F.Luke
Double Eagle Member
Case in point.
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Definition of the word Stable
- Thread starter Horsman
- Start date
F.Luke
Double Eagle Member
In my understanding, a stable disc maintains the angle of release throughout its flight. If released straight, it flies straight. If released on a hyzer angle it finishes with the same. If released with anhyzer it holds that angle too.
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2009
- Messages
- 2,692
are you all talking about neutral discs?
Stable has always been a context term for me.
When I started playing it was almost exclusively used in a way that it meant "overstable." People would need a disc in the air to fade and yell "GET STABLE!" at it. The Banshee came out and a guy described it to me with "This thing is STABLE." Someone would get a Metalhead Viper and say "It's SUPER stable." If a disc was actually stable, people would just say it was straight. :| Stable/straight/flippy was the way people talked in real conversations where I lived.
At some point somebody hung around the picnic table after league and a lot of Busch beer and grammar Nazi'ed us on overstable/stable/understable and we got to do drunken Disc Golf English testing on how every time we said stable we were using the term wrong. It didn't change how people talked, though.
I've moved a couple of times and mostly now play with younger players who don't use the old stable/straight/flippy terminology, but I still run into a lot of players that do. I've taught myself to use "overstable" when I mean overstable, but I still use straight and flippy so I actually almost never use the term "stable". If I do, I usually use the term "neutral stable" so that I don't confuse anyone.
But...here is the thing: To me it's a non-issue; I know "stable" is just a word that is used to describe more than one thing and the context will tell me what the person means. I don't remember ever listening to someone use the word and not know what they meant. I don't have a problem with it because...I'm a disc golfer, dude. I know how disc golfers talk. I know what a disc golfer means when he's rambling. Hell, I understand Casey 1988's posts about 60% of the time because he's a disc golfer. It's our thing. Going grammar Nazi on a disc golfer for yelling "GET STABLE" at a disc they want to fade is just not understanding who we are. We are people who wander around public parks, spend too much money on glorified Frisbee's, throw plastic at trees and misuse our own made-up Frisbee terminology. It's who we are.
Sorry for the rant.
When I started playing it was almost exclusively used in a way that it meant "overstable." People would need a disc in the air to fade and yell "GET STABLE!" at it. The Banshee came out and a guy described it to me with "This thing is STABLE." Someone would get a Metalhead Viper and say "It's SUPER stable." If a disc was actually stable, people would just say it was straight. :| Stable/straight/flippy was the way people talked in real conversations where I lived.
At some point somebody hung around the picnic table after league and a lot of Busch beer and grammar Nazi'ed us on overstable/stable/understable and we got to do drunken Disc Golf English testing on how every time we said stable we were using the term wrong. It didn't change how people talked, though.
I've moved a couple of times and mostly now play with younger players who don't use the old stable/straight/flippy terminology, but I still run into a lot of players that do. I've taught myself to use "overstable" when I mean overstable, but I still use straight and flippy so I actually almost never use the term "stable". If I do, I usually use the term "neutral stable" so that I don't confuse anyone.
But...here is the thing: To me it's a non-issue; I know "stable" is just a word that is used to describe more than one thing and the context will tell me what the person means. I don't remember ever listening to someone use the word and not know what they meant. I don't have a problem with it because...I'm a disc golfer, dude. I know how disc golfers talk. I know what a disc golfer means when he's rambling. Hell, I understand Casey 1988's posts about 60% of the time because he's a disc golfer. It's our thing. Going grammar Nazi on a disc golfer for yelling "GET STABLE" at a disc they want to fade is just not understanding who we are. We are people who wander around public parks, spend too much money on glorified Frisbee's, throw plastic at trees and misuse our own made-up Frisbee terminology. It's who we are.
Sorry for the rant.
scooby snack
Birdie Member
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
- Messages
- 259
Stable, is when you have to briefly maintain balance after your putter comes to rest, inside circle 1.
Casey 1988
Shun the frumious Bandersnatch!
Don't worry I use flippy and undersable for the same thing. Stable is stable but Overstable is not stable to me the terms changed about the time I started in 2003-2004. However some disc golfers that started before 2000-2001 call a upshot a approach shot the same way Paul McBeth does and this confuses people because some discs from the old Lighting line the Upshot and #2 Upshot in the baseline plastic have a disc going up a hill on the photos on the discs. Then Chip shot gets used to for forehand approach, a confusing term since not everyone a chip shot is from the same distance and some can putt from very long distances.
oldmandiscer
Banned
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2020
- Messages
- 1,718
I usually yell GET STABLE reading Caseys posts.
Bogey B.O.B.
Birdie Member
I hear ya Three Putt. I too have been playing for some time and can generally suss out the intention. But, i've introduced a few people to the sport that are utterly confused when they get online and see posts/videos from around the country/world. I think it would be generally beneficial to develop a standard lingo. Having different words to describe one thing may be considered regional but using the same word to describe different things is simply confusing.
This made me think of the six flavors of quarks and color charges.
FWIW, I now think of stability as a resistance to turning over at a given amount of torque set against a reference value. As most discs with a tendency to fight turn (hss) also tend to fade hard (lss), it's convenient to lump discs that dump out hard as "overstable" and ones that are easy to flip as "understable" and therefore put "stable" in the midpoint, but it's not exactly the same thing.
It's true.
Is an S-Curve disc like a Cobra flippy because it is understable at high speeds or overstable because of the amount of fade it has when it slows down? Or is that "stable" if in the end they cancel themselves out and the discs lands more or less straight in front of you? I mean I can get a Cobra to land in a straight line between me and the basket, but I can't make it fly on a straight line. So to me a Cobra isn't stable, but calling it understable doesn't really describe it, either.
Casey 1988
Shun the frumious Bandersnatch!
S-Curve is what that is called exactly like describing disc like Valkyrie, Cobra, and Archon. Then flippy is more the Stingray, Road Runner and Mamba type discs.
Hampstead
* Ace Member *
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2012
- Messages
- 6,332
So consistency is understable then?
Hampstead
* Ace Member *
consistency is a flippy mistress
There really isn't any such thing as a "truly stable" disc, in the sense that it will always hold its release angle regardless. If I was the incredible hulk I could throw a flat top Firebird and make it turn over.
These terms don't have universal exact definitions. It only makes sense to use stable as a spectrum. You can say that a Firebird is more stable than a Teebird, and that makes sense. It doesn't make sense to me to argue about whether a Comet is an understable disc or a stable disc.
Usually when I'm talking about a disc that is very low on the stability spectrum, I'll refer to it as understable, while something like a Firebird is overstable. But when comparing discs, I will always say more stable or less stable to show its relative place on the spectrum.
These terms don't have universal exact definitions. It only makes sense to use stable as a spectrum. You can say that a Firebird is more stable than a Teebird, and that makes sense. It doesn't make sense to me to argue about whether a Comet is an understable disc or a stable disc.
Usually when I'm talking about a disc that is very low on the stability spectrum, I'll refer to it as understable, while something like a Firebird is overstable. But when comparing discs, I will always say more stable or less stable to show its relative place on the spectrum.
azplaya25
Double Eagle Member
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2019
- Messages
- 1,243
I actually find this discussion pretty interesting from the context of disc selection. If we look at a couple of classics, the eagle x and the teebird, we have two discs that someone could refer to as stable, correct? Fresh off the shelf, both these discs are quite stable in my experience. However, they both have distinctly different flight patterns, and these flight patterns diverge even more as the discs beat in and lose "stability." So if one really wants to nerd out on the flight of the disc, I think it's important to distinguish between hss and lss. I know that understanding the difference has helped me build a better bag and become a better golfer overall.
See now this statement only makes sense to me if you have a really beat in straight to understable firebird and an overstable teebird. But your statement to me says that a firebird will stay straighter longer then a teebird and I dont quite agree with that.
Hampstead
* Ace Member *
Disc golf is burdened with poor terminology.
