Hey Steve, How does the Navman work. Does it record top speeds and average speeds. I got up some serious speed during the heavy southerly on Tuesday, in a foot of water at my secret spot. Would have loved to have known how fast I was going. Can I demo your GPS one day? p.s new red switchblade is a weapon!

i'm in.I raced Pl Jnr who was on a buggy and 14 m green purple ,I was on 19 Venom 152 flx(my 152 x 44 is on onits way yeeha)dead on shore I think he won tho (just)

Cheers

lach

I got pretty dam quick on the 9m Assault the other day, in a foot of water in MY secret spot was totally amazed at how quick you can go on a bow lol

quote:

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Originally posted by AdrianW

Steve,

How do you waterproof your navman? Do you flog whatever it is?

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The Navman brand make a waterproof model, the M300, this is the one I use, because yes, I do sell them.
I am sure you could use a range of GPS units provided you got one of the waterproof pouches for them, we sell these pouches too!

Some one was asking about whether long lines would help you go faster?
I don't think the length of your lines will make any difference in winds that your kite is designed to fly in.
In lighter winds the benefit from being able to sweep the kite through the power for longer are increasingly offset by the drag of the lines, the lower the wind, the more effect the line drag will have as a factor which will diminish the benefit of a longer power stroke.

In short to go fast meeds a kite that is as close to its max wind range for the weight of the rider and the size of the board being edged against, so you would never be sining a kite around if you were trying to go fast, that kite would always be parked. Maybe just rocked a bit with the upper lines, nosing the kite into the wind a bit more.

Ideally you would want the shortest lines possible, but not so short that the kite could only fly in the ground effected boundary layer of wind. I was pretty happy with how the CB went with approx 25M of line. The wind at the top of my run where I went fastest was approx 20+ knots, I was doing a broad reach, which is basically the reach that you can attain the fastest speed in any sailing sport, including land kite buggies and landyachts.


Cya and

Goodwinds

Steve McCormack

quote:

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Originally posted by vide

Steve,

36 is pretty good for a production twin tip. 37.5 is the fastest I have heard of for an Underground FLX. It all depends upon the location... Flat water and the right angle are the most important factors.

If other people out there are thinking about buying a GPS, you should get a Garmin Foretrex 201. (Sorry Steve!). The Garmin allows you to download your trackpoints so you can analyse each run and see average speeds such as best 500m, best 250 meters, best 2second average etc. There are lots of software programs that let you do this.

But the main reason is that this is fast becoming the standard for GPS competition. There are 500 Windsurfers registered on GPS-Speedsurfing.com with sailors out there every day recording speeds and posting results. I am currently in discussions with these guys about setting up something similar for kitesurfing. There are standard rules about the data that you have to upload to compete. The Garmin lets you download the data and send the right info to the website while the Navman does not.

The Navman is fine for giving you a Max speed, but you really need to be able to download the data.

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G'day Dave

Really admire your recent efforts, and will be getting Garmin Foretrex 201 GPS into the store asap, thanks for the heads up. How do you keep yours waterproof - Aquapac? Which model?

I doubt that I would care to go much faster in a stock TT, but will give a shorter board a go soon. The big one was starting to get very hard to control, I was just hanging on really. I had one off probably around 25-30knots board speed and skipped out for a long distance.

Cya and

Goodwinds

Steve McCormack

The Garmin Foretrex 201 is a great little unit that is much more compact and comfortable than the Navman - it can be worn on the wrist without any dramas. The only problem is that although it comes with a data cable you have to use freeware to upload waypoints and download track data.

Most of the freeware I found was pretty clunky, especially to enter waypoints - although someone was telling me that you can use Google Earth, conversion software, then upload it another freeware program - doh! Or you can spend another $60 and buy Garmin's CD - not sure how good the mapping is though?

I reckon in another 6 months there will be units the same size as the 201 but with map display.