Tip For Locating Ballast Weight

[Vodkaman]

Continue here or it is going to get real messy. That comment was simply for future reference, NOT a reprimand. No need to be sorry

Ballast is a confusing thing, I feel sure that non of us know the complete story.

Dave

[Sticko]

1 minute ago, Vodkaman said:

Ballast is a confusing thing, I feel sure that non of us know the complete story

I agree to this. Take a look at this video: 

 

Five lures with only difference regarding balast. 

[Vodkaman]

Great vid. This highlights two important facts:

1 - Dynamic (moving) forces completely over rule the static forces. The water passing over the lip provides the dynamic forces, which increase with velocity. The static forces (ballast, buoyancy) remain constant, effectively getting less as the velocity increases, relative to the lip forces. Hence, the various ballast positions make no difference.

2 - Water is a complete system, you cannot assess flow over one isolated feature independently of any other features.

As you can see; all the lures are moving in sync. Even if you put a lure in there that had a slower oscillation, all the lures would still swim with the same waggle speed. The water disturbance from one lure affects adjacent lures, and those behind. The lures behind will swim slightly out of sinc with the forward lures, but still at the same oscillation speed.

Here is a similar video that I made, showing the same effect. When one lure gets ahead you can see the oscillation lag. When swimming parallel, they can be in sync or 180 degrees out of sync and nothing in between. Hence water acts as a complete system.

The initial object of the video; was to make a side-by-side comparison of round and square lips, obviously that purpose failed.

Dave