Short boards with long sidecuts?

[kjl]

So, I recently purchased one of those extremecarving Swoards, and I really like it. I like lots of different qualities of it, but one particular quality begs a question:

For all board makes and manufacturers, why is sidecut radius so tied to board length? As far as I can tell, nobody else (besides Swoard) makes an itty bitty 161cm board with a 13m sidecut. Most 161cm boards will have a 9m or smaller sidecut. In my experience so far, large board length is good for stability at high speed, but the top carving speed of a 13m sidecut seems to be well under the top stable speed for a 161cm board. e.g. (and I'm making these numbers up), say a board that is 161cm long becomes unstable for me at ~45 mph, but the top carving speed for a 13m sidecut radius is ~30 mph. Is there any reason to prefer the 185cm board over the 161cm board, if they both have the same sidecut radius?

Is it just to get a longer edge for better hold on ice? And is more edge or less edge better for ice? Ice skaters never slip on bulletproof ice, and they have an effective edge length of <1 inch... that's always confused me.

I have to say that I really like the fact that the Swoard can be carved fairly fast because of the 13m sidecut, but is small enough (same size as the Never Summer freeride board I rode before switching to plates) that I can maneuver the board around, ollie off of bumps, or wend through the trees, and was wondering why there are no other boards with this combination... As far as I can tell, I have lost no carving ability from having lost 10cm of effective edge when switching from my other carving board...

Thanks,

[NMU Alpine Boarder]

I have a 159 Burton FP with a side-cut of 11.84 m, and love the board. I used it to race on here in the Midwest, and think it's a good fit for the smaller tighter courses we have. This board is fine at speed. I have yet to max it out, although I don't think that will happen any time soon because of a lack of vertical.

[gdboytyler]

The Oxygen Proton 164 GS is another shorter board with a large sidecut radius of 13m. With a 19.5cm waist, it was the widest production GS board I could find that had a length in the low 160's.

I thought the 161cm Swoard had a 12m sidecut?

I also wanted to get a Swoard, but with the strong Euro, it was just too expensive. The Proton specs were close enough for me. Since I wear mondo 25 boots, I could still use moderate angles (54/48) and get 0 overhang on the front and 0.6 cm overhang on the back foot.

I didn't pay attention to sidecut specs until reading at extremecarving.com how bigger sidecuts make it easier to do eurocarves. They were right.