Custom Walker Composite X

[Surfdad]

I thought I would post the pictures here first. I asked Mike to do a custom air brush for James. James couldn't come up with a design so I just told Mike - he's a teenager - use flames, barbed wire and skulls. Can't say the graphics are my design, but I "am" the inspiration!

I like the ghosted skulls at the tail.

[dogbert]

You can't go wrong with flames. Nice!

[NICKYPOO]

Just gonna stick that Bad Daddy in the dirt huh?

Interesting fin set up. Where did you come up with that? What fin are you running? What are you doing for traction. That last one (the red quad) had that gawd awful light blue one that didn't appear to have any texture. What was that stuff?

[Surfdad]

You know those C5's aren't as great as they are made out to be, you can only get 2 sizes. The base length is way too small, but the depth is less than the 3/4" that the side bites need. If I could GET a custom ordered Walzer, I'd do that...maybe next year? Still comes down to the fact that Mike has an operational shop and the folks at Walzer don't yet. AND...the reason you don't see Walker's at your local shop is that CWB/LF/ETC have the distributon channels.

Dennis, my buddy, is the NorCal rep for Walker and he has that board, I still haven't seen it in real time. Dennis has this huge horse ranch...that may not be dirt it's sitting in

This board supposedly has no traction on it. I have a quart of Hula Deck that we'll probably use. The truth of the matter though is that James still prefers the Walzer over the Compsite X for riding, I was telling Sean that James will no doubt ride the Walzer in the upcoming contests. So we'll keep this one for when he wants to impress chicks

The blue stuff was similar to Hula Deck (paint with an abrasive mixed in) but whatever it was it sucked. We tried to stick the board in a rack and it shaved the stuff off

[wannabewakeboarder]

Like the barb wire and skulls not to big on the flames tho

[Surfdad]

This board road very interestingly. Check how far up on the nose James' read foot is. Normally we have to stretch to get our toes on the nose.

[wakeboarder247]

Wow that is really far up on the nose. Did he have to stand that far up to keep up w/ the pocket or was he able to surf it normally just as well as the other boards? btw what was the air/water temp there? looks chillllly!

[Surfdad]

It was raining and cold yesterday. That was on New Hogan, up around Valley Springs. I remember that the water temp was greater than the air temp and the water temp was 62. It was the rain that was killer.

The board rode like any normal board, with three exceptions. The first was this nose riding ability. James is way back in the pocket, so that the tail is under the curl. This allowed him to stand on the front half of the board. What was interesting is that the board would stay there, James isn't dragging a hand to remain in place.

It didn't allow James to get as much air, but he successfully did a 540 and a 720. I don't know that I've ever seen or heard of anyone with twin fins doing a 7 before.

[Surfdad]

One of the issues I had with the Walzer was that riding it revert was hard. The fin placement wasn't condusive to riding revert and the nose was too full. The original prototype of the Composite X had a surfstyle nose that was too narrow to ride effectively revert. This revision seems to have addressed the two issues (fin placement and nose fullness), BUT...I think at the cost of the ability to generate airs.

In this sequence, James wanted to hold the board at 180 degrees and ride revert backside as long as he could. You can see that he slid down the face and then at the bottom he caught the fins and came around.