Sky Trak DRASTIC Distance Issue with 3 wood, especially Driver

[David DeWitt]

Hi Guys this is my first post. I have read every post on this issue and have tried just about everything. But my driver is reading unbearably inaccurately. I am not sure what my swing speed or ball speed should be but I do know that I carry my drives 250+, I have verified with Trackman and with my rangefinder at the driving range. The picture is of a session yesterday. Every single one of these drives carried at least 240 yards with some bombs (for me they are bombs) that carried about 270. As you can see Sky Trak is not even in the ballpark. I hit this morning with my 3 hybrid and was carrying it 215 on skytrak with ease. This was outside at the range so it surely not indoor swing. Definitely was level with mat and bubble on top was centered.

At the end of the day, I can just barely deal with this because my indoor set up has low ceilings so I can only hit 3 hybrid and higher. But I have an outdoor set up that I use too.

What things should I try to improve this? I have tried using dark tees, putting the ball in front and behind the dot, and going to range in the evening when the sun is not shining, I have sacrificed nice non-range balls (variety of brands and types), and making sure logo is facing the camera. What else should I try? This makes playing TGC...frankly not fun at all.

My personal theory is that it just can't keep up with whatever my ball speed really is because otherwise it makes no logical sense that it would be so spot on for irons.

Thanks. SkyTrak_Seth I would love you input.

PS: I do have a call into SkyTrak commercial team.

[David DeWitt]

This pic shows the setup on the day of the original data-sun shining right in there. :/

[Dave Lee]

250 carry is usually around high 140 to low 150 ball speed. What seems really low is your launch angle. I didn't read through all the replies but did you verify the level?

[David DeWitt]

i think the numbers were goofy because of the sun. look at the other data I posted numbers make more sense but still seem short. I just have to accept it seems like that its not going to get my drives right

[trumb1mj]

SkyTrak simply cannot be trusted when:

1) ball speeds are in the 150+ MPH range
2) there is any sun whatsoever

With number #2 I see extreme right misses with no draw spin and ball speed WAY low... SkyTrak can be a fun and useful tool but for the amount of money you pay for it, they really need to revisit the hardware and come out with something more reliable with version 2.

[Clevited]

I just re-verified Skytrak's ball speed issues at higher speeds (might be after 150, hard to say as I haven't tested all speeds). I had two radar devices on at the same time as Skytrak. One was a Swing Caddie SC100, the other was a swing speed radar laid down on the ground. SSR under reports ball speed compared to trackman due to cosine error involved with launch angle and azimuth of the ball. It can spit out big numbers but those are easy to see. The Swing Caddie is very accurate ball speed wise and if anything, under reports about 2 mph compared to GC2 or Trackman.

The results, I saw a 3-10 mph lower ball speed on the ST vs the radar units. This was indoors, no sunlight issues, using new golf balls pointing logo at ST every time. I posted in a different thread a while back that I saw 2-7 mph lower ball speed vs a Trackman when I tested ST against it simultaneously.

This is true across two DIFFERENT Skytrak units so far, and for ball speeds in the low to upper 170s (as reported by ST, they are realistically in the low to upper 180s). I do plan to test this unit against a Trackman again in the near future and I will be sure to post my results when I do.

[LEO MODE]

I just re-verified Skytrak's ball speed issues at higher speeds (might be after 150, hard to say as I haven't tested all speeds). I had two radar devices on at the same time as Skytrak. One was a Swing Caddie SC100, the other was a swing speed radar laid down on the ground. SSR under reports ball speed compared to trackman due to cosine error involved with launch angle and azimuth of the ball. It can spit out big numbers but those are easy to see. The Swing Caddie is very accurate ball speed wise and if anything, under reports about 2 mph compared to GC2 or Trackman.

The results, I saw a 3-10 mph lower ball speed on the ST vs the radar units. This was indoors, no sunlight issues, using new golf balls pointing logo at ST every time. I posted in a different thread a while back that I saw 2-7 mph lower ball speed vs a Trackman when I tested ST against it simultaneously.

This is true across two DIFFERENT Skytrak units so far, and for ball speeds in the low to upper 170s (as reported by ST, they are realistically in the low to upper 180s). I do plan to test this unit against a Trackman again in the near future and I will be sure to post my results when I do.

You can also refer to this guy as per below link who tested and got similar result as I did on camera vs radar.

https://exploringimpact.blogspot.com/2017/03/skytrak-vs-trackman-part-1.html

It seems like the driver ball speed difference does go all the way up to 7mph, which in return should generate less carry as 1mph increase in ball speed gains about 2yds in carry (meaning one can theoretically lose 14yds in carry).

[Clevited]

In that test he was measuring much lower ball speeds and looked to actually get higher average ball speed with ST than with TM. I did not see that with lower ball speeds. I saw exactly the same or slightly under reported bs vs Trackman back when I tested (if I had any higher ones I don't recall them, so they must not have been common if there were any). I don't recall what all clubs I hit but I just hit a ball, made mental notes of the difference and hit another, changed clubs and so on. Didn't start becoming alarmed until I hit driver.

[SkyTrak_Seth]

Hi Guys this is my first post. I have read every post on this issue and have tried just about everything. But my driver is reading unbearably inaccurately. I am not sure what my swing speed or ball speed should be but I do know that I carry my drives 250+, I have verified with Trackman and with my rangefinder at the driving range. The picture is of a session yesterday. Every single one of these drives carried at least 240 yards with some bombs (for me they are bombs) that carried about 270. As you can see Sky Trak is not even in the ballpark. I hit this morning with my 3 hybrid and was carrying it 215 on skytrak with ease. This was outside at the range so it surely not indoor swing. Definitely was level with mat and bubble on top was centered.

At the end of the day, I can just barely deal with this because my indoor set up has low ceilings so I can only hit 3 hybrid and higher. But I have an outdoor set up that I use too.

What things should I try to improve this? I have tried using dark tees, putting the ball in front and behind the dot, and going to range in the evening when the sun is not shining, I have sacrificed nice non-range balls (variety of brands and types), and making sure logo is facing the camera. What else should I try? This makes playing TGC...frankly not fun at all.

My personal theory is that it just can't keep up with whatever my ball speed really is because otherwise it makes no logical sense that it would be so spot on for irons.

Thanks. SkyTrak_Seth I would love you input.

PS: I do have a call into SkyTrak commercial team.

I'm really sorry that I missed this post. It looks like your back spin and side spin numbers are all over the place, so my first guess is that it's a mis-marking issue on the spin. However, I don't think anyone is going to get 270 yards with 140's ball speeds. That said, we are doing some ball speed testing this week for higher ball speeds, but those numbers don't factor into the issue we are testing for (ie 150+). Are you using range balls with your SkyTrak?

[Gresh12]

Wasn't sure what thread to put this in given all the various distance threads going currently. But I did an iron fitting today on Trackman and I took my Skytrak with me to compare. My focus was on choosing irons so I will admit I didn't try to match each shot between both launch monitors afterwards (fitter was grouping different shaft/head combos and results don't line up to my shot history) or disrupt the process worrying about data collection. He only emailed me data from the best combinations so no way to match it with the full session in my Skytrak history.

General comments from the iron shots:
- Skytrak was in network mode and missed 1 shot out of approximately 150 balls hit. The Trackman actually missed more than the Skytrak at maybe 5.
- I was indoors with probably 20' to screen.
- I looked at general shot shape of Trackman vs Skytrak after each shot and starting line/shape were comparable on almost all shots (there was a handful of mishits that were quite different but with the contact I made either device could have been right). Skytrak appeared a bit more punitive on big misses (i.e., hooks/slices) but both are relying on flight algorithms indoors.
- I looked at ball speed after each shot and I never noticed any being out more than +/- 3mph. My gut is Skytrak was under more than it was over but there was a mix

After the fitting was done I hit 17 drives where the Skytrak picked them all up and the Trackman missed 2 (both of these were big pulls). The fitter and I looked more closely at the numbers on these as he was curious about Skytrak and had never seen one in person before. Observations:
- My ballspeed is low 150s and both average and median for Skytrak were about 2 mph less than Trackman on the 15 matched shots. A couple individual shots had Skytrak higher but most were 2-4 mph lower on Skytrak
- Launch angles were all within 1* and most were within a couple tenths of a degree
- Spin was a bit tougher to compare with Trackman giving total and Skytrak giving back/side. We looked at total versus backspin to keep it simple (I'm sure one of you can give me a formula to make the comparison more realistic). Quite a bit of volatility within individual shots here with differences as much as 1k rpm. No discernible pattern but Skytrak backspin was about 10% higher than Trackman total spin when looking at median and average.
- As with the iron observations the direction and shot shape were similar but magnitude offline varied at individual shot level (likely tied mostly to varying spin)
- Carry distance had median/average very close but again each shot had quite a bit of volatility (compounding of the 2-4 mph difference on ball speed and the varying spin). His settings were 250 elevation 20* celsius and mine would have been Skytrak default as I used my iPhone for the first time ever with my Skytrak. I didn't think about these settings until starting to type this up.
- Heigh/descent angles were very similar and I ignored roll as both devices are a total guess.
- My Trackman smash factor was 1.47 which then makes the Skytrak club speed look low based on the estimate.

Conclusions:
- I was happy overall. With any individual shot there's some variability but that could be said of the more expensive units as well (ignoring the radar in full flight tracking but then wind matters if you are trying to get your "typical" ball flight).
- The data when averaging a few shots will be good for showing you how you hit the ball from a practice perspective.
- I really want reliable club data (at a price of less than GC2/HMT or GC Quad which I know is a big ask). I had been concerned with my path the last few weeks as my miss was right (after years of hooking it with a big in/out path and wrist flip) and I thought it was the in/out swing coming back without the wrist flip but in reality it was just simply me leaving the face way open occasionally. I've given thoughts to SkyTrak_Seth on ways to leverage the R-Motion and calculated club data in combination in another thread but I really hope the folks at Skytrak are working on something great in this area as I think it's a game changer.

[Clevited]

They also offer Skypro for club data.

Looks like your data is fitting the general problem others see with Skytrak. Near that 150mph mark, speeds can start to vary more than they do at lower speeds. You didn't get any big outliers in that range which is good.

I dismissed it when I tested mine recently but after thinking for a while, I really think some of the problem could be coming from horizontal launch angle. I put up an old bed sheet over my net to hit into and I drew an X on it. I hit short shots at it, and noted where I hit it. I used that to align my ST. Most of the time when I hit that X, ST shows 0 or sub 1 deg horizontal launch angle. I notice though many full shots where it gets this completely wrong. I hit the X and it shows a 5 degree push, I hit a pull, left of the X and I get a 2 degree push as examples. It seems to be a bigger problem with higher speed shots, but I have not yet tested enough.

My point is, if it gets HLA completely wrong, that can make ball speed completely wrong as they have to trig it out I believe based on vertical and hla. If that is the case, that would be awesome. It might mean that ST can tweak how they measure and calculate that HLA and perhaps reign in the ball speed variability.

Ranging from 3 mph high to 8 mph low, isn't acceptable ball speed accuracy imo. If they can tighten that up to be +2 to -2 mph off from actual that would be perfect to me.

Edit: Never mind, unless there is a serious error in their calculations using HLA, or unless the HLA is off by like 20 degrees (assuming the VLA is usually pretty close), there is no way for this to account for how much it can be off. At worst, it would be off a mph or 2, which is perfectly acceptable and would require being off by like 10 degrees.

[JSPNW]

I posted a while ago on a different thread about the accuracy of ST, it was bugging me so much that I took the ST to the range on Sunday to test it against actual shots measured with a laser. It was not windy and I was hitting off a mat.

First of all I hit my 56 degree wedge to a 63 yard flag, the ST was aligned with the flag. Due to the short distance I could see carry accurately. ST was short on every one for carry by between 5 and 7 yards, total distance by the same amount. Most of the shots were at the flag (I play off 4 so am reasonably competent) and landed within 1 or 2 yards either side, ST had them up to 9 yards wide when I could see the ball actually sitting next to the flag.

Next up was my Pitching Wedge (Ping i200). I measured the marker post on the range at 123 yards which is about my normal carry for the PW. The ST was aligned with the marker post. Every shot landed within a yard or two of the marker and every ball then rolled past the marker. The ST measured carry at 103 - 114 yards and total distance was no further than 122 yards. The ST also had shots straying to the right.

I note a lot of posts comparing ST to GC2 or other launch monitors and a myriad of reasons why ST is this or that etc. The stark reality from my testing at the weekend is that the ST is just simply inaccurate, end of. Have I just got a duff ST unit, has anyone else compared actual shots to ST and come up with something different ?

I have to say I am extremely disappointed, I knew that ST was not spot on, but to be so far out as to render using it as feedback when practising as being useless means I need to have a total rethink. For example I look at the side spin and backspin numbers which I would imagine the algorithm will use to calculate whether the ball fades or hooks and from that I am making adjustments to my swing when in reality I may be hitting the ball perfectly straight all along without the need to adjust.

[AndyF]

What balls were you using at the range and what where your spin numbers like?

The choice of ball at a range can have a massive impact on the accuracy of your ST. I go to a number of different ranges that use different types of balls and I can see vastly different numbers both longer and shorter compared to what I physically see with the range balls and also when I'm using my normal gaming ball in my net at home. The condition of the ball does have an effect on how well the ST unit can get it's readings and you generally find range balls are in dubious conditions at best.

If you can find a range where you can actually use your normal gaming ball and hit it to known distances then I think you will find that the ST matches up pretty well.

Likewise with the dispersion, the best way to align your ST unit is to actually hit some short chip shots to begin with to work our where the centerline is and then use that as your alignment rather than physically just pointing the unit at a point 100+ yards away. You have to also factor in the accuracy of the ST unit itself. It measures horizontal launch angle to +/- 2 degrees. On a 120 yard shot this then gives you an accuracy of +/- 4 yards.

Andy

[Clevited]

Its possible you got a bad unit, but you were playing with it outside. This is a limitation of ST. It has a tough time in direct sunlight, or even indirect as I have found multiple times. You have to be careful when aligning it. ST also uses a flight algorithm which has issues at times sure. It is known that it does not decay spin and therefore that can make it a little more inaccurate than it could be at times. It also can over pronounce left or right spin, possibly related to spin decay. GC2 has issues of its own and that is considered on par with TM or FS by most people's standards. Another thing to think about, was there a breeze AT ALL? Even a very slight helping breeze will make your ball travel a ways further. ST does not account for wind unless you tell it to. Pressure and temperature are part of the equation as well.

If you haven't done so already and it is possible for you, test it against a Trackman at the same time, hitting from indoors to outdoors. This eliminates sunlight issues, allows Trackman to be accurate as possible and you can make direct comparisons of shot shape, spin, distance all that stuff. Just keep in mind the weather.

My only real beef with ST is its ball speed deviation at higher speeds. That might be fixable if ST finds the cause.

[Dave Lee]

There are quite a bit of head on tests out there for skytrak vs trackman and gc2. I’ve personally tested it against a Mevo that I’ve verified against trackman. I think as a system, the consensus is skytrak is accurate for its price point.

That being said, it does have its flaws/limitations. If you are a big hitter, it will under read your ballspeed by a few mph. If you are outside, the sun will mess with it significantly. I’ve actually observed my ball speed increase as the sun was setting. I’ve also seen ball color mess with the accuracy. There’s also the possibility you got a dud.

If you’ve tried everything and it doesn’t meet your standards, just return or sell it? You can get one of flightscope xi type radar systems in the same ballpark. Indoors you run into space issues but if you do most of your work outdoors it will probably work better than skytrak.

[JSPNW]

Gentlemen thanks for your comments.

Andy F, I was using real balls mostly Titleist but the odd Srixon. In aiming the ST, I place a white sheet of paper on the mat onto which the two layers shine onto in alignment mode, I then place an alignment stick onto the lasers which with a bit of fiddling you end up pointing at your target.

Clevited, it was a dull Sunday morning here in the UK and I was under a covered hitting area, sunshine in October is rare !! There was no breeze affecting the ball flight. I think you have a good point about testing it against a TM.

Dave Lee, thanks for the advice, I am going to sell it and get a GC2.

All, I realise that for its price it is not going to be GC2 accurate, the beef I have is that its accuracy is so far out as to almost render it useless. It certainly makes any form of structured practice a waste of time as the feed back is not reliable.

Ho hum!!

[AndyF]

Whereabouts in the UK are you as if you want to test your unit against mine then I'm up in Warrington if you're anywhere near

[JSPNW]

Thanks for the offer AndyF, I am in Colwyn Bay but am about to sell the ST.

[Stackchaser]

I too am having driver issues with skytrak. Not even close to real life distances. I tried again with 4 different drivers tonight and not even close to what I would see on the golf course. Had multiple buddies over for practice last week, and a young limber back 25yr old who crushes the ball only got one over 250yds. Don't want to derail your thread, but attached is driving session tonight. The ones I hit really well, all seemed to leak right and I play a draw. Skytrak did know when I hooked one. After a month of tinkering, I am almost at a give up point and will either use skytrak for practicing 4i; up which sucks since I spent $850 for TGC and just get frustrated playing as I cannot hit my driver anywhere close to a normal distance. My 30 day window is up so I cannot return the unit

[Clevited]

Skytrak has a few issues but unless you are in the 150s and up with driver ball speed, ST should be pretty darn accurate. 9 times out of 10, indoor swing is the issue for newcomers. Before you return it, please test it in a real life situation at the range or something. For most people, ST does a pretty good job. You will note that neither ST or GC2 or GCQ gets distance or ball flight perfect. They have their flaws. Only devices that can do that are Trackman and Flightscope that track the entire flight of the ball.

Please search some more in these threads and read up before you return it. You might regret it if it turns out to just be indoor swing, or as it is for some, a reality check regarding their actual distances.

Also keep in mind that roll out is not something easy to model at all. So only focus on carry when checking your STs accuracy.

Good luck.

[G4zzel]

Great post! This should be in the instruction manual. I see a lot of people complaining about distance, ball flight etc. indoor swing is difficult to master. It took me a good year and a raised cealing to get comfortable.

[AndyF]

Stackchaser,
For that recorded ball speed I would say that those carry numbers look correct.

You say your 4 iron numbers are correct so what are your ball speeds and carry distance recorded with the 4 iron as then you should be able to get a rough estimate as to what your ball speed should be with the driver to see if the unit may be faulty in reading in ball speed.

Andy

[G4zzel]

Stackchaser you might look at your LA it looks very low. Is your ST tilted backwards.


look it up at:

https://flightscope.com/products/trajectory-optimizer/