Hi All
just bought a Garmin 255 watch. Can anyone tell me what to do to measure my speed while foiling.
Have never use such watch before. Many thanks in advance.

Get the Windsurf Pro App.

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Lago said..
Get the Windsurf Pro App.

This 100%, super fun app. Gives you best times over multiple times and distances.

Once you get it logged on the phone you can also sync it with Hoolan app. It's free and pretty cool. I use the WOO kite gps app on Garmin (iq store) and then Hoolan (Apple store). I like all the fields that the WOO app provides. Hoolan is cool and displays your fastest segments, successful transitions etc. There is another one to analyze called Waterspeed. The two I use are just my personal preference.

For years I just used the built-in apps on the Garmin.

In Apps and Activities you create a new app using "Other" as the template. Customise the screen layout to show the data you want. Start the app and go ride.

After a session the data is uploaded to the Garmin Connect web site. You can look at it on a nice big screen, export it out for other stuff.

One word of warning. The speeds reported from all consumer GPS watches are BS. There are always spikes in the data which means your max and average speeds are all hugely overstated.

The good news is that you can see the spikes in the speed graph and just eyeball the rest of the speeds to get a more realistic idea of your speeds.

Some watch apps have the ability to filter out speed spikes. They should all do it, but they don't. The math to do it is well known and would be dead easy to do in an app.

The only way to get accurate speed is to use a Doppler device. Not sure how readily available they are these days.

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Gorgo said..
...
One word of warning. The speeds reported from all consumer GPS watches are BS. There are always spikes in the data which means your max and average speeds are all hugely overstated.

The good news is that you can see the spikes in the speed graph and just eyeball the rest of the speeds to get a more realistic idea of your speeds.

Some watch apps have the ability to filter out speed spikes. They should all do it, but they don't. The math to do it is well known and would be dead easy to do in an app.

The only way to get accurate speed is to use a Doppler device. Not sure how readily available they are these days.

It is true for a lot of older watches had serious problems with overstating speeds. However, the Garmin 255 is an exception. The important thing is to use the correct settings: all satellite systems and multiband. You can set that in the systems settings if using your own activity, or in the app settings when using APPro Windsurf (which I think is great).

Many watches nowadays use Doppler speeds, but that alone is not enough to avoid spikes and get accurate top speeds. The Garmin 255 (in multi-band mode) uses two different GPS bands (frequencies) which enable it to avoid Doppler spikes. The implementation in the watch's firmware and the GPS chip it uses is very decent (which is not true for all devices that use the same technology).

Thankyou boardsurfr, your help worked great.
just realised that top speed should mean top speed on a sailing broad reach. Big difference in speed between close haul and broad reach for dummies like me.

I just install GPSTC Approved
The 255 has been approved for use on GPS team challenge but is still being tested.

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winddoc said..
just realised that top speed should mean top speed on a sailing broad reach. Big difference in speed between close haul and broad reach for dummies like me.

In foiling, the effect of angle to the wind on speed is quite different from windsurfing. In windsurfing, the speed difference between close haul and broad reach can be more than twofold, as long as water state (or skills) and sail size are adequate. In foiling, the difference can be a lot smaller. If you look at the America's Cup boats, they can do 40+ knots at a close haul (near 45 degrees to the wind), and stay below 50 knots on a broad reach. I've seen similar things (at much lower speeds ) in windfoiling.

Winging may be a tad different because the front bladder is quite draggy, and there's a lot of turbulence on the inside (unless you go to newer double-sided wings for racing). That will reduce upwind speed significantly. But that depends on how big a wing you use. For top speed on a broad reach, you'd need a bigger wing that most wingers would pick, due to lower apparent wind. A smaller wing will be easier to contron when going upwind, and underpowered when going broad, so speed differences will be smaller. That said, my 2 second top speeds when winging are almost always in a jibe entry - but then, I never try to go fast.

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boardsurfr said..
It is true for a lot of older watches had serious problems with overstating speeds. However, the Garmin 255 is an exception. The important thing is to use the correct settings: all satellite systems and multiband. You can set that in the systems settings if using your own activity, or in the app settings when using APPro Windsurf (which I think is great).

Many watches nowadays use Doppler speeds, but that alone is not enough to avoid spikes and get accurate top speeds. The Garmin 255 (in multi-band mode) uses two different GPS bands (frequencies) which enable it to avoid Doppler spikes. The implementation in the watch's firmware and the GPS chip it uses is very decent (which is not true for all devices that use the same technology).

I don't know how different the 255 is from my watch (the instinct 2 surf edition) but I get speed spikes on mine. I'm looking at a max speed of 15-ish knots for almost my entire session and then a spike of 31 kts right at the end which is clearly not correct. It's a shame as you would think it would be very easy to filter out based on the duration and deviation of the spike.