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I've been keeping track of my sessions in a little notebook by my desk, just as a way to be able to add up how many hours I rode this month, how many times, etc.

Does anyone else do this, and do you use any tools on the web for it?

I am a web programmer and have started building a web application for myself so I can get rid of the notebook, and thought others might find something like this to be useful as well. I tried a few sites, like runkeeper, and theyre just too complex, too many buttons to click through just for simple logging.

Would anyone find something like this to be useful? Are there any particular session details you'd want to keep track of? So far I've been keeping it simple, date, duration, kite size, wind speed, and brief description, ie "downwinder from planet of the apes to sda"

Again, I'm primarily building this for myself but anyone would be able to make an account and use it as well, so any feedback would be welcome

I think is a good idea for different purposes: from simply tracking number of sessions to progression , record special events, pictures and other data. I use "kite session" APP for iPhone and I keep synthetic reports of every session with pictures and notes (wind, kite size, time etc).
It's fun to look back at the sessions...
I would be nice to be able to export the session data in a Microsoft Office format or PDF for archive, but this APP does not allow you to (it allows to mail, post, etc)...

I did not log anything the first 10 years of kitesurfing (and never since 1979 windsurfing).

But have done it from 2009 till now.

Simply noting in a little notebook or directly in excel, when home again.

Doing it because everybody asks: How often do you go out ? How many hours ? Which sizes are used the most at what time of the year ? What winddirection is it most often and onshore or sideshore ? What boards do you use how often ?

And of course I was just as interested myself (just the natural curiosity - as it has no practical importance to me...)


The only thing I note in every line is:

Date
Start clock entering the water
End clock of water time (for the day/spot)
Location/exact spot
Kitesizes used (in same order as used)
Wind direction
Boards used

This is so easy and fast to do, even long after your sessions


What one maybe could or should write too:

Wave size
Weather (clear, clowdy, raining, fog, hail, snow)
Wind direction compared to spot (degree sideshore)
How many out
High/Low tide
Line lengths used
Fins used
Etc


Wind speed makes no sense at all IMO, just kitesizes and boards as they say it all (as you know yourself and weight).
But a field would be fine, with average and max wind speed, as many times you got a local weather station close by.


But one could go on and on...
Because, when you go out, you might start with a big 10 and 12m2 kite on one board the first sessions, and later use a 5 or 6 or 7m2 kite on another board(s) - and you might have surfed around some pointbreaks or similar, to ride at another break for some hours, or going on "trips" before returning and maybe changing kite again to a bigger or smaller, and the weather could often change from sunny to rain, to hail, even snow, and back to clear sunny again, and the wind could change direction of to between 90 and 180 degrees at the same spot etc etc.

So one could often write a whole novel - that would never be able to fit into any "schemes".


That is why I just note the 5 things above - when, where, what kitesizes, what wind direction, what boards, just to be able to get an historically idea over the years, what happens.
Will note wave size too from now on, no matter if on TT or Race or Waveboard

Peter

I use www.sports-tracker.com/. Works with iphone, symbian and windows phones. Old cheap phone to water proof bag and go!

Gives You: amount of kilometers, time spend on water, calories(with heart rate monitor), see events on calendar, possible to ad free comments, route&place on map etc

Great app and free! If you forgot the phone you can manualy add events also.

Peter, exactly that will come in about 1 month on SPLOCS

We are already working on it, it will be amazing cool, and much more to come as well!

You will read on KF before anyone else. And I am sure you will love using it

Stay tuned

I use the Ocean Rodeo Crew website to log my sessions and have done so since 2006. Check it out:

http://www.oceanrodeo.com/crew/session_logs

I did for the first time this year. How ever I did it more for making sure I went enough times to pay for my season pass at the cable park. Nothing fancy just either a K for a day I kited or a W for a day of wake boarding on a calender.

NICE!!!!

Personally I don't note much down (I'm afraid I will see how much time I spend in the water). I do know people that do.

I think it would be useful to set goals and see when those are achieved. It might make it a little easier to reach goals if you have a reminder function. I know that is not exactly what you are making but it could be an extension at some point.

To me things like that get useful when you can get stats from it. The only real way to do that is have the fields that PF describes.
Make it mobile device accessible If you can add images that is killer too...

Peter_Frank wrote:I did not log anything the first 10 years of kitesurfing (and never since 1979 windsurfing).
But have done it from 2009 till now.

Quite similar...me windsurfing summer 1978...gave it up totally for kiting spring 1999

Keeping track from 2010...on the kitchen calendars (Supa low- tech...ink to paper)

Kite size / surfboard type / wind direction+speed / wave height

Offshore river days on my only TT......kite size / wind direction+speed

Basically shows me if i am keeping my average for the month at a quick glance and on what

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dyyylan wrote:...
Would anyone find something like this to be useful? Are there any particular session details you'd want to keep track of? So far I've been keeping it simple, date, duration, kite size, wind speed, and brief description, ie "downwinder from planet of the apes to sda"

Again, I'm primarily building this for myself but anyone would be able to make an account and use it as well, so any feedback would be welcome

You can input your information in existing gps tracking programs as pointed by others in this thread.
Here are my 2 cents, which I did not update for quite a while:

http://www.nautikites.net/blog/index.ph ... 905-145635