Help - - Skytrak not picking up good drives

[GMR]

Hi all, hoping someone can offer some suggestions for a problem I'm having. Over the past couple weeks, my Skytrak is not reading data on well-struck drives. I don't have an issue with any other club and it reads just fine when the drive is slightly mishit, leading me to believe the ball speed is causing the issue. The highest it has ever registered for me is 161 ball speed (once), and very rarely registers 160. My swing speed with driver is in the 108-112 range and on other monitors I've occasionally registered shots with balls speeds in the 168-170 range. It's only really become a problem as I've begun to strike the ball better indoors (so I guess a good problem to have?)


In any event if anyone has any suggestions I am all ears!

Thanks

[BWJones]

Try moving the ball back 2 inches behind the red dot (away from your target) The theory here is a low launch angle may be difficult to pick up. Moving back gets the ball slighlty higher for the read process.

[Clevited]

Be sure you are making good swings at your normal speeds before thinking Skytrak is broken. Indoor swing is often the problem here, meaning you are unknowingly holding yourself back. I suggest taking it to a range to see if the numbers come back.

Also, I have found that my Skytrak under reports ball speeds when they start getting fast. I have seen upwards of 8 mph lower ball speeds compared to Trackman. This is a problem for me for sure when ball speeds reach 170+.

You say your swing speed tops out at 112? That would mean a theoretical max ball speed of around 166 mph. Seems likely your Skytrak just under reports a tad, or the device that measured your swing speed was reading a tad high. Need to rule out all of that kind of stuff. I am betting your Skytrak is fine, just under reporting a little if anything.

[GMR]

Be sure you are making good swings at your normal speeds before thinking Skytrak is broken. Indoor swing is often the problem here, meaning you are unknowingly holding yourself back. I suggest taking it to a range to see if the numbers come back.

Also, I have found that my Skytrak under reports ball speeds when they start getting fast. I have seen upwards of 8 mph lower ball speeds compared to Trackman. This is a problem for me for sure when ball speeds reach 170+.

You say your swing speed tops out at 112? That would mean a theoretical max ball speed of around 166 mph. Seems likely your Skytrak just under reports a tad, or the device that measured your swing speed was reading a tad high. Need to rule out all of that kind of stuff. I am betting your Skytrak is fine, just under reporting a little if anything.

Sorry think you misunderstood the issue. When my ball speed is above 160 I literally get NO READING. I get the whole indoor outdoor thing, my issue isnt that the reported speed is too low, but rather that when I catch one that I know is in the 165-170 range the unit literally doesn't pick up the shot. Thanks.

[Clevited]

Yes my bad, I got confused when you said highest ball speed you saw was 161. That is weird. Could be related to my issue. Do you use a protective case? If its not the official Skytrak one, it might be worth taking that off and see if it still happens. Otherwise, Skytrak isn't seeing it in its snap shots. Do you tend to launch high with driver or low?

[GMR]

No protective case at the moment. Tend to tee high and launch relatively low, though that varies. No issue at all reading155 ball speed off my 3w, only a driver issue and like I said only seems to be on the faster speed drives.

[GMR]

Try moving the ball back 2 inches behind the red dot (away from your target) The theory here is a low launch angle may be difficult to pick up. Moving back gets the ball slighlty higher for the read process.

Will give that a try, thanks. On a similar note, is it a problem if the ball is teed up too high?

[wbond]

If i remember right, they had a video showing a player with high swing speed and teed up high and they had the unit raised up quite a bit. I would definitely try moving it back away from target and possibly raising or lowering the unit to see if it helps.

[GMR]

Just as an update here, I've raised my Skytrak by about 3/4" which seems to help. Still not reading 100% of drives, but an improvement, and am starting to see some higher ball speeds in the low/mid 160s.

I have one question on this though. Raising the unit moves the red dot further away from the unit when I'm hitting shots off the mat. Will this have any effect on the readings I'm getting with my irons (since the ball will be smaller from the perspective of the SkyTrak)? Not sure if the unit was designed to operate a fixed distance away from the ball or how it works exactly, but if someone with any idea could comment would be much appreciated.

[Clevited]

Glad to know you are having better luck. In my experience, I haven't noticed much of a difference between a little further out and a little closer. I think it has a lot more flexibility measuring shots than one might think. With that however, my Skytrak is raised up a bit, and I place the ball inside by an inch or so of the laser dot so that I have it within the recommended area. The only problem I know for sure regarding placing ball too far out is, it won't register a shot. I believe the light curtain doesn't get tripped when too far away.

[KelleyAdamson]

I am having the same issue and tried to shift the Skytrack+ with no luck. I opened the task manager and found that the TGC 2019 program had a task still running in the background. I closed that task and restarted the Skytrak+. It is working fine now. I will try to test this again to see if the TGC 2019 program is not closing properly.

[bob-p]

POSSIBLE SOLUTION???

A major reason why we upgraded to SkyTrak+ was that our SkyTrak would have problems registering my driver shots and many of our chip shots.

And, I just encountered this problem with our ST+ with TGC 2019...

I was having difficulty getting a chip to register, so I tried moving the ball around and rewinding shots until it picked up the swing and the results were reasonable.

And, then on the next tee, I could not get my driver or 3 wood to register any shots. I tried moving the ball around - 360 degrees around the dot, in all 4 directions - and that didn't help. I tried decreasing and increasing the lighting - and again - no shots registered. I tried placing a dark background behind me - and again - no shots would register.

So...

As an experiment - in TGC 2019, I changed the club to a PUTTER and then with a ball on a tee in the position that usually works, I hit a driver - and the ST+ picked it up the first time. Though because it was set to PUTTER, the ball didn't go very far - and was getting comments about all I needed was to sync this put for an albatross...

I then set the club back to DRIVER - and the ST+ picked up the tee shot on the very first try - and worked on the subsequent holes.

Maybe the problem isn't with the ball positioning - maybe it's the software (at least the ST/TGC interface) that's getting confused, and by changing between PUTTER (which uses different settings) and DRIVER, the software resets.

At least this worked today and allowed me to finish the round.

[bob-p]

I did another round on the ST+ today - and again hit a point where the driver wouldn't register (after several shot attempts).

I set the club to PUTTER and tried hitting the driver and it still didn't register.

Then I just putted the ball - it registered the putt correctly, and then set the club back to DRIVER and it registered my drives on the remaining holes.

If this trick works for others, then the problem could be a software issue and not a problem seeing the shots...