From the Timekeeper's point of view, we had timing assistant volunteers turn up at the registration van after we started to set up for the day and the racing had commenced.
This precluded getting them out to the timing van and in some instances we had people assisting who were not registered at all.
Any more than 3 people in the timing van at a time is too crowded and led to chit chat etc that was at times an issue when trying to sort out radio calls etc.
Communications are definitely a major issue and must be addressed in future events with the unfortunate incident whereby a car was sent on its way when the main course was closed due to a vehicle spin.
A full report is being prepared for the DLRA committee but some of the major flaws in the new timing equipment were mainly found to be in the software provided to input and store the data.
The system works on the rider/driver's membership number plus the vehicle number being entered for each run and will not recognize letters such as A,B,C,D etc which are used to indicate class changes especially for bikes.
We tried using numeric alternates such as 1,2,3,4 after the vehicle numbers but this only led to confusion especially with some of the older car numbers which became a bike or vice versa.
There are several smaller issues with the software but the major issue with the reporting side is the fact that it only saves the fastest time for a particular run and doesn't give the time of day that the run was made, the split segment speeds (which could be of assistance with vehicle tuning and gear selection etc) and whether the run was nominated as short or long course.
Current class records should also be shown for comparison.
As you may know we had a failure with the 2¼ mile speed timer which could not be repaired and lost some time when the 4 mile system was clobbered when a car spun. This will most likely result in us having to relocate the TSB units further away from the main course in future.
