mountainbum wrote:I've always wondered how it was possible to turn effectively on straight skis....does tipping straight skis do anything?
It depends. The "straight" ski era began at the dawn of skiing and lasted into the early 1990s, so individual ski characterisics varied all over the place. From the early 1900s, very few alpine skis were literally straight. Almost all skis (except X-country and jumping skis) had some sidecut - just not as much as the skis we know today. I had multiple "straight" ski models from 1983-1994. Harald and other skiers had many more of course.
All of those "straight" skis had some sidecut. What they lacked was the deeper sidecuts and easy flexibility we're used to today. Skis in those days were very stiff, which was necessary for edgehold on hard snow/ice. The materials technology to make a ski laterally stiff (for edgehold) yet longitudinally flexible (for easier turning) had not yet trickled down from aerospace and other high tech industries to skis (at least not skis the average consumer could buy or afford).
On skis like that, if you had the requisite movements and balancing skills, it was possible to carve non-skidded turns. Doing this required 100% weighting of the outside ski, since it took all your weight to bend a ski into reverse camber. If you then tipped that fully weighted ski, it would turn at whatever radius the sidecut allowed (typically quite long). Because skis were so stiff, it took a lot of energy to bend them into reverse camber and keep them there. That energy could only come from two sources: (1) a skier moving at sufficiently high speeds could maintain reverse camber; or (2) a skier STOMPING on the BTE could produce a momentary reverse camber. Both of these techniques required balancing and movement skills that were beyond most skiers.
Mid-long radius carved turns were possible if the skier could handle the high speeds involved. Carving linked short radius turns was beyond the ability of all but the elite. I can count on one finger the number of carved, short radius turns I made on my "straight" skis. It happened largely by accident, on a pair of Rossi 7SK's, a lightweight slalom ski. I remember needing to make a turn RIGHT NOW to avoid something or other. Stuck my ski way out to the side and STOMPED on it. ZING!!! The skis flew across beneath my body like they were fired from a slingshot. Holy crap! I rarely had the nerve to try linking such turns. I didn't have the strength or balancing skills necessary to handle the enormous rebound energies from such stiff skis. I'm sure Harald did them routinely. But the one I did experience was very cool... 25 years later I can still feel that jolt of energy and my shock at how quickly the skis came around.
But... none of that involved "tipping" in the PMTS sense. Even if you avoided steering, it required very active BTE dominance. Not like PMTS at all.
PMTS tipping works even at slow-medium speeds not only because our skis have a lot of sidecut, but also because they're very flexible compared to traditional skis. This is why HH and the coaches are adamant that many of today's skis are still too stiff for PMTS techniques. Even if skis have the sidecut, if they're too stiff they can't be bent into reverse camber without active pushing, which leads to ineffective movements. On stiff, straight skis, PMTS tipping at less than mach speeds wouldn't do much. You'd turn, but on such a large radius that you'd be picking up speed from one turn to the next. Not a good recipe for recreational skiing.