GPS Track?

The track is consistently poor along those 6 ft fences, but straightens once you break out onto open ground. It's not long enough to be definitive, but the first portion also looks OK until you move closer to the fences. The thing about a low object like a fence is that you only have to move laterally 6-12 inches to substantially change the angle and the available horizon for more GPS satellites to become visible to the watch.

I note also the poor track is on the outbound portion. The major user-controllable factor of GPS tracking is letting the watch get a solid GPS lock (wait for the outer ring to turn green) at the start - if you don't have a solid lock first, it is much harder for the watch to get a lock on the move.

If you wanted to check things a bit, you could edit your screens to include the GPS datafield (listed under "Other Fields") and repeat the hike to get an idea of GPS signal quality along the route.

The track is consistently poor along those 6 ft fences, but straightens once you break out onto open ground. It's not long enough to be definitive, but the first portion also looks OK until you move closer to the fences. The thing about a low object like a fence is that you only have to move laterally 6-12 inches to substantially change the angle and the available horizon for more GPS satellites to become visible to the watch.

I note also the poor track is on the outbound portion. The major user-controllable factor of GPS tracking is letting the watch get a solid GPS lock (wait for the outer ring to turn green) at the start - if you don't have a solid lock first, it is much harder for the watch to get a lock on the move.

If you wanted to check things a bit, you could edit your screens to include the GPS datafield (listed under "Other Fields") and repeat the hike to get an idea of GPS signal quality along the route.

Looking back, I found another move that I did with a Suunto Spartan Ultra, and it exhibits almost the same type of track. This move has pictures of the area, and I forgot that there were some trees along that path. This move I think may explain what was going on there. After the trees, both the F5x and the Ultra exhibit excellent tracks. Check this out and see if I'm correct in the assumption that the trees are the culprit here...

http://www.movescount.com/moves/move169469482#table-year=2018

You could try it on the other wrist too - see if the angle is better, perhaps its getting a bounce back signal off the fences/houses too. I sometimes notice that a ride out might have very good tracks but for the return ride I start to see a drift and get off track with GPS or vice versa. For riding I'll sometimes use my bike watch mount to keep it balanced.

I'd really love to see Galileo fully online and enabled on the watches - a much higher satellite position is, in theory, going to help a lot with all these visibility problems we see with GPS tracking. Add on the 1m over 5m accuracy and we should see some far better tracking on these devices.

Do you happen to be using the "ultra-track" setting? I noticed when I use it the tracks look terrible! I guess it saves some file space but I switched back to 1 second recording and my tracks are much much better. Something to check anyway.

No, since I don't do multi-day rides/hikes, I always have the GPS on the best setting, so that isn't the problem; unless GLONASS is going wacky like in some of the Suunto's. Once out of the way of the tree/fence line, the track is pretty darn good, even told me when I missed a turn, but oh, that fenceline... :-)