Legitimate Study or MasterCraft Propaganda
 

I was looking into surf systems to retrofit my 1998 MasterCraft and hit upon this test detailed on YouTube. Has anyone heard of this? It seems to be saying that a trim tab based surf system is superior to a surfgate type system. It so strongly reaches this conclusion, in fact, that I wonder if this was a test that MasterCraft funded for marketing purposes.

https://youtu.be/peThE-tNJ0g

Does anyone have any thoughts?

I didn't assume it was paid for by Mastercraft off the bat, it may be.

Either way it's bad science, and is done by people with little if any at all knowledge of the subject they are studying. I was astonished how poor it was at times. I couldn't imagine turning in/"publishing" this research.

Actually, it kind of pisses me off. People get money to do **** like this. Maybe I should start my own company doing wake based research, seems like my field competition is laughable.

Im not a surfer and only surf when we CAN't wakebopard so take this for what its worth.

I know that when testing out a new surfgate boat, the wave looked amazing but actually riding the wave was different. The wave lacked "push" and just seemed a lot weaker than other boats I've been on. From the boat it looked like one of the best waves I've seen but like I said actually riding the wave was a bit of a let down. The NSS G23 I rode was much better. The wave didn't "look" better but actually riding it , the wave was much better.

King12, you're right on that someone paid a lot for this testing and the production of the video explaining the test results. Even though our government wastes a lot of money on a lot of stupid studies, I can't see government funding go toward research deciding which $100,000 boat has a better surf wake.

If we rule out the government, that leaves sources like Consumer Reports or Wake World. But if they did the test, I'm thinking they would want the public relations perk of saying "look at this great test we did for y'all."

Having ruled out government other non-biased funding sources, the two boat manufacturers who had boats featured in the study come to mind. If this was a Malibu-funded study, I'm thinking they would bury the results rather than spend additional money producing a video that concludes that their surf system is no good. That kind of leaves MasterCraft.

Or maybe I'm just cynical.

this was posted up here when it was first done ... no idea how to search for it.

Original thread: http://www.wakeworld.com/forum/showthread.php?t=803471

Oh yea I wasn't implying government sponsorship. I've been in the middle of that game and it's often a lot harder than it seems to get government grant money for studies. Not a chance really for wake sports research especially by a LLC. Only chance I can see is an engineering student that gets a grant for a summer hydrodynamics project/dissertation. Your deductions seem sound to me. If it were Malibu they would have probably had at least one Malibu right?! Idk al axis vs MC makes no sense to me.

I was just saying damn it how do people get paid for this crap. MC has to have an engineer or two for heir surf system... Why wasn't this done by them during product development

It does not cover Readability of the Wave.... and thats what matters.
I have an MC and still think the info needs to be taken with a grain of salt

I am confused as to why they talk about the 20ft boat category and show data for an A22 and not an A20?

The university of Michigan did this testing and I worked at one of the dealerships that supplied the boats for this testing

I saw that one of them worked at Michigan, I was hoping and still not convinced that it had nothing to do with the institution. That's unfortunate.

wake2snow, it sounds like you may well have the answer to the very thing I was hoping to learn. Do you know if the University of Michigan did this for their own purposes like furthering research in a way that's more fun than studying bridges or skyscrapers or did somebody (like MasterCraft) pay them for the research?