Forums > Wing Foiling General

Garmin watch Gps problems

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Created by richw 5 months ago, 12 Jul 2025
richw
NSW, 133 posts
12 Jul 2025 5:48AM
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Hi Guys I have a Garmin instinct 2 I bought in March this year it has worked perfectly till yesterday When it said my top was 75mph when it was about 20 mph has any had similar issues

BWalnut
984 posts
12 Jul 2025 3:53AM
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That usually happens in a crash. Look at the speed readout and where the spike happened. Usually it reads high like that right before it drops to zeroish. Probably just from it slapping the water.

camerongraham
NSW, 204 posts
12 Jul 2025 7:04AM
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BWalnut said..
That usually happens in a crash. Look at the speed readout and where the spike happened. Usually it reads high like that right before it drops to zeroish. Probably just from it slapping the water.


Brian, Thanks for that !

id see these random top speed readings from my sessions and wondered WTF ?

Im crashing less now and the random high speed readings have also diminished

richw
NSW, 133 posts
12 Jul 2025 7:25AM
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Thanks Brian for the info it has never done it before and it kept doing it each time and the average speed seems to be a lot slower than normal. I tried turning it off to reset it. I will try it again over the weekend thanks for the info much appreciated by the way I love my mini cuda thanks for your advice

BWalnut
984 posts
12 Jul 2025 1:20PM
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Glad I could help!

camerongraham
NSW, 204 posts
12 Jul 2025 8:09PM
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BWalnut said..
Glad I could help!


Ok I'll come clean and admit I have a mnemonic for when I'm getting up on my skinny ML board in chop/gusty conditions. It's called the "Brian"..
Or
"what would Brian do? "

Thanks for the video you did as it reinforced the technique I had been trialling of facing downwind, with a hand on the nose of the board and the other hand holding the leading edge of the wing down on the water and waiting for the right moment to pull the wing up and overhead and then turning side on to the wind and pulling away to a kneel or stand position.

So now I'll have to call my speed spikes on my Garmin = Walnuts??

Short story, is we appreciate your insights, advice and reviews on this forum

BWalnut
984 posts
13 Jul 2025 12:12AM
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I love it!

Thanks for the affirmations. It's always cool to hear that that what I'm experiencing and sharing is making it from my water sessions, through the interwebs, and back to the water in another part of the world!

Sandee
QLD, 264 posts
13 Jul 2025 9:47AM
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I think GPS's just get a little confused about where they are, now & then, and come up with a random position at that time. Maybe associated with a crash or the subsequent immersion. And then they figure it out and get back on track. Its a pity when our maximum speed logged for a session are simply not credible; I wouldn't mind claiming that one!

ptsf1111
WA, 454 posts
13 Jul 2025 8:20AM
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I've experienced the same with the Instinct 2. Have used it for hundreds of windsurfing sessions and never experienced an erroneous reading but when I'm wind foiling it occured a few times, similar to above. Quite sure that's because of much harder crashes compared to windsurfing as I'm still a beginning intermediate.

dieseagull
NSW, 225 posts
13 Jul 2025 1:06PM
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Get the same thing on occasion on my instinct 2 surf, a brief spike (so small you almost can't see it on the graph) well above the speed I can possibly go on the foil. It's a shame the software doesn't let you exclude data beyond a certain standard deviation.

SlowlyButSurely
207 posts
17 Jul 2025 2:41PM
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also if you want, you can always repair the FIT file with tools such as gotoes.org/
you load the FIT file from Garmin Connect, and remove the max speed peak.

patronus
478 posts
17 Jul 2025 3:38PM
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dieseagull said..
Get the same thing on occasion on my instinct 2 surf, a brief spike (so small you almost can't see it on the graph) well above the speed I can possibly go on the foil. It's a shame the software doesn't let you exclude data beyond a certain standard deviation.



I thinks the Windsports Tracker app is from the same guy who wrote GPSResults, used by windsurfer speedsailors, and has filters. Might only be on Android

joeballow
39 posts
18 Jul 2025 1:21PM
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In garmin connect you can also view the 2 second and 10 second top speed from each run which should filter out any momentary crazy spikes. But I've also never seen this with my epix, the instantaneous top speed is at most a couple of knots faster than the 2 second one and I've never seen an instant over 30 kts in over a year of using the watch for all my sessions.

warwickl
NSW, 2351 posts
18 Jul 2025 4:42PM
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I have the 255 Garmin about 12 months old.
I have the opposite problem.
On.my old Garmin I've done 21 knots and not a spike.
My skills have improved and the foils I now have are more efficient yet 18 kn speed seems to be my maximum yet it feels much faster.

joeballow
39 posts
19 Jul 2025 5:45AM
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warwickl said..
I have the 255 Garmin about 12 months old.
I have the opposite problem.
On.my old Garmin I've done 21 knots and not a spike.
My skills have improved and the foils I now have are more efficient yet 18 kn speed seems to be my maximum yet it feels much faster.


Any chance your previous watch was showing mph? 18 kts = 21 mph.

ptsf1111
WA, 454 posts
19 Jul 2025 8:52AM
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This is what I've had a couple times when I was still learning and had some hard crashes at times. You can see that the positional data is spiking to some incorrect GPS coordinates. I don't get why a clear error like this isn't filtered out.

The max speed is also far off as a result although the 2 sec and 10 sec averages are not affected.

I'd expect a brand like Garmin to do better than this. That said, it happened only a couple of times.







patronus
478 posts
19 Jul 2025 1:45PM
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Select to expand quote
joeballow said..
In garmin connect you can also view the 2 second and 10 second top speed from each run which should filter out any momentary crazy spikes. But I've also never seen this with my epix, the instantaneous top speed is at most a couple of knots faster than the 2 second one and I've never seen an instant over 30 kts in over a year of using the watch for all my sessions.


I can only find Average and Mac in Garmin Connect, how can I get 2 and 10 secs?

warwickl
NSW, 2351 posts
19 Jul 2025 4:40PM
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Select to expand quote
joeballow said..

warwickl said..
I have the 255 Garmin about 12 months old.
I have the opposite problem.
On.my old Garmin I've done 21 knots and not a spike.
My skills have improved and the foils I now have are more efficient yet 18 kn speed seems to be my maximum yet it feels much faster.



Any chance your previous watch was showing mph? 18 kts = 21 mph.


No as I always set in kph.

joeballow
39 posts
19 Jul 2025 3:12PM
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Select to expand quote
patronus said..

joeballow said..
In garmin connect you can also view the 2 second and 10 second top speed from each run which should filter out any momentary crazy spikes. But I've also never seen this with my epix, the instantaneous top speed is at most a couple of knots faster than the 2 second one and I've never seen an instant over 30 kts in over a year of using the watch for all my sessions.



I can only find Average and Mac in Garmin Connect, how can I get 2 and 10 secs?


I use windsurf as the activity when I record. At the bottom of the page there are 4 tabs. The "runs" tab shows those stats for each run.

GuillaumeT
5 posts
23 Jul 2025 2:43PM
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I've had only one session with buggy values in a few months of using the Instinct 2. The bogus top speed was already showing on the watch itself. The battery was very low during that session, not sure if it's related. I fall quite a bit when trying to go fast (27kts until now) and I've not seen any bad values during falls.For accurate speeds, make sure you switch the data recording to "every second" (Settings / System / Data Recording), it makes a huge difference in data quality.

Oahuwaterwalker
293 posts
24 Aug 2025 2:37AM
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So what I hear you guys saying is that if I want to crack 30knots I should try a hard crash as speed ? Lol, just kidding. I've had a spike from a crash as well that seemed pretty accurate for how fast I was flying through the air.

BWalnut
984 posts
24 Aug 2025 4:25AM
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You got this! 30 is super easy to crack with the ragdoll method. I'm buying a beer for the first person to crack 70 knots via the garmin yardsale method.

mikey100
QLD, 1097 posts
24 Aug 2025 6:37AM
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I will always be gobsmacked how my little gps units (I have a Motion and Garmin 255) can, in a fraction of a second, communicate simultaneously with several satellites that are 20,200km above the earth (had to Google that one) and calculate and show me a speed that is accurate to within a fraction of a knot.
And that I can purchase one of these devices for the price of less than one nights holiday accommodation will always have me in awe.
So when I get an incorrect reading ( have a 45kt/2sec on my wingding using KA72..yea, na) I can accept how this amazing GPS system we use can have the occasional glitch.
This is the stuff of The Jetsons for those as old as me who can remember them.

joeballow
39 posts
24 Aug 2025 9:59AM
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I enjoyed this write up of the details of how GPS works: ciechanow.ski/gps/

If you like that style of blog with animations that builds up from the basics to a more complicated subject his their post on airfoils is also very interesting and the concepts all apply just the same to foils in water: ciechanow.ski/airfoil/

winddoc
NSW, 74 posts
24 Aug 2025 8:04PM
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I have a Garmin 255, before each session on the water, I check the calibration against the car speedo as I'm
driving. That way, I'm fairly confident that it's working properly.



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"Garmin watch Gps problems" started by richw