Select to expand quotetbwonder said..
I think Vosadrian has a valid gripe. He was told he could no longer participate in GPSTC, because his device did not produce the required error data. Meanwhile we are all allowed to post to GPSTC through KA72 which does not use this error data to filter the results.
It's pretty clear that GPSTC is not going to change in anyway. Eventually someone will come up with something different and most of us will move over to that. For me, that will be a very sad day, but such is the way of the world.
I asked a couple of the young slalom sailors at my local spot if they wanted to join GPSTC, they asked can we use our watches.. I explained no and they could get a motion or another approved device, their reply ...could not be bothered with the hassle, times change and GPSTC needs to update . I note people going on about the integrity of the data ... funny can't see that been mentioned in.The philosophy of the Challenge: If updates to the software where implemented as been suggested many times GPSTC might grow again.
gps numbers year/sailors 2023/286 , 2022/344, 2021/368, 2020 /406, 2019 /414, 2018 /450, 2017 /472
There are plenty of sailors in our team who use a watch in every session, but rarely or never post results because their approved devices all died, or almost died. A couple of people have Motions or GT-31s where getting data off is a matter of patience and luck.
Regarding accuracy, there is just one category that is likely to be off on a regular basis with "non-approved" devices: 2 second top speed. Significant errors in other categories happen, but are very rare, and they also happen with approved devices, especially when posting from ka72.com.
The problem with inaccurate 2-second readings could very easily be addressed. One way would be to limit the difference in 2 sec speed used for the rankings to 2 knots, relative to 5x10. It would be trivial to implement this in GPS Speedreader, but since most postings come from ka72.com, it would require a change on the GPSTC web site. But changes that have been promised to the GPSTC web site years ago never happened, so that's probably just a pipe dream.
One potential solution would be an "open source" web site as a ka72.com alternative, where volunteers can make changes. The ESP logger illustrates nicely how such a model can work. But it would require a volunteer who would be the initial primary developer of the web site. Not my area of expertise, so that's no me. But I'd be happy to make any changes to GPS Speedreader for use on such a site.
A much simpler change to get more active posters would be to officially allow posting wing sessions. That would focus on the "Team" aspect of GPSTC, not the "Speed" aspect, but most postings on GPSTC don't have a chance to get jelly beans. I'd love to see results from wing sessions from the many speedsurfers who mostly (or completely) switched to winging, like Stroppo.
I agree with your thoughts Peter. I agree that neither KA72 or GPSTC are amenable to change and an alternative web site could be a good outcome and provide the opportunity to adopt different speed categories that are less sensitive to gps error. Also, perhaps limit the precision of speed reporting on such a site to 0.1kts. Having said that, I suspect the speedsailing demographic is dominated by GOBs who don't like change and will resist it. I didn't know posting of wingfoil sessions to GPSTC was banned?
Yes, sadly winging sessions are banned from GPSTC, apparently it is not considering to be Windsurfing. I have discussed this with many members of the committee. It seems the majority of them would be happy to allow winging. Yet the original decision to ban it has not been overturned.
I imagine there are plenty of winging sessions being posted to GPSTC as there is no obvious winging ban on the site and it would be impossible to tell the difference from simply looking at the six category results.
We have several local wingers who even have Mini Motions, but we can not officially invite them to join GPSTC
How could would it me if there was a drop down box to pick between windsurf, windfoil and wingfoil ...
Select to expand quotebc said..
How could would it me if there was a drop down box to pick between windsurf, windfoil and wingfoil ...
Of course that would be ideal, but would mean a change to GPSTC. Winging could be allowed with no software changes.
At one point GPSTC must have considered alternative devices, on the integration page of the site it states the following fields
Possible values are X for unknown, D for Doppler, T for Trackpoints, L for GpsLogit app. We know the app is not approved?
Some of the biggest scores in gPSTC have been posted under X but I don't know of anyone that's posted in GPSTC under L (change the wording from GPSLoogit) so could we not just use that as a new field?
The actual average of two sailors is what makes this a team challenge so not having any Coding skills in this medium wouldn't it just take a small change in the code that averages the results to ignore results posted under L or is there more to it?. That way wingers/unapproved devices (fun sailing) can be entered but not averaged in final results.
Currently in the fields you can Edit your scores in GPSTC or post from third party software on your PC, we all trust that people do the correct thing so the same applies if you post from unapproved devices or those pesky Wing Dingers ??just select the L field. My 1 cent worth??
Select to expand quotekato said..
Simple..buy the correct, recommend cricket bat and you can play. Or jump up and down on the boundary line and whine. It's your choice
I'll take the 2nd option!
Not interested in a mini-motion Dezza, but thanks for the offer. It's just not worth the hassle for me. The core problem is obvious to me and I don't want a part in the exclusive club the GPSTC has become. I was banned years ago and I have moved on. I'm finding this boundary line whining thing much more fun.
I had no idea until this thread that wings were banned. Despite the fact they could not possibly be competitive. The inclusive decision would be to allow them realising they will not harm any competitive results, and it would include more possible new members, as well as allowing existing members wanting to try something new to do that and still be a part of the GPSTC.... but if there are two options, the GPSTC chooses the most exclusive option.
Select to expand quotevosadrian said..kato said..
Simple..buy the correct, recommend cricket bat and you can play. Or jump up and down on the boundary line and whine. It's your choice
I'll take the 2nd option!
Not interested in a mini-motion Dezza, but thanks for the offer. It's just not worth the hassle for me. The core problem is obvious to me and I don't want a part in the exclusive club the GPSTC has become. I was banned years ago and I have moved on.
Whine away then. 
But you know why you were banned which I won't share here. You just refuse to play cricket and that's ok. But don't get on here a claim that you're been hard done by the GPSTC. It's just not true. 
I love the GPSTC. I understand the reasoning behind requiring "approved" GPS units. But that reasoning made sense when a good GPS unit was easily available, and other commercial units had much poorer performance. Both of these facts have changed several years ago, but GPSTC refuses to adapt. As a result, participation keeps going down. It's sad to watch.
It cracks me up that there is a push to allow winging on GPSTC under the guise of 'inclusiveness', yet if someone had ever suggested adding kiting there would have been a mass lynching
I'm also curious why GPS Speedsurfing doesn't seem to be considered in these discussions? It's the site the pros use, yet its device rules seem more flexible and the world doesn't seem to end. They have also chosen to head down the path of separate sites/rankings for windsurfing, windfoiling, winging, kiting etc. Makes sense to me to compare like with like
GPSSpeedsurfing.com (GPS3) is really more comparable to ka72.com than to the GPSTC. It is largely missing two elements that make the GPS Team Challenge so interesting: the monthly competition in multiple disciplines (and within and between countries), and the social aspect created by the multiple categories and the requirement to have 2 postings from the same day.
The desire to allow wingsurfing data to be posted is pretty much just from the social aspect. Wings are slower (even considering the top guys at Defi Wing showing impressive 30 knot averages), so wing results will rarely get jelly beans, and be even rarer in the top 10 rankings. With winging, it's not about comparing apples to oranges - it's about keeping the connection to those who often or even exclusively wing. I'd love to read about the wing sessions from people I know. Kiting is a bit different, since kites can beat windsurf speeds (and distances).
GPS3 has a bit of a monthly competition, but unless you're one of the top 20 guys posting, it's rather irrelevant. They also focus on 5x10 seconds as the primary category, which is pretty insensitive sensitive to artifacts. A spike that causes 2 second speeds to be overstated by 5 knots is likely to be reduced to 0.2 knots in the 5x10 (if it makes it into the 5 best 10 second runs at all). With a lot less competition and a single, robust category, device accuracy has always been much less important for GPS3 than for the GPSTC.
But if GPSTC won't change, maybe GPS3 will?
Select to expand quotekato said..vosadrian said..kato said..
Simple..buy the correct, recommend cricket bat and you can play. Or jump up and down on the boundary line and whine. It's your choice
I'll take the 2nd option!
Not interested in a mini-motion Dezza, but thanks for the offer. It's just not worth the hassle for me. The core problem is obvious to me and I don't want a part in the exclusive club the GPSTC has become. I was banned years ago and I have moved on.
Whine away then. But you know why you were banned which I won't share here. You just refuse to play cricket and that's ok. But don't get on here a claim that you're been hard done by the GPSTC. It's just not true.
I already said here why I was banned. Not sure what you are suggesting otherwise. Perhaps I was not told the true reason why I was banned. Did the GPSTC troll my social media and decide that my hair colour is not fitting in with the GPSTC but they just did not want to tell me that, so instead they sent an email telling me to remove a session I posted with an unapproved device or they would ban me. I didn't remove it and I was banned a short time later. But I really appreciate you keeping my big secret safe!
I never claimed I was hard done by the GPSTC. I claimed they were not inclusive as the GPSTC philosophy claims to be. I just stated what happened to me.... all factual. People can make their own conclusions.
I use to enjoy gpstc but no more and reading this thread it's no wonder it's dying. So happy to be dinging. I only read the thread because a mate rang and told how discussed he was in it. All over 3kts.
It took me three years and thousands of dollars in equipment upgrades to improve 3 knots. I'd be disappointed if someone smashed my PB by using an in accurate device.
Select to expand quoteremery said..
It took me three years and thousands of dollars in equipment upgrades to improve 3 knots. I'd be disappointed if someone smashed my PB by using an in accurate device.
Buhahahah! You win the debate!
