Glad to see you here. I haven’t produced much content lately so I’ll update as best I can from the past few weeks. Happy New Year most of all to you. 2009 was a strange one for sure both personally as well as on the HB front.
I’ve been riding the hell out of metal product this season and there is a lot to compare and contrast from different manufacturers as well as within a single line of boards. I don’t have the board-feel of my Jedi Master Billy but I have learned a lot from him and others so I’ll give it a shot in my personal review to come of Kesslers, Sigi Grabner’s. For now, I’ll offer my take on the new F2 Speedster GS shape with metal. I’ve posted a few pics on our new HB photo repository at Smugmug. Please bookmark this as we’ll be uploading any and all photos as often as possible. It’s easier everyday to do so and I’ll get Billy, Skully and Will onboard to contribute. Any photo you see posted around the HB world, you may view in Higher resolution at the Smugmug site. (mostly. There may be a few stragglers.)
It’s great to get back onto an F2 and I believe that the new metal GS shape is a 
contender. I’m not really sure if the 183 is a course board but man o’ man is it a machine on the freecarve circuit. I believe there’s 170 cm plus running length out of this thing with the new hammerhead nose profile and the manufacturer claims 20 or so meters of sidecut. I’m not sure that the new stick falls this close to the Super G range of things but it’s all of 16 plus meters of pure rock fury. If I closed my eyes and didn’t know this was an F2, I’d say that this board came from F2. The familiar snap and feedback out of a turn is like an old friend from the late nineties to the early ott’s but with a nice clean Cadillac smoothness within the turn. It’s unbelievable how the Speedster munches up the terrain. I’m a pretty technical rider that likes to tighten up a board to spec on the sidecut for as much feel as possible but I found that the more loose I got on this thing and the more I let it run out a bit, the better it performed. To me, this thing holds a turn all the way through only to release when firmly commanded unlike the likes of the Kessler which only takes the flutter of a nose hair to release the tail for some speed check and feathering. Billy and I love the feel of the Madd 180 and the wider Virus sticks at around the bill eighty length and personally classed them as “super board” when they were current. The F2 Speedster RS WC edition is my new Super Board but with new school shape and construction. The width let’s you stand up for more power with lower angles and let’s you actually drive the board around the hill with your legs rather than bending at the waiste on steeper angles that is necessarey to power up the nose on a skinnier board. I hadn’t detuned the board on purpose on it’s maiden voyage intentionally to compare turn release and engagement with some rounded edges at the tip and tail. As always, my findings were consistent with previous experimentation. Detune, detune, detune!! As I said before, the metal provides a dampness within the turn that smooths out the middle of a turn and let’s a rider reset to neutral, prepping for the optimal positioning of the next turn, making heel and toeside links appear flawless from the softie and two plank gawkers observing from the lift overhead, even on the hard blue’s to the black. I rode this board with F2 bindings and of course, my only go to for boots, the RC-10’s from UPZ. I will give a brief review of the ride down the line with an S-flex plate to complete the package from F2 and ride the way the board is meant to be set up.
Until then….
Dave, just wanted to drop by and say thanks for the review and give you some details on the board construction.
The board you’re riding is the 2010 version of F2’s Speedster RS183 World Cup Edition. SCR is a blended 14,18 & 22 (from tip to tail) with 18mm of tail taper and 20.2cm waist width. Effective edge is 173cm.
Something of interest is the inserts are setback 70mm. Maybe this has something to do with the tail slide/release.
is there a big difference between the 09/10 and the 08/09 model of the 183 sl wc?
Yes, the 2010 models have a completely different sidecut and camber profile than the 2009 models.