Timing systems for club races

[The Duckmeister]

The club has had good experience with tablet and webscorer. Again, it needs a person to keep a close eye on competitors and realistically its no better then the clock and a running sheet. As yet the logistics of using that setup for enduro and dh limits it to xc.

The ultimate goal is to have setup and execution of club evens be as smooth and simple as possible. I really like the look of sportident system and from discussions I've had with other clubs and event managers they are real believers in it also. Sure its a big investment and the club will need people to become champions of the system, ultimately thats a decision of the members as to whether they want to head in that direction and the committee to execute it.

Thanks to Ducky and Dozer for the contacts, been very worthwhile talking to those guys!

Another positive to the Sportident system is because it's fairly popular, particularly around the GE scene, clubs that own a set of equipment can hire it out and recoup some of the costs of buying it. However, in a perverse way, that also raises a negative aspect.... The chips are bloody expensive to buy, at around $100 each, so that's where a very large chunk of the investment can be sunk. So typically system owners will only have a small stock of their own chips and hire the rest they need for their events (going rate for hire is $5/chip, so in the short term hard to go past in favour of buying). Which can sometimes make scheduling race dates difficult if you need to hire chips and find all the available stock is already committed to another event....

 

[spikenet]

Another positive to the Sportident system is because it's fairly popular, particularly around the GE scene, clubs that own a set of equipment can hire it out and recoup some of the costs of buying it.

hey ducky,

Many positives of sportident. Seems to be the only horse in the race when comes to systems out there for the money.

A couple of questions I have for those using the system are below:

Any maintenance required? Seems maintenance free, but keen to know.
Any issues with batteries of chips going dead? Costs to get replaced? Any problems with cards going missing?

One burning question from the committee is around the ongoing costs of running the system, dont want to find a whole bunch of chips need replacing for multiple 1000's in a couple of years due to dead batteries or equipment failure outside the warrenty.

cheers!

 

[Stinky]

hey ducky,

Many positives of sportident. Seems to be the only horse in the race when comes to systems out there for the money.

A couple of questions I have for those using the system are below:

Any maintenance required? Seems maintenance free, but keen to know.
Any issues with batteries of chips going dead? Costs to get replaced? Any problems with cards going missing?

One burning question from the committee is around the ongoing costs of running the system, dont want to find a whole bunch of chips need replacing for multiple 1000's in a couple of years due to dead batteries or equipment failure outside the warrenty.

cheers!

After 3 years of using the Air+ system I have found it to be pretty maintenance free. You need to check the configuration of the boxes before each event to make sure that thy are time synced. This is straight forward and takes about 10 minutes. Other than that it is just charging the boxes.

At our event on the weekend I had the first issue of chips having flat batteries. They were out of the first batch to arrive in the country, but still think they are supposed to have a 5 year battery life. You can get a battery checker to make sure you dont find out at the end of the race that is was flat. Will be putting this into our protocols from now on.

In that time we have had one chip completley lost and another damaged in a crash. In both cases I charged the rider a replacement fee.

As has been mentioned before I still think that the hiring of chips is the way to go, particularly for a club that may change direction / motivation in a few years.

 

[spikenet]

Will be putting this into our protocols from now on.

In that time we have had one chip completley lost and another damaged in a crash. In both cases I charged the rider a replacement fee.

Thanks for the great info! Any chance you would be happy to share any documents, forms etc as a template to get us setup on that front? Do you keep some sort of deposit for the chip, licence, etc etc.

cheers!

 

[Stinky]

We dont have anything written down in that regard. When doing events interstate and dont know the rider group as well we will keep a licence or similar as a bond, other than that we just tell them that they wont be allowed to do anymore racing until the fee has been paid. What normally happens is the rider says that they lost it, we tell them they have to pay and they soon find the energy to walk the trail and find it.

 

[The Duckmeister]

hey ducky,

Many positives of sportident. Seems to be the only horse in the race when comes to systems out there for the money.

A couple of questions I have for those using the system are below:

Any maintenance required? Seems maintenance free, but keen to know.
Any issues with batteries of chips going dead? Costs to get replaced? Any problems with cards going missing?

One burning question from the committee is around the ongoing costs of running the system, dont want to find a whole bunch of chips need replacing for multiple 1000's in a couple of years due to dead batteries or equipment failure outside the warrenty.

cheers!

We've had a few cases of malfunctioning chips, both our own and hired ones. with the hired ones it's easy, just tell the mob you got them from that one of their chips is dead and let them deal with it. :bounce: I believe thay can be sent back to the system suppliers for service, but I don't know the costs involved. When hiring chips it's a good practice to get more than you'll actually need, just so you have a few spares in case some don't turn on. Regarding the beacons, I'm not sure the charge life of those, but I'm fairly sure they're user rechargeable. You'd best chat to our tech guy again to confirm that though. As Stinky suggests, the beacons do have a tendency to time-creep, sometimes by quite alarming margins, so it is essential to synch them when setting up for a race, otherwise the data will be off.

When issuing chips to competitors, advise them not to place it too close to a Garmin or similar device, because they can sometimes interfere with the signals. We've had a couple of cases of lost data due to interference. About 250mm separation sems to be minimum. For security, again like Stinky suggests we take each rider's MTBA card or another form of ID and hold it for the duration of the event, which is returned when the chip comes back. If we have any cards left over we can chase the person for either the chip or the replacement fee, which is clearly stated in our event info guides.

 

[spikenet]

again, thanks guys for the info...

I've been looking at the SiTiming software and.. wow its a steep learning curve!