Originally Posted by
goose
I agree with everything Stazi said. And as I said before, and supported by the length of this thread, even with AutoWake, we are still in an infancy state with many people in the surfing world.
Sorry you had a bad experience on the 2018 Max. But keep in mind that while AutoWake can help, it doesn't completely handicap you either. You can have AutoWake on and still really screw up the wave. This would be my original line of questions...Where did you have the flow plates set? Where did you have pitch and roll set? What was the amplitude display showing for displacement? Did they have GPS or paddlewheel and was the speedo accurate? Was the inclinometer calibrated correctly? I know that sounds like a lot of things that could be wrong, but truth is with any "smart" system, the system is only as good as the inputs and if everything is working properly.
Let me explain how things could go, even with AutoWake on. Lets say you move the flow plates to 90% for surfing on the port side for normal surfing. As I have explained before, the flow plates do roll the boat, but they also create lift which lowers pitch. Lets also assume that you moved the roll for the port surfing to 5 degrees instead of 3. For arguments sake, we will assume everything else is set properly and working properly. In this case, the higher % than normal flow plate not only creates a lot of roll, but also lowers pitch. Typically we use front ballast to lower pitch, so with the plates down, the only thing the system can do is DRAIN front ballast to maintain the same pitch. On the Max, the center bag is closer to center of the boat, so it takes a LOT of water to adjust pitch so in this case, the front ballast might have been less than 50%, and probably closer to 25%. The same goes for port surfing at 5 degrees. With only a few passengers in the boat, I assume 1 is driving, 1 is sitting in passenger side and the other would NOT make much of a difference in roll. So, the 90% plate will probably roll the boat about 3 degrees, but the rest of the roll will have to be made up by again DRAINING the non-surf side. Surfing at 3 degrees, the non surf side probably would not drain much, but to get the extra 2 degrees of roll would have to be made up by probably draining another 50% of the non surf side ballast. Again, I don't know these variables to be the case, but IF this happened, we are NO longer running 3000lbs of factory ballast. We would be running 100% on the surf side (1000lb), 50% on non surf side (500lb), and 25% on front (250lb). So, really we are now only running 1750lb of ballast. You didn't mention passengers, but I assume at least 1 is a female so 3 average adults and 1 child is probably about 500lbs in passengers.
To sum that up, we have 1750lb in ballast and 500lbs in passengers, for a total of 2250lbs, or 750lbs LESS than factory ballast. I say this all the time that there is NO replacement for displacement, so if this was the case, it wasn't AutoWake that was making the wave small, it would have been the lack of displacement that made the wave small. Again, I have no idea if this is close to what happened or not, but that is why I ask what did the amplitude display show? In this case, if we only had 2250lbs of ballast and passengers, then the displacement would have displayed approximately 40%. Again, if you missed it, the amplitude display on the Max is basically a chart of what the Max can handle. At the bottom of the scale is 0 lbs. The top of the scale is 5800lbs. 5800lbs is the combination of factory ballast and passenger capacity. As I have said before, to get a "good" surf wave, you really need to be at least at 70% on amplitude display. On the Max, that means you need to have 100% full ballast in all compartments AND at least 1000lbs of additional passengers or weight. 3 adults, 1 child and with wrong settings simply won't get you there. I know some people may disagree that factory ballast alone should be enough, but that just isn't the case for most people. Again, in your case, you said the wave "looked" good, but didn't have push. That tells me that AutoWake probably did the best it could to get the correct pitch and roll, you just didn't have the displacement. Did I mention how important displacement is????
As to comparisons to the XLV, that isn't really a fair comparison. Keep in mind, the XLV hull is substantially different than the max. It was a narrow hull design and had cutouts in the back compartments that narrowed the running surface even further. For surfing, it would allow the boat to roll pretty easy without the extra lift in the corners. You also said 3000lbs of ballast. Did you mean 3000lbs ballast and passengers, or 3000lbs of ballast plus passengers?? Also, are you just rolling the boat or adding a "suck" gate? See how all these variables add up? Also, the Max is substantially deeper and has a higher overall capacity. I looked it up and on the XLV, the factory ballast was 1450lbs and total passenger capacity was additional 2300lbs. So, total capacity on the XLV would have been 3750lbs. If you are including ballast and passengers in the 3000lb number, then you are actually at 80% on amplitude. So, I would imagine an XLV running at 80% amplitude would have a good wave. Especially if compared to a Max running at less than 50% amplitude.
Hope you don't take this the wrong way Trayson. I know you have been a long time poster on here and a very faithful Moomba owner. I appreciate all your feedback over the years and hope you don't feel like I am being defensive about your feedback. I am just trying to explain how even with AutoWake, it will not create the perfect wave if you don't everything set properly and most importantly if you don't enough displacement...