Windy Ride

[mlennox]

I was out yesterday in very windy/gusty conditions, with the first half of the ride being into a headwind of about 20 miles/hour with gusts over 35. Wind and power values seemed good, however on the return trip the iAero was only reporting about a 5 mph tailwind even though it was still at least 20. The result was way too high power values, so I'm wondering what others are experiencing in terms of very windy conditions?

[travispape]

I was out yesterday in very windy/gusty conditions, with the first half of the ride being into a headwind of about 20 miles/hour with gusts over 35. Wind and power values seemed good, however on the return trip the iAero was only reporting about a 5 mph tailwind even though it was still at least 20. The result was way too high power values, so I'm wondering what others are experiencing in terms of very windy conditions?

Since it only has a front wind port, the iBike can only measure a head wind with respect to the bike. This would mainly be an issue if you are riding uphill with a tail wind. If you do any riding where the wind actually passes you, the iBike unit would over-report the wind speed (it would measure 0 mi/h wind when the wind is actually something negative in this case) and would therefore over-report power. And let me be clear that I'm not just talking about a tailwind, but a tailwind that exceeds the bike speed. If you have a 10 mi/h tail wind and you are moving at 15 mi/h, the iBike will do fine. If you have a 15 mi/h tail wind and you are only moving 10 mi/h, then you will have some error.

Conceivably, we could add an additional wind port that mounts at the back of the seat for enabling the measurement of such tail winds, but its not worth it for the small percentage of riding where it actually happens.

Travis

[mlennox]

I was going faster than the wind, but iBike was still reporting too low a wind value... perhaps this is due to my battery issues?