A week ago, I had my first ride on a Burner 197.
I took it out on a midweek day. I fell a couple of times trying to figure it out. It demands speed in order to come back up from a turn. You need to be 'on it' to ride it. I spent about 3 hours riding it. As you write above, the Burner does feel solid, and turns shorter than it's length. Having said that, the side-cut radius is 19m. While I didn't have any problems turning it on fairly narrow trails (East coast), I kept missing the turns to get to the trail I wanted to get to (a function of my focus and the boards side-cut radius I believe). Or maybe I was having fun and kept forgetting. I wanted to try a different board after a few hours, although I was tempted to stick it out and keep riding it. I felt like the board would be much better used on a larger mountain where you could add more speed over larger turns.
After lunch I switched to a 2003 Coiler 180cm, and was immediately back in euphoric heaven feeling like I was having a super-day on an easy turning board.
The Burner doesn't have a modern easy turning shape. But, it will turn, just seems to demand more from the rider than today's boards. That's what it felt like to me; I'm not sure I'm being fair though, as the length and side-cut of the board are way different to the 180cm I was riding.
