Winter Driving Practice - Chronograph: Speed or Spin?

[SirRaph]

As the cold and drear descends on the midwest, I'm planning an indoor driving setup to work on my distance in the offseason.

I'm likely just going to hang a couple moving blankets in the basement, paint a target on it, etc.

I'm also thinking about buying/borrowing a chronograph to measure the speed of the discs I throw. But I'm questioning a couple things:

1. How fast do discs typically travel? Some chronos don't register until you get to 100 feet per second, etc.

2. Does the speed of the disc actually determine the distance it travels? I know that line/height/nose angle all play factors in distance, but is speed or spin more important?
I've always wondered if I put a chrono in front of a guy throwing 350' and compared it to the speed of a guy throwing 450+, if there would be a dramatic difference, or if the spin that's imparted on the disc is actually the larger determining factor.

Anyone have any idea?

[JR]

You need both speed and spin and getting spin is a matter of holding on to the disc long enough and stopping the wrist. Actually trying to stop the wrist, because nobody probably has enough power to do a full stop at full power before the disc has pivoted and ripped out of the finger pinch. A 4.30 to 5 o'clock rip point is the goal, when the front of the disc is at 12 o'clock at the rip.

Spin rate increases with increased speed up to a point. That point of not being able to hold on to a disc as long as at slower speed varies from person to person. I don't recall off the top of my head, how much ErinH here spun his discs until the discs gained more speed than spin. He got something sicknasty like 30 revolutions per second tops and it was under max speed i think. I also don't recall the amount of lost spin vs top speed.

Avery Jenkins got either 19.4 or 19.7 revs per second with a pulled power throw in the two slo mo angle video at channel mfranssila on Youtube. The field is only a little longer than 500' and the disc with the dark color bar is a max weight Star Xcaliber.

My best radar shot this season is 94 kilometers per hour and s-curves with fast discs at sea level top out at around 415-420' in calm weather. Of course there's more distance on those shots from skips, but that is the airborne part. Nukes. I did not have the time to measure my spin rate this year. Last year i had a little less power and topped at 17 revs per second, but usually got only 14.

94 KPH of mine falls well under those choronograph limits. Carlsen measured a 600' Teebird thrower having a launch speed of almost exactly 100' per second so good luck trying to throw so fast

[SirRaph]

How are people measuring revs?

There's a $70 chrono here: http://www.walmart.com/ip/F1-Chronograph/4382668?ci_sku=4382668&ci_src=14110944&sourceid=1500000000000003260410 that can measure as low as 30fps, which is only 20 mph/33 kph.

[JR]

That is a perfectly usable lower limit as long as it's accurate and goes high enough as well. Revolution measurement is easy with a camera and a disc with a distinct mark that can be followed easily and accurately. If you have a camera, that films at 60 pictures per second and the disc needs 10 pictures to do a full revolution, the revs are one sixth of a second in duration right? So the revs per second is 6. With a 240 FPS camera in that Avery Jenkins dual angle slo mo vid you can calculate, how long it took for a full revolution, because the disc was spinning at 19.7 revolutions per second.

Erm except that we had a 240 and 250 FPS camera IIRC and the video editor changed the frame rate to 250 FPS i think.