Ski Speedometer

"gronski" wrote in message
...
"fat_boy" wrote in message
oups.com...
OK all, here is the challenge, come up with a viable way of measuring
your speed on skis.

I have heard tell of using GPS, but since it will only get your
horizontal speed component, and not the verticla, it will always read
low.

What else can you think of?

My warmest congratulations to all contributors to this energetic thread!
The "fat_boy" wins the "Troll of the month" competition hands down ;-)


Sorry to arrive so late in this fascinating thread, but, making some
assumptions here, surely the only reason to want to measure one's speed
skiiing is to have a subtle show off about it in the bar afterwards. 'Hey, I
hit 75mph coming down the couloirs this morning, it was nothing', type
thing.

Sadly, I feel an accurate measurement will only lead to disappointment when
you discover that you actually only reached 35mph and the desire to show off
will be drastically minimised.

In which case, the best, cheapest, most accurate, most efficient, most
flattering, and therefore most satisfactory method of speed measurement,
which will still allow bragging rights, is undoubtedly the rule of thumb
method, which tells me I hit 75mph because it bloody well felt like it.

ps - Thanks to this thread I will be taking my 3 yr old hiking Garmin to
Morzine this weekend for a surreptitious reading which I will only share if
it makes me look suitably good. If it's more than around 25mph I'll be
pleasurably surprised.

Happy skiing.

"Norman" wrote in
:

ps - Thanks to this thread I will be taking my 3 yr old hiking Garmin
to Morzine this weekend for a surreptitious reading which I will only
share if it makes me look suitably good. If it's more than around
25mph I'll be pleasurably surprised.

You probably will be. I certainly was, though perhaps "pleasurably" isn't
really the word. All skiers go rather faster than I had imagined, including
the ones in a snowplough tuck and a hat with bells on.

Jeremy

All skiers go rather faster than I had imagined, including
the ones in a snowplough tuck and a hat with bells on.

When and where did you see me? Did you like my one piece flourescent ski
suit that I was wearing?

"Norman" wrote in message
...

ps - Thanks to this thread I will be taking my 3 yr old hiking Garmin to
Morzine this weekend for a surreptitious reading which I will only share
if it makes me look suitably good. If it's more than around 25mph I'll be
pleasurably surprised.

Oh come on don't be modest. I would class myself as a low-intermediate skier
and definitely in the "wuss" category when it comes to anything daredevil,
but even I managed to clock 71.4 km/h in a shoose (sp?) week before last.
That's [err, divide by 8, hang on.... multiply by 5-ish, one on the
doorstep] just short of 45mph.

Walter

In message
Jeremy Mortimer wrote:

"Norman" wrote in
:

ps - Thanks to this thread I will be taking my 3 yr old hiking Garmin
to Morzine this weekend for a surreptitious reading which I will only
share if it makes me look suitably good. If it's more than around
25mph I'll be pleasurably surprised.

You probably will be. I certainly was, though perhaps "pleasurably"
isn't really the word. All skiers go rather faster than I had
imagined, including the ones in a snowplough tuck and a hat with
bells on.

Jeremy

Looking at it from a ski-mountaineering perspective, any fool can
approach terminal velocity, the real skill is coming down slowly and in
complete control.

Mike
--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
" || _`\,_ |__\ \ | immunology lecturer, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:25:33 GMT, Mike Clark
wrote:

In message
Jeremy Mortimer wrote:

You probably will be. I certainly was, though perhaps "pleasurably"
isn't really the word. All skiers go rather faster than I had
imagined, including the ones in a snowplough tuck and a hat with
bells on.

Jeremy

Looking at it from a ski-mountaineering perspective, any fool can
approach terminal velocity, the real skill is coming down slowly and in
complete control.

Well, sort of, but I'd suggest that there's a little more skill
involved in coming down fast and in complete control.

--
Ace (brucedotrogers a.t rochedotcom)
Ski Club of Great Britain - http://www.skiclub.co.uk
All opinions expressed are personal and in no way represent those of the Ski Club.

Most reasonably intelligent people know that the obvious is not always
correct.

As somene of more that reasonable inteligence I will decide for myself
which obviousness is true and which is not.

Indeed. Ignoring all the boring stuff like turbulence and boundary layer
effect, the air going around a car is faster than the speed of the car.
Without such trivialities the aeroplane getting him to his holidays
wouldn't get off the ground. Haven't seen many roads parallel to pistes
either

At last, an intelligent post.

I had thought of that, since I specialised in fluid dynamics as an
engineer. And, from testing the device held out of the side of the car
at 50 k, and validating the cars speed against one of those 'You are
driving at xxx kmh' radar signs, I have found that the wind speed meter
agrees to within a couple of k with the radar reading.

And, byt the way, noticed that the car speedo reads about 5 % high.

And then you're also going to include errors associated with
verifying your cars velocity. Of course you could buy a GPS to
more accurately calibrate the car speedometer and then

Just outside our village is a 'You are driving at xxx kmh' radar sign.
I validated the device aganst that and found it to be within 2 kmh,
which is acc urate enough for my purpposes.

Wow, this guy's got one of them rumoured flying cars!

Or from driving up to the ski resort? (At altitude) Thus determing
the affect of altitude.