Sand Wedge Sailing

[derekney]

I am having a problem with the simulated shot of the sand wedge. It is going an unreasonable distance sometimes: over 110 yards with a high shot shape. I know there is no way I can hit a sand wedge that far and high. A full swing on the range for me will go maybe 75 yards. When I get this super long shot, the shot stats are showing a club speed in the seventies which seems very high to me. I would expect a club-speed in the fifties for these shots.

What could cause a shot like this to go long. I am in practice mode, 70 yards from the green from fairway. I have sand wedge selected for my club. I am pretty sure my v-cam is now working well. Longer irons are going slightly shorter than I expect so it not like I tuned it up to go far. And I am pretty careful about not letting my shadow get on the sensor.

What software settings should I be looking at? How does it figure out the ball speed? Is it using the cameras (h-cam/v-cam) at all for that?

Just not sure how to debug this. It is not happening every time, but often enough to be a real problem.

[More Info: I tried selecting 9-iron instead of sand wedge in the clubs menu and it seems to "fix" this issue. My sand-wedge starts hitting consistent distances that I would expect. I am pretty sure the wedges get some extra processing and this must be what is messing it up. For now I guess I will just select 9-iron when I want to use my wedges--it seems to work much better then.]

[Maverick]

The red sensor might have been. where the ball first crossed. If you wave the club over 1 of the 4 reset sensors in the back and it still stays on, then that would be a problem.

As Brent suggested, try different lights Derek.

[theLONO]

Haha, Tiger would have to use Zmax's settings too! So don't be too sad. This is about a 15yd high chip he had to hit over a bunker in Dubai.

[Bubba22]

Tiger!!! Lol!

[derekney]

I played a round yesterday and green side chipping was very frustrating with this problem. I was hoping to try to understand a little what could be happening, so wanted to get an idea of what is supposed to happen with these types of shots.

Note the following is assuming a working H-cam and V-cam. So for a normal shot with say a 5-iron, the following happens (please comment on where I am wrong, and there are embedded questions):

As club approaches the ball, the back and impact light sensors behind ball see the club passing and mark the time of passage of club face.
The club hits the ball.
Q: Is this when the audio detection is used? To determine the exact impact time?
Q: What if audio analysis is turned off? How does it determine impact time then?
The system can now determine the "club speed".
The ball flies ahead of the club face and passes over the balltrack light sensors marking the time of passage of the ball.
The system can now determine the horizontal ball speed based on the impact time and the balltrack passage time. Note that if there is loft involved the actual ball speed would be higher because it is rising the entire time.
Qoes the system use the v-cam launch angle to compensate for this an increase the ball speed based on launch angle?

Now for a high loft shot using a lob wedge where club gets ahead of ball...
As club approaches the ball, the back and impact light sensors behind ball see the club passing and mark the time of passage of club face. Same as for 5-iron.
The club hits the ball.
The system can now determine the "club speed".
The club moves ahead of the ball and passes over the balltrack light sensors marking the time of passage of the club which for a 5-iron would be the ball speed.
Q: Now what is supposed to happen?
I have a feeling that the sensors cannot actually detect the ball once the club has passed over the balltrack sensors. Is this correct?
So is the system supposed to do some type of estimation of ball speed by using the value measured by the balltrack sensors (which is really club speed after impact) and modifying it by some algorithm?

Is this what the whole "chipping distance" and associated parameters is all about (the algorithm which gets a ball speed from the club speed after impact)?

Thanks for any and all information. I just feel like if I understand what is SUPPOSED to happen I may be able to get a clue as to what is actually wrong.
-Derek

[Maverick]

Sorry it took this long to reply. Been very busy plus lots of snow the other day.

Q: Is this when the audio detection is used? To determine the exact impact time?

Yes

Q: What if audio analysis is turned off? How does it determine impact time then?

As club face is measured by the timing(face angle) sensors.

Qoes the system use the v-cam launch angle to compensate for this an increase the ball speed based on launch angle?

Yes

The club moves ahead of the ball and passes over the balltrack light sensors marking the time of passage of the club which for a 5-iron would be the ball speed.
Q: Now what is supposed to happen?
I have a feeling that the sensors cannot actually detect the ball once the club has passed over the balltrack sensors. Is this correct?

Yes, the club crossing the ball track, before the ball, gets read as ball speed.

[quote]Is this what the whole "chipping distance"

[derekney]

Thanks very much for the answers, it makes things much clearer now.
No, protee got back to me and I asked when they could remote in, but never got a reply.
I am going unavailable for a few days so I will ping them when I get back.

I wonder if I could have an audio problem. I think I mentioned that occasionally I swing and hit and the sim does not respond at all. I guess I could try turning the audio off temporarily.

[Maverick]

Yes, try that. It's not uncommon to have audio issues. The microphone could be dirty or the audio gain pot(on the circuit board) needs to be exercise or increased.

[derekney]

Tried that and it did not seem to make a difference to high loft shots--still getting the occasional 90 yard shot with sand wedge out of rough. It did seem that it fixed the problem where I occasionally would hit the ball and the sim did not notice it.

[Maverick]

Did you ever get Protee to remote in? Just to test, set Use_TBS=False and see if you still get the occasional 90 yard SW shots.

[derekney]

No, I pinged them again to ask them to remote in.
What does Use_TBS control?

[Maverick]

It sets the ball speed method to the old method, which caps ball speed to a maximum smash factor. Just want to see what happens.

[derekney]

The guys from protee remoted into my system this morning. They found some issues with the serial to usb device: changed driver and made it so power saving did not turn off usb ports. That did not seem to really fix anything but could cause problems.

They now suspect that when I swing the sand wedge the first thing that shows up on the balltrack sensor is not the club face, nor the ball, but the club shaft. I have been working on keeping my hands in front of the ball on impact on those shots and that seems to cause problems here. The sensor that lights off is usually one of the first 4 left ones and presumably since it is before the club head gets there it causes it to miscalculate the club speed to be much higher. They are going to look into a solution for this and are hoping some changes will address the issue.

The one thing I am a little puzzled by is that I do not think my swing is very unique here. Are others running into this? I am using a kind of punchy motion for the swing. My instructor (Charlie King) harped on not being "flippy" where your wrists break and the club head gets ahead of your hands. Thought others tried to do this too.

The protee guys were very helpful and I was impressed with the level of support. They spent about an hour and half looking at things.

[Maverick]

That would be too much shaft lean for a wedge, no? You were launching it over 50 degrees. I can see your head causing it maybe. Don't know of anybody that has this problem.

[bcgc0918]

There is no one that has more lag in the club than I do. And I never have this problem. But if you are tall it may come into play if your clubs are more upright. I would have to believe it is your head casting the shadow. If you play the ball with lag in your club like I do then the ball is way back in your stance and your head shadow would be more likely to cross the sensor. For me it is just outside the sensor. I am 5.9 tall and the taller guys don't play near as much lag and their shadow is nearly touching the row behind the ball.

[mmlincon]

Yeah, I'm curious what your launch angles are. It sounds like you maybe breaking your left wrist in an effort to increase loft and spin when in fact it will reduce it. This is a common mistake but could lead to the club head racing past the ball. A kind of artificial flop shot without the flop aspect. This would cause the sensor to misread and cause the ballspeed to be too high. A quick video should show this, even with a modern phone.