Xi+ first impression

[Brutaly]

Ok. I havent done any proper testing with GA and the Xi+.

Just got access to a second Xi+ and will try to set them up side by side. One at the correct distance ofc.

I know FS have had issues with radar interference when setup beside an other radar.

[jon.summy@aol.com]

Brutaly......anxiously awaiting how you calculate path and face angle......I really appreciate all of your input it is great food for thought. This is making me strongly consider pulling the trigger on a Xi+. Thank you!

[Brutaly]

Have tons to do so here comes a short answer on how to fit with Xi.

Calculate angle of attack according to my previous post. There are tools you can buy and setup to determine launch angle, i know Wishon Golf sold one version of it and if you browse the Internet you can find other tools as well. Its a mechanical device you setup.

Pinpoint a target approx 100 meters out on the range. Use this target for all shots.

Use a compass and identify 2 reference points, one of each side of the target, which should be 5 degrees angle from the target. A good compass will have no issues doing this but dont have your bag to close when doing it.

Stand right behind the one you are fitting and see to it that they are properly lined up, which you have to do with a full blown LM anyway.

Determine each shot starting direction in relation to the target line. Dont stare at the ball, look at the reference points.

Jolt down the perceived angle of each shot and the number of the shot. Exclude the same shots that you exclude from the FS data when evaluating.

Calculate the mean value. If you practice for 30 minutes you can get this down to +/- 1 degree. Multiply by 85% on woods and 75% on irons and hybrids. Now you got face to target.

Open up Trajectoware and take data from the Xi and fill in the blanks.

Check the carry distance and the lateral deviation.

Open up trajectoware and manipulate the shape of the curve so that your calculated face to target and the landing spot correlates with your calculations. This little trick will give you a proper face to path and club path.

That is pretty much it.

Oh, if you fit with Xi i suggest that you start out with irons and move to woods and let the second longest wood determine the baseline for driver loft. If you do it in that order you dont have to worry about launch angles and AoA as much until you start with the driver. The driver should have 4-6 degrees lower loft compared to the second longest wood. If you can hit the second longest wood of the deck with a good trajectory your driver loft will be good enough as a baseline. A club that cant be hit off the deck consistently is basically just an other driver.

Invaluable when fitting drivers.
http://wishongolf.com/wp-content/upl...ation_2010.pdf
Read it thru and you realize you actually dont need the exact numbers from an LM
Measure the current loft and start there.

If you plan to fit professionally, buy the Xi+. For home fitting the Xi i enough.

There is actually one even easier way.
Read thru the Flightscope section of the forum and you will find a post stating that you could contact the poster if you want to maximize the value of you Xi. PM him and buy and android device. Just saying.

[Brutaly]

Brutaly......anxiously awaiting how you calculate path and face angle......I really appreciate all of your input it is great food for thought. This is making me strongly consider pulling the trigger on a Xi+. Thank you!

Download Trajectoware and you are good to go. Its that easy.

Just input the values you got from the Xi+.

Just remember to multiply horizontal launch angle with 0,85 for woods and 0,75 for irons to get a correct face to target line.

[Brutaly]

Here are the results of a series of shots with i7 when i used two Xi+ side by side.

The spin axis are messed up since they cant be calibrated correctly so they infact look at the ball from different angles.

The trajectories both looked very similar in the two ipads.

Unafortunately one of them didnt upload to myflightscope so i used screenshots.

LM1 is at correct distances and LM 2 is at 200 to tee and 400 from tee to screen.

I also did some shots with a driver but im to embarressed to post them, it was a borrowed driver with a 45,5 shaft and i play with 43. It was close to terrible but the numbers where just as good/bad as the ones in the attached picture.

I also tried to go below 200 cm to tee and it will work but the angles to the ball from the LM just got to big, the ball has to be setup so the LM at the back can see it and the forward LM:s angles just became to great. This resulted in a couple of really weird shot but i think those will disappear if you set it up straight behind the ball. What happend wasnt that spin didnt read properly. The thing that suffered was clubspeed which resulted in about 8 yards more carry.

I also moved closer to the screen and it worked nice with 290 centimeters distance to the screen. And got readings well with in my tolerance.

When i combined 190cm to tee and 290cm to the screen the carry/clubspeed/ all increased about 5% and imo thats to much for fitting/training but acceptable for simgameplay. I believe the device dont have the time or angles to measure the club correctly. In the Xi+ there is a diagram that shows the acceleration of the clubhead and that starts rather early and my conclusion is that the antenna cant handle the angle to the club head. At 190 cm the clubhead is close to straight above the devioce in the backswing and downswing.

Conclusion:
Its definitely possible to play simgolf and even fit clubs with the Xi+ with 200cm to tee and 290cm to the screen. I find the values to be good enough.

Simplay is possible at 190cm to tee and 290 to screen but you will get anomalies and increased length.

I will have to do some testing with drivers and higher swing speeds since i lack data on higher swing speeds.

The distance to the screen might be even shorter if i do more tests.

Disclaimer
I suspect there is some sort of tolerance when they produce these devices so it might vary between units but im very confident that i could fit customers with 200 cm from radar to tee and 290 cm from tee to screen.
This might not be the case with your device!

Btw, here is a quiz. Which LM stood to the right and why do you think its to the right?

Btw ball speed and club speed are swapped in the pic and i just dont have the time fix it, live with it :-)

[Brutaly]

One more thing regarding the numbers.
If you watch closely the biggest difference between the two series is in ballspeed. The interesting part is that ballspeed is measured after impact and in the series of shots we have CORRECT distance from tee to screen on both LM. Shortened distance from radar to tee shouldnt affect the measurement of ball speed, So the numbers are infact "better" than they look.

And for the ones that want to go the easy route to fitting with Xi :-)

Also, the Flightscope works REALLY great with Android (wink-wink), so if you go that route, get an android tablet and PM me.

[Skedaddle]

Still trying to absorb all this Brutaly, but thanks for your time and effort. Brilliant stuff

Do you know how I can get a Wishon LA mat as looked on his site and could only see the Trajectory SW in goods sold there?

Lots of good articles and tips on making your own launch monitor too!

[Brutaly]

Still trying to absorb all this Brutaly, but thanks for your time and effort. Brilliant stuff

Do you know how I can get a Wishon LA mat as looked on his site and could only see the Trajectory SW in goods sold there?

Lots of good articles and tips on making your own launch monitor too!

Buy an Xi and PM Goatbarn and tell him you want the most out of it. If you can stand using an android tablet!

But if you are interested in fitting buy wishons book, "common sense club fitting", its easy to understand and extremely comprehensive. I use it as reference litterature on almost every customer i have.

No, i dont know how to get it if its not for sale anymore. I had one like 10 years ago when i started to build clubs. But buy an Xi and contact Goatbarn and you have everything you need. 😉

[Bubba22]

Thanks for the work Brutaly. So what do you think is the minimal distance for accurate data? Do you need metallic stickers on the ball? My only worry is that some of the calculations like dynamic loft, club path and face angle etc. are estimations that are subject to some error. May work overall for most fittings though.

[Brutaly]

Yes you need metallic stickers. This is crucial to get spin readings that are correct. On the other hand if you have my swingspeed (95 mph) spinn has very little impact on overall distance.

Minimum distance to the screen/net might depend upon ballspeed. I cant verify this yet but its at least a hunch i got. I get the feeling that the minumum distance from the radar to the ball infact is the important one. Its there all the club head measurements are and i think the increase in measured club head speed when the using shorter distances like 200 cm indicates just what you point out in your post. When a players swingspeed increases the device might get some trouble to measure pre impact hence screw up club head measurements.

250cm from radar to ball and 300cm from ball to net/screen do work very well, that im 100% sure of, at least with my device.

I have three fittings this weekend but if i can get the time i will do some more tests and get back to this topic.

[jon.summy@aol.com]

Brutaly........have you ever used a swing analyst tool like a swingbyte2 to help with fittings? This supposedly gives you path and face to path......would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Best,

Jon

[Brutaly]

I own 3bays gsa, swingbyte and skypro. None of them are good enough for fitting imo

A good lieboard doesn't a better job when determening path and face angle is more exact from just check horizontal launch angle manually.

Gsa have one nice thing though and that is the swingtempo and vizualisation. That is at least a guide when determining the bendprofile. Clubspeed seems accurate enough to guide you to chose flex.

[Clubfitter73]

Angle of attack which is missing in Xi and which is needed for driver fitting. See the picture i attached. What you need to do is measuring the loft of the driver (which you need to do even if the LM has AoA.) to use the chart. Only use horisontal centerhits to eliminate the roll angle and exclude hooks and slices since those tend to manipulate the loft.

I would use 85% on woods and 75% on irons when translating horisontal launch to face angle

Dynamic loft=Static loft+(angle of attack)

Dynamic loft is the result of all that has been done either by the player or material to influence the face (normal) orientation towards the target like:
- shaft lean aka hand position
- shaft bending
- face orientation in relation to the target (left/right)
- impact position.

An other way to look at it is to see dynamic loft as the face angle but vertically

Please note that AoA is not part of Dynamic Loft. AoA is similar to club path but then again vertically.

Angle of attack which is missing in Xi and which is needed for driver fitting. See the picture i attached. What you need to do is measuring the loft of the driver (which you need to do even if the LM has AoA.) to use the chart

Because of the above you can not use those...they are wrong.

To be perfectly honest i find spin loft of less importance when it comes to fitting....By using different shafts you can affect then spin loft by approx +/-0,7 degree from the players baseline

I beg to differ. It's very easy to influence the spinloft for example using shafts with different balance points, in fact changing the spinloft is one of the major accomplishments of a good fitting. I think you mixed the "material can't change spinloft" with the more general rule "most high hcp player keep the same spinloft when changing their swing"

[Clubfitter73]

LM1 is at correct distances and LM 2 is at 200 to tee and 400 from tee to screen.

Conclusion:
Its definitely possible to play simgolf and even fit clubs with the Xi+ with 200cm to tee and 290cm to the screen. I find the values to be good enough.

Simplay is possible at 190cm to tee and 290 to screen but you will get anomalies and increased length.

Disclaimer
I suspect there is some sort of tolerance when they produce these devices so it might vary between units but im very confident that i could fit customers with 200 cm from radar to tee and 290 cm from tee to screen.
This might not be the case with your device!

Btw, here is a quiz. Which LM stood to the right and why do you think its to the right?

Btw ball speed and club speed are swapped in the pic and i just dont have the time fix it, live with it :-)

The reason their is a limit both for the distance from the tee and distance to the screen is the shape of the radar beam and time.

The radar is controlling its shape of the radar beam and you can visualize it as an cone shaped beam. If the ball is to close to the radar then the ball is below the radar beam and it's launch will not be pickup until it enters the beam. The consequence of that later pickup is lower ball speed, lower launch angle and lower spin data. It will also create issues with the club data as it now didn't clearly report the impact moment because the moving ball was picked up much later (in radar time) flying. The delay will skew clubdata.

The distance between tee and screen is needed in order to allow enough time for the radar to measure enough datapoint and calculate those data point into meaningful data like spin and launch angles.

The slower the ball speed and the higher the spin the more you get away with less distance. A ball moving at 120mph is moving 53.6 meters per second. If you give it 4 meters to fly it will hit the backpanel in 0.074 seconds, 290cm will give the radar 0,054seconds to pick up any data. (NOTE real flying distance depends on launch angle as well, but trying to keep it simple )

When the spin on that same ball is 5000 rpm (rotations per minute) or 83.3 rotations per second that 0.074 will allow the ball to rotate 6.2 times. at 290cm 4.5 rotations. As the metal dot can only be measured while facing the radar that 6.2 can easily become 5 rotations measured and that 4.5 easily only 3 rotations measured.

So increasing the speed with just a few miles per hour and decreasing the spin will make those rotations drop below 1 and than the radar has no data to measure the spin. Or placing the radar closer to the tee so the ball is pickup later then there are also less rotations to be measured...

[Bubba22]

Thanks Clubfitter. So what do you think the minimal distances are for radar units? Would it be different for Trackman vs Flightscope?