I just let the software plot the average. I’m in a pretty narrow gorge so I doubt the wind was changing direction by a large margin but of course it may have been shifting. I have other plots that show similar angles and typically there isn’t much difference between angles on each side, although this one does have my best speed. I’m admittedly usually a bit slower on both tacks. That said, I’m a beginner compared to you so I just may be “bad” on both sides rather than good on both.
Here’s another day, with a longer climb(which I fell on and floundered around for a bit thus the slow overall speed with turns included) but still average 56° and 7.6mph VMG sailing only. Like I said, I don’t consider myself very good(as you can tell by my DW performance and nonexistent shred score), but there isn’t a huge difference in my angles on either side. A little speed penalty on my toeside typically but interestingly enough on this one my best starboard segment is 53° with a VMG of 8mph so it’s not far off my heelside.
This is what i have noticed while analyzing my data for trying to determine how my parawings compare to each other.
Those one off VMG dots that once got me excited are no longer useful when I look at my data because they don’t mean anything without looking at the corresponding dot on the joining tacks. Quite often i might see 8kts but the joining tack is only 6kts and I can see this reflected in my angles on the satellite image. I now just look at my satellite angles and the effective VMG for the climbs to try and understand the differences in my equipment results.
I asked if the wind shift is happening because you have plenty of dots on both starboard and port that are a lot better than 60 degrees but they mustn’t join up to a good result on the joining tack otherwise your angles would look a lot better on the satellite.
The software is trying to find the wind direction based on your tacks being equal on both sides.
@Matt sorry for the slow reply! Love this. Parawing start-only racing sounds so fun, and I’d be really curious to watch racers try to game the powered vs unpowered detection
How would you want a race like that to work? A set start and finish, a time window everyone rides in, the wing stashed for the whole downwind leg like you said in the VMG thread? I’ve been tinkering with async racing in Courses, and I’ve also been playing with the idea of crews if you want to race with friends. Would love to hear what would actually make it fun to race, and I’m happy to pilot something with you if you’ve got ideas!
@Matt full bias up front: I’m a big “switch your feet” person. Getting a good angle on a parawing means driving SO much weight down, and I can’t imagine grinding that hard toeside and still having control
The tricky part is true wind. There aren’t really any reliable wind sensors out there, so Foil Run estimates it for each session by balancing your tacks (like @FoilMad said), and a weak side mostly shows up as the wind being a bit off. One long-term project I’d love to try: once there are enough riders out at the same spot at the same time, I could pool those sessions and let all the different stances and quirks wash out into a much more granular read on the actual wind. That’s when switchers vs non-switchers gets really interesting!
In the meantime, if you have a decent idea of the actual wind, you can set it yourself in Analyze for the whole session, or per climb if it shifted. Then your sides aren’t evened out anymore and a real weak side shows up. Would be SO curious to see your before and after once you switch (yes, I’m just going to go ahead and assume you’re going to be a foot switcher )
Honestly I don’t know, but I think what best highlights the strengths and weaknesses of parawings as rounded usable products. A lens to that end: how would you best punish a pro wing racer who’d have the legs on the upwind lit on a 7m parawing, but maybe wouldn’t stash/pump/duckdive as well as a surfer. I would say the downwind section should also punish race foils with a cross wind/upwind pump section, maybe multiple short upwind sections. I guess it could become a bit lame like cyclocross, when what I have in mind is more like enduro.
But short of that, I guess just doing exactly what you’ve done but combining an upwind and downwind section. Then just seeing what shakes out from the data. I think, like Strava, you get a fun distraction even if some people will claim the KoM with an ebike or sportscar. I’m not sure how you’d mark the turning point on a purely digital upwind downwind lap? Maybe a turning box where the turn isn’t timed.
I can tell you you don’t have to grind very hard to lose control. Foot switcher is primary winter goal. Feels crazy after all the time on SUP that I now need to learn something else from scratch. I justify it that I’ve long felt the itch to buy a race kite to learn that.
Yes this is what I wondered, at some point (soon!) you’ll have enough data to see through the quirks of wind direction and have a “implied true wind”.
Duly noted, I’ll share the progress results. Humble pie for the sake of progress
The idea of “true wind direction” is a bit of a unicorn to me. When I’m out there the wind is constantly changing directions slightly.
I would rather use the perpendicular to the bisected tack angle personally as it’s the only thing that will give you valid data for that time and position.
@FoilMad love this idea!! I ran it on my own sessions first: across 53 up-and-down parawing sessions I’m at about 1.7 minutes climbing for every minute downwind, pretty close to the 2:1 most people quoted in @foilstate’s upwind/downwind ratio thread.
What would you want built into Foil Run? Anyone else who tracks their up/down time, I’d love your take too! I’ve put my data and some potential UI mocks here, would love to hear what would be most useful in the app.
For the missing final runs, thanks for the reports there! I’ve tuned some of the algos based on that. Please keep reporting when you see things like that, and lmk if the latest algos fixed it.
I posted this in the other thread but in thinking more about it, either way makes sense. If you wish to dw for 30 minutes then it costs you 1.7 times that.
Or if you you go upwind for an hour you dw for 59% of that.
For people who don’t switch the chart is not really accurate. The software determines the wind direction based on splitting the tacks so it doesn’t really show the weak angle. @Hdip might be shit on both sides. hahahah
It’s equally accurate for both styles. There’s absolutely no reason one can’t point as high when riding toeside, it’s easy to point too high. I do think that one can get ultimately get more consistently higher overall VMG with switched feet but I believe that mostly it’s a function of ability and riding faster and not one of angle. One thing about seeing everyone post numbers is that there isn’t a huge gap between the foot swtichers and non foot switchers, so far I haven’t seen convincing evidence that one is vastly superior.
I actually can switch feet when winging. I’m scared to try parawinging for some reason. I don’t parawing that much. When I learned to wing on a lake a buddy and I would post our times from the bottom of the lake to the top. He would foot switch, I wouldn’t. So I got pretty decent at toeside. Once he saw I was getting close to his times though he started actually trying and would demolish my times.
Switching feet does have a huge benefit in letting your body rest. For all you surf guys like me though. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t learn it. If it’s flat water though, learn a new skill. If there are waves, then just ride waves in normal stance.
Yeah you young guns can ride back out from waves toeside but my back requires me to get out of that stance quick. I don’t think my adult son will learn switch.
I think for many like me though that are chasing upwind the parawing is such a revelation and switch is almost mandatory. No one wants to ride 15ks toeside in a session and then back it up on consecutive days. I think as the newer PW’s have evolved the PW’s that perform upwind best require a fair bit of leaning hard kite race style to go fast upwind and staying toeside is a nightmare fully powered on them.
As for you @hdip just commit and jump stance quick. You’re supposed to be representing the best of us.
I’ll confuse you even more. I parawing with both hands on the bar almost exclusively.
Haha that’s always been my argument. If I’m in the top echelon of the sport, the people who are good at sports must not be doing it yet.
Ok I set wind direction manually. Here we go. That tells a better and more obvious story. This could be too corrected though. I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. This wind direction matches more in line with my longest DW run that day though so I think it might be correct.
can ride back out from waves toeside but my back requires me to get out of that stance quick. I don’t think my adult son will learn switch.
