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My skytrak has continued to be very wrong on driver, but now my unit is laughably short with my irons as well. It is now reading my 9i distance as around 120 carry. This is 25-30 yards short compared to trackman, gc2, and real world data. Not sure what to do at this point. This unit is worthless if I know the numbers arent close to being accurate.
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Can you post up your launch data: ball speed, launch angle, backspin in particular and then an assessment can be made to see what may be the issue -
Are your ball flight characteristics accurately represented compared to what you see IRL? Have you looked into changing the elevation to reflect where you live? I can't imagine the elevation accounting for 25-30 yards though.Comment
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Ball speed and spin cannot be measured accurately when the sun is the primary lighting source. This really needs to be either addressed or admitted in the pre sale FAQ.Comment
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Noticed the same since the last 2 (maybe?) software updates. I’ve been playing a lot outside and hit my PW about 125. I couldn’t get it to come close inside today even after adjusting elevation way up.
7 and 8 iron also way short (15 - 20) yards in this session today.Comment
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If you haven't yet, and can, take your skytrak to the range that has a Trackman and compare at the same time. That way you can be 100% sure it is nothing you are doing temporarily different. The golf swing is such a difficult and potentially variable thing.
Just compare launch numbers not distance primarily. I think it has been shown time and time again that Skytrak algorithim in many cases (especially high speed, high spin shots), is a little conservative with carry distance and roll compared to reality.Comment
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I have been having trouble with my 8 and 9 iron specifically but I can't tell if its me or the unit. I'm actually leaning more towards me. I can hit my pitching wedge 120-130, 9 iron 130-135, 8 iron 140 and then my 7 iron 160-170. Such a huge gap. I used to be able to hit my 8 iron 160 and 9 iron 150. I have been trying to change my swing so much with those clubs to figure out why I am losing so much distance.Comment
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Keep at it, the nice thing about having a launch monitor like the Skytrak, is it helps you figure out the technical side of what is going on. If you pm me some screen shots I can help you make heads or tails of things if you like. I dabble in this stuff a lot.
I think you know the basic answer though, it is likely something you are doing. Whether you are grazing the mat with that one club more and losing speed, or you tend to hit higher on the face with a club that another, or your lofts are out of wack, or that club feels different, etc etc etc. There are so many interelated things in the golf swing and at impact that it takes some effort to feret out the truth but I can help if you want.
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If you're hitting lots of shots off a mat with forged clubs then get your lofts checked regularly. It is more punishing than hitting off grass and the lofts will change the more times you hitComment
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I’ve just changed my irons and wanted to check their distances. Went onto SkyTrak and found the distances to be way off. I’m a 6 handicap and hit reasonably consistent shots. Today I went to our practice ground ( it was sunny with no wind ) and used my lazer to check my distances, here they are, forget setting ST next to a Trackman etc, the numbers below are real shots. The clubs used are Ping i200
P actual carry 126 yards ST 110 yards
9 actual carry 136 yards St 120 yards
8 actual carry 145 yards ST 134 yards
forget spin, mats, ball etc, in real world ST is way out. What is the point of the wedge mapping that just came out when it is so far off.
i’ve loved my ST, but real life testing shows it’s accuracy to be dodgy. I’ve tried changing altitude, humidity etc, they have little effect.
Any suggestions gladly received.
On on using the driver I can never get a drive further than 260 yards on ST, on the course my drives average 280 yards. Again what is going on.Comment
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ST spin rates are variable, when fitted for the i200 my 7 iron was spinning at 7100. When outdoors I was not using a launch monitor, I was measuring actual shots with my Bushnell.Comment
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Should have said I was fitted using a Trackman.Comment
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Sorry, I misunderstood before, I thought you were using Trackman at the same time as ST. I have a new question. Were you hitting range balls when you were there?
ST only captures the initial launch conditions, if a ball has worn dimples it might behave differently. Often for me, that means it will knuckle sometimes, or carry further than usual.
For me ST, is sometimes up to 10 yards short with irons, but rarely much more. I am a high ball speed, high spin player. For instance, a pitching wedge for me is 125 ball speed, and 11k spin. ST doesn't quite get that right for me carry wise. It thinks it goes shorter than it really would. It has been guessed that the ST algorithm doesn't model spin decay well or at all. This is something I feel they need to fix to bring their product to the next level of accuracy.
Screen shots are very helpful in determining the issue. I can tell you right away if the ST is misreading, if it is likely the ball itself (worn dimples), or if it is the algorithm for calculating your ball flight. If you are getting 7k rpm with a 7 iron, you could be seeing algorithm issues but 15 yards, at least for me, seems a little excessive. Could perhaps be a couple things going on.
If you could, hit the range up again and take some screen shots of the problem shots.
FYI: Driver is a whole different issue, we can talk about that too if you want.
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Hello,
I was hitting Titliest balls at the range. Not range balls. I am then comparing the distance to what ST shows when hitting the same balls indoors with the same clubs. The spin on the 7 iron when hitting indoors is generally about 1500 rpm down on ST compared to the fitting which was on Trackman.
hope this helps.
I have to to admit I am seriously considering a move to GC2.Comment
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Ok well I might have some things to check or think about.
Were you in both instances, hitting off of a mat? Was the mat the same type each time? This can be a huge difference maker both with spin and clubhead speed. If you even ever so slightly hit a mat it can slow down your swing speed just before impact considerably. A different mat can hardly effect your swing speed if hit it slightly fat.
Honest to God, the absolute best thing to do is if you are able, use a Trackman at the exact same time as your Skytrak. Make sure the trackman is on normalize (the outdoor wind can change everything and make the differences much worse). Note the differences in the most important launch parameters, ball speed, launch angle, and spin (side angle spin can be a difference maker as well but lets just focus on these). If they are close to the same but your yardages are still off, then it is just Skytrak's algorithm being different than what is REAL. GC2 uses algorithms too and they are too generous with low spinning driver shots for instance.
Unless you have really high ball speed, the ball speed for Skytrak should be within a couple mph of Trackman. So really, most iron's should never be much different there. Long irons and woods can be significantly different. Again, it depends on your ball speed it seems.
I would personally recommend you do this before you go through the trouble of returning it and spending no doubt more money on a GC2. Just trying to potentially save you some headache and money.
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Thanks for your very helpful comments. Our Pro has a Trackman in his studio so I will take ST there to compare.
For info the range shots were off grass. The indoor mat I use is a True Strike.Comment
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Balls are starting to come out in a whole bunch of colors and patterns. Skytrack seem really sensitive to this. I sometimes use Qolf plastic balls and you get huge differences with color. Red seemed to go farther for me and blue didn't read at all.
Also this might seem too obvious but the wind isn't in your face in the settings is it?
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Ok I just got back from hitting 200 balls at the driving range...I just updated skytrak to the latest version and brought along my flightscope mevo (radar based). Unfortunately, my skytrak subscription had expired so I couldn't export the data to post. But I compared every shot so I was able to pick up on a few things. (skip to the bullets at the end if you don't fee like reading the details) Anyways here's the setup.
-Mat Range with hard full distance range balls (brand new mat..not sure which brand but it's the thick gel type)
-I started at 6:30 PM...so the sun was coming down but still bright. It was to the right of the target line so directly behind the skytrak
-Mevo was 5 feet behind the ball
Right away, i noticed the skytrak was 5 mph ball speed less than the mevo. Since that is a huge distance gap, it was pretty easy to see the skytrak was the one underestimating. (just based on where my ball was landing) I started with a 9 iron so it was still pretty easy to see where the ball was going. I cycled all the way up to driver. The bias was pretty much 5 mph across all the clubs. What's interesting was the launch and spin was surprisingly close. If you know about the mevo, it's not supposed to measure spin very well without metal stickers. But they must have did something to the firmware because the spin rates were matching more often than not.
I noticed once the sun started to fall below the hill to the west, the ball speed bias started to go away. Once it completely fell behind the hill, the ball speeds pretty much matched. For the last 100 balls I hit, the ball speeds were within 1 mph of each other. When it got dark and the flood lights came on, the speeds seem to still match. Although I got a few that ended up a few mph different..but those seemed to be more outliers than the bias i was seeing at the start. I cycled through all my clubs and moved the skytrack around. The ball speeds still matched except on driver. I'm not a big hitter by any means (150 max) but the skytrak was still 2-3 mph slower even after sunset.
Anyways here are my observations from my test
-Skytrak is super sensitive to sunlight...and it's not just sunlight shining directly in the camera. The sunlight I had was behind the unit.
-The skytrak algo seems to calculate shorter distances than flightscope. I had a few center shots (low side spin) that had very close spin measurements, launch, and ball speeds. But the skytrak calculations for carry always seemed to be a few yards shorter than flightscope. Not sure if there's something else going into the numbers but the difference in carry wasn't always the same.
-For 500 bucks, the Mevo performed a lot better than I expected. I had done this test about a year ago and remembered the spin numbers on the mevo being garbage. But today was close enough on a lot of shots to at least trust the average. The ball speed and launch matched pretty much every time (once the sun set)
If you are having huge distance issues, I would take a look at the light source first...if sun reflecting off the mat and ball can cause a 5 mph bias, I assume other types of lights can too. Launch angle was also pretty sensitive to the relative height and level. Hope this helps.Comment
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Nice post, very thorough. I have had difficulties with Skytrak in the sun as well. I just don't try anymore. I was surprised at first by your constant 5 mph descrepancy until the sun went down as that had not been my experience indoors. Makes sense. Indoors I see minimal difference with mid irons and below. I start to see some difference with longer irons and most obvious with the driver. The algos are definitely different. I tend to believe flightscopes more. -
From previous posts, it sounds like you're a big hitter. I definitely think the bias gets worse the faster the ballspeed. In my swing speed range, it varied from 0-3 mph but i can see it growing if you swing in the 120's.
The algo must be using something other than ball speed, backspin, and launch. Even the calculated swing speed estimates seem to be all over the the place. Maybe the side spin numbers are having a bigger impact on the numbers than expected. Since the mevo is assuming 0.
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