Vulnerable aluminium frame racquets

Guess everyone heard of the most famous of the aluminum frame racquets, the Yonex Carbonex 8 ... here's a pix of the old favourite.

Friends pix of the Yonex Carbonex 8

The Carbonex 8 was popular as it was lighter than racquets of the era as Yonex introduced an aluminum frame instead of the then traditional steel or wood. Feels like a proper broomstick when you compared it against today's modern equivalents!

In the late 1980's, I was living in NZ and played inter-club during the winter. When temperatures dip below 10-degree Celcius, you would often notice quite a few players wielding a broken Carbonex 8. This is because aluminum is a soft and brittle metal. After a racquet has been strung, it's alike an empty soft drink can. You can put your foot on it and press hard - the can will retain it's shape. The moment you poke or tap it with a little force, that empty soft drink would collapse if still under pressure. Thus any mishits on the frame or racquet clashes on a cold winter night would deprive you of your old favourite...

Here's some good news for the fans of the Carbonex 8 - Yonex introduced re-issues but these are made in Taiwan, not Japan as per the original. I bought a few of the reissues for an Australian friend who was a die-hard fan of the Carbonex 8. His spouse was extremely surprised I was still able to obtain new Carbonex 8 racquets for her man!

..... still feels like a broomstick though (since I was never a fan of the Carbonex 8)!

Yonex string chart 2017

CCTV video on Racket and Shuttlecock Production, String Tension

Finally a end-to-end video of how shuttlecocks and racquets are manufactured instead of the mere glimpses from the big players in the market.

Enjoy!

Cut-price stringers

Purpose for this article is educate the players who favour the ever cheaper restringing jobs. For instance, some one posted online for the following advertisement.

Good price, yes?

Only catch is you can not buy the REAL Yonex BG66 and NBG99 below SGD$10 per packet. Even if you did manage to buy geniune Yonex strings overseas, the cost inclusive of shipping would be more than SGD$10per packet.

You can visit the Yonex Global website to verify the actual cost for yourself. Yonex products are like Apple and Samsung - prices are control on a world wide basis. 

Hence I believe such advertiser(s) are using fake products. If you search Aliexpress (and the alike) you can find many such fake reels of Yonex strings for below USD30!

Silly thing is many actually believe they are getting the real deal! 

If you call the local Yonex agent, to try to buy their items in bulk, the agent will not sell to you unless you own a sports sport and is a proper registered business.

Bottom line is  - You get what you paid for!

Personal racquet motion sensors

Bought the following to try out after reading the marketing claims and some reviews on the internet. Hence will not be going be reviewing in detail since there are such information on the internet. Will only inform of the information the other reviews left out or did not update on.

Was a customer and not in any way affiliated with the company

The personal motion sensor I purchased and since sold

It's actually quite a useful tool. Provides many statistics such as smash speed, count of your various strokes at a time interval on a date and even provides an overview of your game for the time period when the racquet was active.

Battery life on the sensor itself is not good if you use it for real time monitoring thru bluetooth. The bluetooth real-time monitoring is only usable for a very short distance only eg roughly about 2meters only.

Mobile data is a pre-req before any of the results can be displayed on your smartphone as the app has to sent the data collected to their server for processing.


Additional CONS are:-

Will not tell you if you are hitting the sweetspot.

Will not tell you if your swing or lifts were sending the shuttlecock to the correct point on the court.


Reason is the data presented are computed from various motion sensors in the unit itself (like those on your smartphone). Hence it can only compute details from the swing of your racquet eg swing speed during a smash, count of number of lifts, etc.

Furthermore no matter how hard we tried, the swing will not exceed 240 KM/H.

An annoying byproduct from the app is that it keeps repeated the same advise on how to improve your game eg you should be smashing more irregardless.

Guess that's why we still need coaches...

Old fashion method to determine stroke consistency

What is stroke consistency?

It is the ability to hit the shuttle within the a small area on the string bed, shot after shot.

We have seen video of the professional players under-going training using several high speed cameras with computers performing body motion analysis in order to optimise their competitive performance. This includes hitting the shuttlecock within the sweet spot to optimise the transfer of energy  from the arm via the racquet, to the shuttlecock.

Unfortunately for us (aka the non-professional), we will never have access to such facilities nor can we afford to purchase such specialise equipment for a single purpose.

Luckily there is the old fashion methodology for the non professionals.

PRO is the cost of a restring.

CON is will take a while before we can see the results - not within the few minutes as per for the professionals with the high tech setup.

The methodology in-question involves reviewing the areas of fraying on the racquet stringbed.

The following pix is my own racquet. String brand is Gosen and the string thickness is 0.63mm. Used for about 12 badminton sessions so far.

Fraying on my own racquet stringbed

The following are the idealogy behind the fraying.

If the fraying occurs within a small area in the sweet spot, your stroke timing is consistent. Professionals will have a small round spot of about 3.5-5cm diameter within the sweet spot on their racquet stringbed.

If the fraying occurs within a larger area in the sweet spot, your stroke timing is good.

If the fraying is larger than the sweetspot, your stroke timing is not as consistent as it should or could be.

If the fraying is outside the sweet spot, your stroke timing need to be changed.

Recommend you restring with a darker string if you wish to determine where you are hitting the shuttle on the stringbed.

Why?

Since the head of the shuttlecock is white, the shuttlecock will leave white residues on the dark colour string upon contact. Hence you can then see the residues. This will provide an idea where you are hitting the shuttlecock on your racquet stringbed.

ISBS study of relation between tension and speed of shuttlecock leaving stringbed

ISBS conducted a study of the relationship between the tension used on a badminton racquet and the speed of the shuttlecock leaving that stringbed.

The following chart summarizes their findings. The article is at this weblink with the full details available for download as PDF.

Basically, the results are shuttles leave the stringbed at a higher velocity at the lower range of tension tested. Automation was used to swing the racquet consistently.