So, if you have a couple extra fat sacks, fill them in the middle of the cockpit. Depending on the size and shape, you might want to fill one in the middle and the other closer to the walkthrough area at the dash. Remember, if you add all the additional weight in the back, then you will need something in the front, or you will be drastically changing the pitch. Next thing is fill all factory ballast to 100%. Once this is all done, then check the “Amplitude” display on the dash if you are in a 2018 model. If you have maxed the “Amplitude” display, then first make sure you have not exceeded the capacity of the boat. Obviously, that would be a big safety issue. Once you have made sure you have NOT exceeded the capacity of the boat, then try and run the boat with factory flow settings, wakeplate settings, and keep it in manual mode. Once you get the surf speed, check the shape of the wave. If the wave is not clean, then you could adjust passengers to the side you are surfing on. If the wave is very smooth with not a good defined “zone”, then try moving passengers to the non surf side. If the wave is rather short, then try moving passengers to the bow of the boat. If the wave seems extra long, then try moving passengers to the rear of the boat. By experimenting with different passenger locations in manual mode, then you can see what the maximum potential is of the wave with maximum displacement. Ok, you might be confused at this point because what does that have to do with AutoWake, but stay tuned…
The next thing you should do is hit the left button and engage AutoWake. As soon as it comes on, note the actual pitch and roll of the boat. With your extra ballast and optimized seating locations, you can now see what your actual pitch and roll are. If you had a good wave, then I would imagine that pitch and roll would likely be close to factory defaults. You might find that the pitch or roll is actually a degree or more off. As we have said many times, displacement trumps everything. With enough displacement, you can actually get good results even if the pitch is at 8 degrees or 11 degress. With enough displacement, you can actually get good results on port side even if the roll is at -2 degress or -4 degrees. So, for that day, you can now see where you are with pitch and roll. If you want to try and maintain that for that day, then you can now adjust pitch and roll to the new settings and as long as you have the extra ballast, then you should have a consistent wave throughout the day as you change riders with minimum ballast draining. Keep in mind that as passengers move, it will obviously have to drain some ballast to keep the pitch and roll, but this would be one example of when you might want to adjust pitch and roll from factory settings. One very important thing to remember is just because those pitch and roll values work that day, does NOT mean the same settings will be optimal when you reduce displacement. In fact, it will very likely NOT work as good and let me try and explain that......
Let’s say you did the “experimenting” with maximum ballast on a Saturday. On that day, you had an extra large crew of 10 passengers and you even had an extra fat sack in the cockpit area. When you moved all the weight around and filled all the factory ballast, you actually found on that day that the optimal pitch was at 10.5 degrees. In fact, it could never get less than that because with all the passengers in the rear of the boat, the front ballast was always at 100% just trying to maintain 10.5 degrees. With all that displacement, you still had a very surfable wave and in fact you really loved it because it had a great amount of push. In fact, several of the passengers learned to surf for the first time without the rope and now you are convinced that 10.5 pitch is the “Magic” number. The roll was actually close to -3 so you just left the roll alone. You had such a great experience that you wanted to do the same thing on Sunday. However, on Sunday, you only have 3 passengers and the person with the extra fat sack was not one of them. So on this day, you only have factory ballast and 3 passengers. The truth is you just will NOT get the same results on Sunday as you had on Saturday. When you get to the lake, the “Amplitude” display will explain that. On Saturday, the “Amplitude” display was maxed out. On Sunday, the “Amplitude” display will be at about 50%. This is when you really need to change pitch and roll BACK to factory default. If you don’t, this is what will happen. When you turn AutoWake on, the roll will get achieved first, then it will try and fill ballast to reach the “AMP” setting of 100% of ballast in the rear. It will get there. Let’s say you have all passengers sitting perfect and both rear ballast get to 100%. So, the roll is achieved and rear ballast is achieved. However, the front ballast will never fill all the way up, because if you left the pitch at 10.5 degrees, then it will actually need to add more weight in the rear to get to the extra high pitch and the only thing the system can do is NOT fill the front or drain the front to try and get to 10.5 degrees. So, in this case, it is likely that you will end up with 30%, or maybe less ballast in the front. As I have described before, this is a huge mistake, because now you are actually losing about 700lbs displacement to try and get to a “MAGIC” number of 10.5 pitch. If you change the pitch back to default of 9, then the front would continue to fill and in fact, you might get to 100% ballast in the front. In this case, the less pitch actually makes the wave bigger because it increases displacement. Remember the no replacement for displacement??
Confused now?? This is a prime example of why it is very important to understand how all the components work in the overall system. Let’s say you are a new user and you went out on Saturday as we described. Let’s say you just left all factory defaults and just operated the boat normally. What would likely have happened is the AutoWake system would have filled all the ballast to 100% in the rear. With all the passengers and ballast in the rear, then it would likely have filled all the ballast in the front to 100% to try and get to 9 degree pitch. It is very likely once it got to 100%, it would have given you a popup that said front ballast maxed, unable to achieve 9 degrees pitch, move passengers to front. This would have been a little annoying, but if you wouldn’t have done anything, the popup would go away and you would have ended up running most of the day at 10.5 degrees pitch with popups coming on every time you took off. While the popups would have been annoying, it would at least be telling you what was going on, and the best part is the performance would still have been there and you would have had a great day. Now on Sunday, when you went out with less displacement, you would still get maximum factory ballast, because you never adjusted from factory defaults. On Sunday, you would NOT get popups, because with only 3 passengers, the system can easily achieve the factory settings for pitch and roll. On Sunday, you would not have the same push as Saturday, but you would have more push than if you had left the 10.5 pitch settings. And the best part is by not adjusting settings, you can actually see how the only variable between Saturday and Sunday was the “Amplitude” display and now you see exactly what we mean by how important displacement is.
One example where you might actually want to adjust roll is if you want to play with “wave transfers”. The Flow plates can generally make about a 4 degree change from port surfing to stbd surfing without moving passengers. So, if you want to do transfers without moving passengers, then you might adjust port surfing to a -1 degree roll and stbd surfing to a 3 degree roll. If you do that, then you will probably want to make sure that you have plenty of displacement so that the wave is still good and surfable with these new reduced roll amounts. Like I said before, with enough displacement, it will overcome the slightly lower roll amounts so you should be good. However, if you only have a couple passengers in the boat and factory ballast, then this might not be possible. If that is the case, then during transfers, you might have to have one passenger also move in the boat to help with the roll change between port surfing and stbd surfing.
So, after reading this, you might think I am suggesting that you don’t adjust pitch and roll very often. If so, then you are getting my point. Unless you really know what you are doing, and you have a good knowledge about how you are making adjustments and how they relate to the displacement in the boat that day, then you can actually get less performance if you adjust pitch and roll too much. If you really must adjust pitch and roll, just always remember that high pitch or roll numbers can cause the system to drain front ballast or rear ballast to try and achieve those numbers. While that might be what you want to do to personalize the wave shape or length, just always keep in mind that push and size will always be more affected by displacement than pitch or roll.
