RaceQs

[axolotl]

Hey, had anybody heard of RaceQs, where you run a Smartphone during the race and all boats doing so have their tracks, tacks and gybes, boatspeed and heading,etc., downloaded and shown in Google Earth after the race? Seems very cool and free.

In Dago' Hot Rum I yesterday, there were about 20 boats out of 120 that uploaded, including Cimmaron, the ancient 4kn shitbox (although sporting serious membrane sails) that was first and kicked ass on some major west coast weapons (Bak Pak, Dennis, Orient Express, Shampain's boat, etc.). We came in 27th and fourth in class. Anywhoo, I was curious about how Cimarron did it. It was a pursuit start which I hate because different boats experience different conditions. The RaceQs replay was fascinating. Cimarron had amazing boatspeed through the channel, 8 knots sometimes, the luck of the starttime and she went directly down the dredged channel in clear air, maybe a 2kn current push at Ballast Point. As an early starter she had some serious pressure we never saw a half hour later. She kept up boatspeed during the downwind legs and her equally rated mates slowly slipped behind. Killed the shifts during the upwind leg. Avoided the current by nestling up against point Loma where the pressure was better, an error on the big boat's part, who worked less current next to Zuniga jetty, but suffered in the light air there. Props to Cimarron.

But the big thing is this RaceQs is it's the cat's meow. Review the race and see bad starts, smart positioning, keeping clear air, etc. Any downside to subscribing (free)? It appears the race authority has to set up a particular race. I'm having trouble seeing any races my boat(s) were not involved in. This should be standard Interweb fare for sailboat races within cell coverage.

Here's some eye candy:

http://raceqs.com/tv/tv.htm#userId=1001207&video_offset=&track=d1a7c3b0-bc9b-489d-bfcd-68c7c17ec50a&start=2014-11-08%2011%3A22%3A14.103%20-08%3A00&finish=2014-11-08%2015%3A31%3A16.139%20-08%3A00&boat=B%5C'Quest&time=1415485259471&focus=cimarron&rival=Rowdy&tab=dash&view=auto&extradata=1&race=1

 

[allene222]

The guy who runs RaceQs races at our club every now and then. He is friends with one of the boats in our club. He gave us a presentation. It was really nice for me because I was winning most races and people were complaining about my handicap, how competitive I was, blah blah blah. With RaceQs you can see statistics on the different boats and what it showed was that although my boat was slower than all the others like my handicap would indicate, I sailed significantly less distance. The point is that they all shut up after than everyone suddenly played nice.

It has functions you can use to evaluate your boats performance. When you are sailing a straight line, the path is one color. When you can't hold your line, the path changes color. There is also a kind of radar screen that shows your heading and speed and if it is a tight cluster of points, you are sailing well. A large cluster is slow.

There is a race mode like you indicate where the RC sets it up. You can also go into an individual boat screen and you just see all the boats that were sailing where you were at the time you were sailing so you would see other fleets as well.

I track my races with a Qstarz rather than using a cell phone so I upload the track that night. Nobody can see me until I do that but I can track from when I get to the dock so I don't have to remember to turn my phone on or have it go dead before the race is over.

 

[pasta514]

It's a neat app and the technical support I've gotten has been great.

 

[break my wallet]

i've used it a few times.. sucks lots of data on my S3 galaxy.. any ideas on how to reduce the data consumption?

 

[us7070]

The guy who runs RaceQs races at our club every now and then. He is friends with one of the boats in our club. He gave us a presentation. It was really nice for me because I was winning most races and people were complaining about my handicap, how competitive I was, blah blah blah. With RaceQs you can see statistics on the different boats and what it showed was that although my boat was slower than all the others like my handicap would indicate, I sailed significantly less distance. The point is that they all shut up after than everyone suddenly played nice.

that doesn't really prove anything

if you sailed a shorter distance because you tack through 80 degrees, but they sail cruising slugs that tack through 100 degrees, maybe your rating should be changed

 

[~HHN92~]

Several at out club downloaded it and there were replays in the clubhouse for a while. I guess the novelty wore off and it was discontinued after a tme. I liked it and use it still on occasion.

 

[ryley]

axolotl, can you try posting your link again? I couldn't get it to work.

 

[bloodshot]

its pretty good but takes some committment on the part of whomever is firing it up on the boat to get it set up. If RACEQ is one here, they need to add a function so it turns on every race day at a certain time, not just one day at a time.

 

[DaveK]

i've used it a few times.. sucks lots of data on my S3 galaxy.. any ideas on how to reduce the data consumption?

I think if you turn off live stream off, that will help. Just upload track once you stopped recording.

I have an issue on how to break the timeline into segments so you can show many different races in one day. Can anyone help guide me properly on how to do that? I ended up making a seperate regatta for different races but I think that isn't correct.

 

[allene222]

The guy who runs RaceQs races at our club every now and then. He is friends with one of the boats in our club. He gave us a presentation. It was really nice for me because I was winning most races and people were complaining about my handicap, how competitive I was, blah blah blah. With RaceQs you can see statistics on the different boats and what it showed was that although my boat was slower than all the others like my handicap would indicate, I sailed significantly less distance. The point is that they all shut up after than everyone suddenly played nice.

that doesn't really prove anything

if you sailed a shorter distance because you tack through 80 degrees, but they sail cruising slugs that tack through 100 degrees, maybe your rating should be changed

I can always count on someone at SA to put a negative spin on anything posted. The main thing the RaceQs guy pointed out was that I sail a straighter line. That is the beauty of RaceQs. Lots of tracking programs can show you if you tack through a good angle and you can measure the distance between the two tacks but this thing shows how you sail between the tacks. The RaceQs guy said he can tell who is going to win the race by looking at the radar plots that show how straight a line any given boat sails. I take it that they count the miles by adding the distance traveled each second so if you are carving tiny s curves, you get a lot more mileage than someone who goes from the same two tacking points.

 

[axolotl]

axolotl, can you try posting your link again? I couldn't get it to work.

Hmm. It works when I click on it. Try this one:

http://raceqs.com/tv/tv.htm#userId=1001207&video_offset=&track=d1a7c3b0-bc9b-489d-bfcd-68c7c17ec50a&start=2014-11-08%2011:22:14.103%20-08:00&finish=2014-11-08%2015:31:16.139%20-08:00&boat=B%5c%27Quest

 

[axolotl]

Or try the official portal for the race:

http://raceqs.com/regattas/hot-rum-series

 

[Alex W]

It would be nice to know what races have any portion of the fleet using RaceQ before signing up. Is there any adoption in PHRF-NW?

 

[NoStrings]

The guy who runs RaceQs races at our club every now and then. He is friends with one of the boats in our club. He gave us a presentation. It was really nice for me because I was winning most races and people were complaining about my handicap, how competitive I was, blah blah blah. With RaceQs you can see statistics on the different boats and what it showed was that although my boat was slower than all the others like my handicap would indicate, I sailed significantly less distance. The point is that they all shut up after than everyone suddenly played nice.

that doesn't really prove anything

if you sailed a shorter distance because you tack through 80 degrees, but they sail cruising slugs that tack through 100 degrees, maybe your rating should be changed

I can always count on someone at SA to put a negative spin on anything posted. The main thing the RaceQs guy pointed out was that I sail a straighter line. That is the beauty of RaceQs. Lots of tracking programs can show you if you tack through a good angle and you can measure the distance between the two tacks but this thing shows how you sail between the tacks. The RaceQs guy said he can tell who is going to win the race by looking at the radar plots that show how straight a line any given boat sails. I take it that they count the miles by adding the distance traveled each second so if you are carving tiny s curves, you get a lot more mileage than someone who goes from the same two tacking points.

What you're seeing is an artifact of a nearest neighbor position correlator, NOT a tracker per se. There is no filtering or smoothing occuring. You can see it in the occassional track swaps and jumps.

 

[RImike]

I use it, the issues that are easily overcome. For example, in replay when trying to figure out where the line is. and where the pin and committee marks are. To over come that, I do a 360 spin around them and when I watch the replay, I know where the line is.

 

[coyotepup]

I'm sure it has its uses, in local fleet racing and such. For distance racing it's a really poor substitute for an actual race tracker like Yellowbrick. Stamford decided to use it for the Vineyard race tracker, and for that purpose it wasn't any good. With the "one account per boat" limit they had (I don't know if that's a RaceQs thing or just a request in the SIs) nobody but the skipper could go see how things went (or are going, and then only for boats in cell phone range that have the app), and friends and family can't follow the race.

I guess on the plus side, it was fun to go halfway back to the old-school way of finding out the results. Like hearing a boat call into the finish half an hour after we did, when we thought they'd be long gone.

So use it for all that stuff above and I bet it's great and all. But no more thinking it's a race tracker, SYC.

 

[us7070]

The guy who runs RaceQs races at our club every now and then. He is friends with one of the boats in our club. He gave us a presentation. It was really nice for me because I was winning most races and people were complaining about my handicap, how competitive I was, blah blah blah. With RaceQs you can see statistics on the different boats and what it showed was that although my boat was slower than all the others like my handicap would indicate, I sailed significantly less distance. The point is that they all shut up after than everyone suddenly played nice.

that doesn't really prove anything

if you sailed a shorter distance because you tack through 80 degrees, but they sail cruising slugs that tack through 100 degrees, maybe your rating should be changed

I can always count on someone at SA to put a negative spin on anything posted. The main thing the RaceQs guy pointed out was that I sail a straighter line. That is the beauty of RaceQs. Lots of tracking programs can show you if you tack through a good angle and you can measure the distance between the two tacks but this thing shows how you sail between the tacks. The RaceQs guy said he can tell who is going to win the race by looking at the radar plots that show how straight a line any given boat sails. I take it that they count the miles by adding the distance traveled each second so if you are carving tiny s curves, you get a lot more mileage than someone who goes from the same two tacking points.

well, i wouldn't call it a "negative spin", i was just pointing out that there are reasons besides being a better sailor that one boat might sail a shorter course than another.

in particular, if it is because of performance differences between the boats, then it needs to be adequately reflected in the rating...

but your explanation of them not sailing straight courses, and sailing extra distance because they wiggle too much seems inadequate - to me at least...

what we, or at least i, expected to hear in response was that you were sailing a shorter distance because you were playing the shifts correctly. for boats that tack and gybe through approximately the same angles, that is the way to get big differences in the distance sailed.

 

[allene222]

what we, or at least i, expected to hear in response was that you were sailing a shorter distance because you were playing the shifts correctly. for boats that tack and gybe through approximately the same angles, that is the way to get big differences in the distance sailed.

I have been racing for about 10 years and in all those years we had one day with shifty winds. We did play the shifts better that day and were first to finish beating a J-105 with my old wood boat that was owed over a minute a mile. We get a persistent shift and you need to play that correctly but not the oscillating shifts we had that day. Typically you just tack and go to the finish line with no shifts to play. What I was talking about was the nice readouts in RaceQs that show you how steady of a track you are holding. It is a nice feature and like I said, the CEO of RaceQs said he can look at any given race and from that readout tell who won. I have not checked that out but he said my tracks looked good.

 

[notallthere]

In Dago' Hot Rum I yesterday, there were about 20 boats out of 120 that uploaded, including Cimmaron, the ancient 4kn shitbox (although sporting serious membrane sails) that was first and kicked ass on some major west coast weapons (Bak Pak, Dennis, Orient Express, Shampain's boat, etc.). We came in 27th and fourth in class.

Just like to clarify that their paneled crosscut #1 (Dimension Polyant FLEX) is over 3.5 years old. The MR500 Main is from early 2013 as well as the S-1.5

They do sail the wheels off that ride...