From a cost to racer point of view (this has been briefly covered earlier in the thread) 10 key ‘hand counting’ with numbers clearly affixed to the car is the way to go.

this is not to difficult to do but generally requires a second person in race control to count the laps. When i race directed back in the late 90’s we ran this way. The draw back is that laps could get missed if people got distracted.

for club racing the .5 second that can be missed with hand counting does not matter, larger events need the accuracy of the transponder loop.

the ease (as stated earlier) of the transponders counting laps is very nice for the race director.

to the original title of ‘is there a transponder hack’ nope (for all the reasons stated above.

i have heard from people i know who run/bike that there are ‘passive systems’ that are much cheaper for the individual (given out in the event bibs) but the counters are exponentially more expensive.