Originally Posted by
TimF
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.
We hand counted for quite a while in our club. Our club was run by one of the nicest gentleman you could ever meet and his name was Dennis. You bought your "transponders" from him, he would sell you a set of 10 for $5 or so. They were puffy dots that you affixed to the outside of your car on the hood using the supplied velcro. You got 10 different colors and Dennis had his 10 computer keyboard number keys colored. He was amazing, I can't remember him ever missing a lap no matter how many people were running. He was affectionately referred to as Dennis and his Dots. But when we went to AMB, my OCD really kicked in because now I had a very accurate account of my lap times which allowed me to over analyze everything.
