Sorry, no conspiracy to be found here
. I have zero connections with them, I'm not even a very happy customer. But I can look beyond just my own horizons and think about more than just "me, me, me!" Mylaps are a company and for them (like any other company) this is a
business, not a
hobby - and they are in it to make money (they have employees that need to eat, pay rent, feed their families, etc.). That's how our western capitalist system works - for good
and for bad. It's not exactly their fault that they don't have competition on the market, is it? Plus, I'm not a hypocrite, so when it pisses me off (and it does!) when e.g. Chinese companies produce cheap (and mostly crappy) blatant copies of what western companies have invented and designed, regardless of copyrights and patents, I cannot turn around and say "Oh but it's different with Mylaps - there I support such a thing, because it makes my otherwise very expensive hobby slightly cheaper!" Sorry, no can do. Do I wish their products were cheaper? Of course! But I cannot dictate it to them.
And again, even at current prices, these transponders are IMHO only a rather minor cost compared to the rest of the equipment you need to race (and to keep racing!) that I don't see what the big problem is. Please think
honestly about what you are ready and willing to pay for other electronics, the stock class motor of the month, all the tires, the bodies (depending on class)... and how much of these perish so quickly or can only be used in one class or one type of vehicle, while the single transponder you actually
need is universal and will usually outlive them all. Yes, we all wish this hobby was cheaper, but that goes for every single component and all companies, not just Mylaps and their transponders!
Yes, of course competition
is a good thing. So let other companies do their own
complete products (without patent or copyright infringement) and then it'll be a fair competition. Because when the tech is apparently so simple, old and proven, how come no other company has ever done a serious effort to produce such a (complete!) system of their own (i.e. incl. a decoder!) in all these years? Should be a gold mine, right? With all those unhappy people that want to spend less money... There should be enough engineers out there that could do it, too - it's only tech, not magic. But for some reason, all that has happened so far, was to rip off the cheap and simple part, the transponders. Apparently it's much harder to build a decoder, right? Or is it too expensive to do? For whatever reason, to my knowledge nobody else has successfully built and properly marketed a complete working decoder / timing system so far. If MRT really is finally working on a decoder as well, that's great news! And it's about time someone does, after all these years, no, decades - it's almost 2024 now. Problem is, it might be too late by now. Almost all current race tracks have a very expensive Mylaps system and are not likely to buy a new one, unless they'd need to replace a defective unit, or the new system was
much better (no idea what improvement that might be - after all, the Mylaps system does a good job) - but would a better system be necessarily cheaper?