As I "get better" I get more confused.

[EivlEvo]

Alrighty... I was able to pop out for about 30 mins today. Nothing spectacular and I only really played 2 holes.

I don't really seem to have an issue controlling the roc, if I throw it hyzer, it will stay hyzer, if I throw it very slight hyzer it will come back to flat and finish with its normal fade.

Obviously... this isn't the gobs of data im sure you were after, but for now it's what I've got...

Basically I threw the leopard and the roc independently on 1 hole. the leopard with the same type of throw would anhyzer all the way to the right ending up at a 1-2 oclock position and the roc would end up very near 12 with a slight bias to the left.

I have some trouble with nose up on the roc for whatever reason? And it requires quite alot more altitude than the leopard to get out to the same distance... since I don't often drive with it, I need to adjust for this in order to make it effective.

fwiw: I originally had one of those starter sets and ended up with a 145 leopard and a 137 shark. I also acquired a 170 shark... the leopard came off my list right away, but I kept throwing the shark... at first the disc was extremely reliable for me... go out straight, fade slight left. Every. Time. (this is the 137 btw) Then all of the sudden, it would just go crazy anhyzer on me as well. No matter what I did... and I was using it mostly for approach shots so it's not like I was ripping it or anything? Anyways... that's when I picked up the roc.

Sorry for such long posts... and thanks for the help...

[Star Shark]

Sorry for such long posts... and thanks for the help...

No worries, wait until you see JR get a roll going . I think you probably got discs too light for you. Drivers in the mid 160s and putters and midranges in the low-mid 170's are what you're after.

[Dr. Burd]

So - you're asking why your Leopard is turning over so much? I kind of forgot the point in the middle of this thread somewhere.

The short answer is "any number of reasons".
Hopefully, information that is useful to you will now follow.

D plastic - it is likely that you've taco'ed your Leopard into a few trees. A couple full power drives into a tree with "non-premium" plastic can severely alter a discs stability. An understable disc can become "never-ever fade back" understable after a couple good whacks. However, this can be a good thing.

There's a good chance that you throw your Roc differently than your Leopard, even off the tee. Make sure you're not trying to crush that Leopard as hard as you can. Relax your reachback, it's amazing how far a disc can fly with seemingly no effort. To clarify, you MUST relax your reachback to avoid tensing your forearm muscles. When you're trying to huck your driver as hard as possible, you often block yourself from doing just that.

You said you were throwing 250' or so. Maybe you're throwing a little bit farther now? If you take Joe's Universal Flight Chart as the gospel truth (I certainly do), a Leopard SHOULD start acting differently - especially if you are throwing 20 ft. farther on AVERAGE. That average thing can be important to any of us who aren't really hitting it.

The power requirement for a Leopard, averaged across all tested plastics, is in the 225'-275' range. The distance you can throw when you start to CONSISTENTLY hit cruising speed for any given disc, is going to be slightly higher than the distances you regularly throw. E.g. if you CAN throw 290', you can probably CONSISTENTLY throw 260'. However, if your max distance is more like 250', you might regularly only throw 225' - which will likely not translate into enough acceleration for the disc to fly as intended.

If your max D went up 10-20', you may now be consistently getting that Leopard flying faster. This gap between max D and what you consistently throw will obviously become less significant the better your form becomes. Are you throwing your other discs farther than you used to? (more importantly, are your SHORTEST drives going farther than your shortest drives used to?)
------------
People asked you for info on the flight path of your Roc. I pointed out something that (currently) may be a problem in this troubleshooting session - you might throw your Roc very differently from your Leopard.

That said, a lot of people are intimately familiar with how a Roc acts at any given distance/power. I am not one of them, but they can certainly help you out.

I would suggest two things.
1) leave the Leopard at home and play some all Roc/Aviar rounds
You'll get used to the Roc, it will make you pay closer attention to release angles, and you will have enough "data" to potentially get some useful advice from all those Roc lovers.

2) Learn to hyzer flip the Leopard. Preferably in a field at first. I would say take your Roc out there and throw both - learn how they're different, and how you can get them to do the same things. You might not want to just throw the Leopard over and over - you may find it difficult to adjust back to flat releases if you haven't been playing long.
===
Closing thoughts:

A 137g Shark is WICKED light.

The weights you listed in your original post are fine, but a 162g DX Leopard is on the lower end of what most people throw. It's probably pretty flippy now that you've worn it in so you'll need to learn to hyzer flip it for straight / turnover / s-curve shots. Upsides may include versatility, throwing huge anhyzer bombs and trusting that it won't flex back, a potential roller disc, or something to throw over water hazards (if you ultimately decide you don't like it) =)

You will probably have to change everything you learn, multiple times. I recently blasted through the 300' barrier, and although it feels great, I know I've probably added other problems that will keep me from 420'. It's a long process, and can be extremely frustrating. Just remember to relax and have fun.

[EivlEvo]

Yeah I don't throw the 137 shark at all anymore. Haven't since the very beginning of this season. At the beginning of this season was when I started getting more serious about the whole system. I was throwing a 145 leopard, a 137 shark and a 169 aviar (out of one of those oh so awesome "starter sets") and i had a 175 champ beast as well. I pretty much threw the beast exclusively off the tee and never touched the leopard.

So as I said, I'm just tossing the 162 leopard and the 169 roc and aviars.

The leopard has had its fair shares of tree encounters... a number of which have essentially been full speed right into a tree. I don't know how much you guys consider tree damage, as in... 5 times is ok or 6 times isn't and it probably comes down to there's really no way to tell.

I'll see if I can hit the fields for some experimenting and report back.

Also re: weight... this is the first group of discs that I purchased for their weights specifically... but doesn't getting a higher weight essentially just mask the errors I'm making?

[EivlEvo]

Alrighty,

I played a round with the roc today. I had zero issues with it at all. It flies stright if I throw it straight, it flies left when I throw it hyzer, and it flies right when I throw it anhyzer. I was getting pretty similar distances with it as well... maybe 10-20 feet less than the leopard iirc. But I have a much more pronounced nose up issue with this disc. With the leopard, I feel like it "flies" more... which of course, it does. But the roc requires more altitude to get those same distances, and on some throws I end up with that left turn drop off that is a tell tale sign of that nose up angle (the disc stalls instead of low speed fades).

So I guess my question is, what's up with the leopard? Or is the roc's stableness hiding something? Lemme know what other sorta info you guys'd want...

[Jeronimo]

Time to get a new leopard...

[EivlEvo]

Well if I'm gonna be looking into a new disc, should I go straight to the leopard, or should I look at another disc? Should I go with star or champ plastic over the dx for more durability?

[EivlEvo]

Time to get a new leopard...

Also I actually just put the disc on a flat surface and it's pretty warped... maybe 2-3mm. Most of my other discs aren't perfectly flat either, but none are close to this bad. The discs I assume should be flat from the manufacturer?