Re: How do you measure SPEED on skates?

Phil Earnhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Such devices have been around for at least a decade.
>
>If all wheels maintained constant contact with the ground, it might be
>a reasonably accurate way to measure speed. But they're obviously not.
>You also have to engineer a device that will be amazingly robust in
>the face of all sorts of abuse that anything mounted to your skate
>will get.

There was a Inline Skate computer about a decade ago,  that had an
Algorithm that calculate the drift down speed of the skaters wheel
rotation and came fairly close  to getting a good  estimated
measurement of the speed and distance skated.  I had one of these and
checked it with a measured course and bike Computer and it was within
1 MPH. It was kind of a hassle because it worked on a hall effect
pickup and magnet stuck in the skate wheel and it made it difficult to
rotate wheels.  It broke off one day and that was the end of that. By
that time I was pretty good at estimating my speeds. 

Bob