Yup, already did to both. They don’t give a rat’s ass
@Scott_Pisciotta: So you pair your trainer as a Power source and Controllable trainer? and you can feel the resistance change going up, flat and down.
what bike and gearing do you have on the trainer?
I have a Nishiki MB 29" wheels. I replaced the front gear with a higher count at a bike shop but the idiot should have told me to replace the back one. Will try to get the smallest back one available. I can’t tell for sure, but thinks around 12 on the smallest gear.
@Scott_Pisciotta: See if you can find a used Road bike wheel 700c, it should fit on the MB, Less noise and you will have a lager diameter which mean more speed.
I use a old MB but changed the crank and rear wheel. it is now a dedicated Zwift station.
The Kurt Kinetic Rock & Roll Smart Control trainer needs pairing as both the power source and also as a controllable trainer. Plus cadence as well. Nothing gets paired to the speed sensor even if you have one on the bike.
Make sure the firmware is the latest and you do a spin down calibration after warming the unit up for 5 - 10 minutes.
I have all three options paired, with the latest firmware. I have a funny feeling you only tested with a limited set up bikes and gear ratios. That’s why you need more in app configuration options to allow for a better workout.
What is the tooth count on your big front chain ring and the smallest on the wheel.?
Around 43 on the front, and 11 or 12 on the back.
HI Scott,
I did a quick calculation, using https://www.sheldonbrown.com/gear-calc.html.
and it show that the max speed on a flat with no wind or drag would be 48.1km/h at 90RPM with your current gear ratio. That is why you wont be able to keep up on the flat road. You can also see a road bike with a 56 chain ring can do 64.1km/h
Great info, thanks. This further proves my point we need more configuration in the application. If you are going to allow non controllable devices to have an advantage on the downhill sections, you should allow settings to help out non road bikes.
I agree that a Gear selection slider will be nice.
I don’t agree that non controllable trainers has an advantage on a downhill.
Sure they do, you can put 200+ watts into the downhill
Yes they can, but how much of a difference will it make when the bike is already doing 50km/h?
this is going down the Alpe du Zwift: my best time was without pedaling.
it’s not the huge downhills, its the 4% drop over 1/4 mile that gets ya.
but on a 4% you will still have resistance. Also that is why Zwift has the resistance slider. If you need more resistance on the downhill then use 0 on the trainer difficulty slider.
This post started with Flat sections. the problem is the slider does noting on the flat sections.
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Yup, but then on the uphill i don’t get any benefit. Have two sliders…downhill resistance and uphill resistance.
NO: you either have climbing or downhill gears. you can’t have best of both worlds.
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I’ve been using Zwift since beta and have spent countless hours with support trying to resolve this issue. I have to use large ring in front and last three gears to generate enough power and spin out on downhills. My resolution was to use Wahoo utility and after I start Zwift I go to the utility and Sim mode and add 8-10 mph of wind resistance and I can use small ring up front and middle gears. Kicker is 10x quieter too! Simple resistance setting would solve this problem!
I have a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine Smart (not SMart COntrol). Zwift will ONLY pair with it as a speed sensor. Fine; Sufferfest does that too. However the power that Sufferfest calculates matches pretty well to the power that the Kurt Kinetic Fit app calculates for the trainer. The Fit app even has a spindown calibration, so it is probably the most accurate.
My one 5 minute experience on Zwift (low effort) showed power numbers probably ~25% lower than the other apps. SOunds like this is common based on this thread…?
Just got a Smart trainer myself - Elite Diretto - and also find this a bit infuriating. Like others, on flats I need to be on the big ring and smallest cogs (maybe only bottom 3-4 useful).
In erg mode of course this problem disappears since I can happily use mid (quieter) gears and the resistance will adapt appropriately.
The power to gear ratio is very unrealistic compared to what I’d experience outside so it would be ideal to have some way of adjusting this to make more realistic.