Vail & VBC 24Jan20

Steve Brown's Boyz and I hit Vail today. We caught the leftovers all over the mountain and did the most damage back at Blue Sky Basin. Snow was falling and we often found it deep but conditions were also often choppy from yesterday's sun and some wind. It got nicer toward the end of the day.

Of course I then introduced 'em all to the VBC taproom in Vail Village. There was stuff we all enjoyed. I particularly liked Blur, VBC's most popular NEIPA. So tasty, the hazy, that I even brought home a six - just $14 so, as typical, "to go" is much cheaper than drafts in house.

What's In Your Quiver? 25Jan20

I had many of the skis out today to tune and wax and took inventory for grins. Living a lot of time in Summit Co in winter brings one to ski mainly when it snows, mainly when or where it is not crowded, and on task-appropriate boards. I have three sets of alpine skis, all from Liberty right here in Eagle Co; I have two pair of AT skis and one pair of backcountry boards. I love the Liberty skis for their light and lively bamboo cores plus their Colorado lineage. First is the Helix 187cm 135-105-120 with STH 12 bindings - these were my prior daily go to skis; they are pretty straight, pretty flat, fat enough and with tiny turned up tips called bomb rocker- FAST. Next are my current alpine daily drivers, though most call 'em mid-fats - but I need that for when I choose to ski. The Origin 182cm (bought them used so a bit short) 146-116-136 with STH 13 bindings are twin-tipped turning torrents - full rocker-camber-rocker... so fun with keen graphics to boot. Finally when lift-aided, the Genome 187cm 170-141-150 with STH 12 bindings. Yep, these are the fattest skis ever made and dump selection to a foot or more of new snow makes there use very specialized for me. Just 2-3 days/season but oh baby on those days I float like a butterfly. Plus, I'm always comfy in my Solomon 80 boots.

In the Alpine Touring (AT) realm I have two contenders. I don nice Scarpa AT boots for these and try to keep my kick weight reasonable. First is a pair of 178cm K2 Work Stinx 125-88-110 with Dynafit Radical bindings. These are good for everyday work in the backcountry and I repurposed them from my telemark days; the skins are still fine. Next up are some special 188cm Skilogik (RIP) Bomb Squad 148-122-140 pow hounds with gorgeous tops and Dynafit FT bindings. Here again the conditions need to be right but when they are these boards are spectacularly fun. Plus, fun fact, I acquired them from Fritz Sperry of legendary Colorado backcountry descent lines and books.

Finally, on cross country days or days out with Kala I've got a pair of Fischer SBound 112s. These 179cm 112-78-95 skis with Rotofella XT NNN bindings have metal edges, great sidecut, and plenty of width to romp where trails don't go (they do not fit in tracks). The bases are outfitted with "offtrack crown" scales which dig in well but the camber is extreme so with flourocarbon on the tips and tails I can really take off on the flats. I even have kicker skins for steeper ups. Getting down is sometimes an issue and I need some snow to execute telemark turns (without true down-pressure) from my awesome Alpina Alaska boots. Go where few go...

Good news is that I have used them all this year. Come skiing.

Hittin' The Slopes 22Jan20-24Jan20

My friend Steve Brown and his buddy Richard Hubbs came to town for "boyz week." Their timing was great as after quite a dry spell we are getting several nice storms, including a 12+in dumper. We are really in the pre-boyz-WE of his show: day one we hit Keystone after ~6in of new. We were stoked and skied plenty but hit highly variable conditions in and out of trees.

Overnight we scored a dumper of 12" at the Nest. Awaking we dove on OpenSnow to determine who won the Summit snow lottery and it was Breck. We headed over and THERE WAS NO TRAFFIC! Our day in the deep and steep rivaled some of our best. We skied much lower vert totals but much more challenging terrain and had an f*cking blast (but  Imperial was closed so no Whale's Tail).

With soft stuff finishing and crowds pending, our plan was to return to KS for some AT action up to Ericson and Bergman bowls. With a few hearty souls I awaited the rope drop which really never came for me by 1pm. We did do runs off Outback and found my rig was sorely busted - I was doing tele turns due to heel free AT bindings! I don't know how it was so out of sorts but I had to head back down after a couple runs and left "da boyz" to undertake the skin-out. I was bummed but glad my whack style got me down the hill in one piece. The fix is all done so won't happen again - tip: "check your gear-always."

Rip it... rip it good.

Security Update - IoT Belt & Suspenders 17Jan20

I finished modifying and installing some IoT tilt sensors on my garage doors. I chose Z-Wave Plus (the most secure) models which came with mechanical tilt switches on board. The mechanical is on the right in the 1st pic below. I'd heard the mechanical switches were prone to fail after a year so I bought a bunch of mercury switches from China and modified the sensors to use those instead. Both doors are monitored now and the system works great. It's belt & suspenders because my Arlo cam in the garage already monitors for movement and triggers when the garage doors go up. Now I am doubly sure if something is messing with my garage (and I'll have an image of them).

Jax & More 08Jan20

Kala & I have been waiting for the COS Jax to open and we went with Jim & Mary on day 2. It is excellent... and we went on 50% off wine night. This new seafood spot is highly recommended. We enjoyed oysters, shrimp, grouper and scallops, as well as the wine and company.

We followed the great fun and meal with a split of 2017 Staglin chardonnay back at the ranch; think refined mineral white burgundy not big sweet oaky Cali chardonnay - stellar. While toasting we caught the best concert video of all time from Roy Orbison and friends on my recently augmented stereo system. Folks seemed to like the material and the rendering.

And, to keep y'all up to date, note that Grouplove just dropped the single Deleter from their upcoming album. Worthy but not their best.

My Best Fish Of 2019 07Jan20

Yeah... it's mostly listening, audio, skiing and tying this time of year. For grins here's a look back at 2019 and some of the nicer trout I caught and released in our western rivers.

Fine Spotted Cutty - South Platte in March

Brown - Arkansas in April

CutBow - Arkansas in April

Rainbow - North Platte in April

Brown - Big Horn in May

Rainbow - Wind River in May

Rainbow - N Fk Shoshone in July

Yellowstone Cutthroat - Soda Ck in July

Snake Fine Spotted Cutty - Snake in July

Colorado Cutthroat - Lost Lk in August

Kokanee Salmon - Gunnison in September

Brown - Colorado in October

CutBow - Arkansas in December

SuperTweeter Buildout 04Jan20

I completed the buildout of my new Viawave SRT-7 supertweeter additions to my main speaker system. The new sound is awesome although I am still measuring and tweaking. The new drivers in their custom package sit atop my main front towers.

I built some custom "cabinets" just to hold the supertweeters - they provide no accoustic purpose but for a bit of a baffle. I started the packages from a 6"x36" piece of bloodwood (to match the bloodwood veneer on the existing speakers and the tone of our craftsman theater furniture). This is a very hard and gorgeous wood which finished out nicely. I first cut the plank into 6"x6" pieces on my table saw and the cut rabbets and rounded the edges using my router table. I then cut the holes for the drivers with a drill and jigsaw. I  assembled, sanded and finished the "cabinets" in Summit when not skiing.

After mounting the drivers I built boxes for the variable attenuators and any other crossover stuff. Everything gets interconnected via audio banana plugs. I found special stacking banana plugs to allow me to jack into the L & R audio signal currently sent to the mid-high drivers of my main towers. My front channels are bi-amped.

They came out nice and sound great. I'll do more adjusting and measuring but the hard work is done. Including acquiring parts from Russia and Japan, and the handy woodworking.

SuperTweeter Install Update...
I listened and measured and found too great an emphasis/influence from the supertweeter on the mid-range. I installed a 1.5µF capacitor in the signal path to roll off what is sent to the supertweeter @ 13KHz at 6dB per octave - much better but they are $50 per side! Improvement both measured and in smooth listening. Once finalizing the design I buttoned it up...

...And measured again multiple times. Here I show, via REW and my Umik-1, 1st the impact of the Viawave SRT-7 by adjusting the LPAD-1 from .5 down to 0/off. Clearly I've got improvement in flatness from 7K - 20KHz but what influence should I choose? Ultimately I liked .3 on the potentiometer with the cap in place. Listening was awesome in stereo music especially - THX theater modes were good but with so much center channel influence I noticed it a bit less.

Then I measured full range to re-EQ the entire modified setup for music through my new JRiver MC25 HD streamer (with an embedded parametric equalizer). I did notice over-emphasis from my subwoofer so adjusted that too and settled on -55dB for this 18" servo sub. Below I show both an EQ curve for gains allowed and no gains. Using EQ with gains allowed requires more power but does get to a closer match to my house curve. I will try both and may even lower my reference output and shoot another EQ filter set to flatten further.

Still though, the supertweeter endeavor is an unmitigated success and I need to move on to additional DIY audiophile projects.

Blodgett Theater Audio System Review...
Here's quick review of the Blodgett Theater audio system in total. Folks sometimes write these in strings like JRiver MC25 on Lenovo Q150 > Integra Research RDC 7.1 > Integra Research RDA 7.1 > Paradigm Reference Studio 100s with Viawave SRT-7s/Reference CC & Surrounds/Reference Studio Servo 18. It tells the tale from source to transducers. I also have an Integra BluRay player and a Roku 3 as sources. Here it is in pics.