What timing gear should I get?, For local Porsche Club autocross events Options

[soloracer]

Guys & Gals,

I've been made the co-ordinator of our local PCA autocross events and have been given the go ahead to get some new timing gear. The problem is I'm not sure what to get, where to get it, etc. So I thought I would ask you guys since several of you have years of autocross experience. What features should I look for? The price of gear seems to range from $1000 to $5000 and at this point I'm not sure what is really needed and how much is paying for stuff that you really don't need. We typically have about 20 cars per event to give you a perspective on the size of our events. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[lapuwali]

I'll agree with Paul on defining exactly what you want up front. I have to disagree on some of his other points, which would be reasonable when dealing with a sizable club running big events, but are way overkill for a club running events with only 20 cars. I've certainly seen good events run quite successfully with over 100 cars using hand-written times, and cheap PA, and a sheet of board and a grease pencil for posting times.

I would certainly strongly disagree with the "need" for laptops and esp. printers. Printers are nasty, cranky, fragile devices that require wall power. A reasonable timer should be able to run on a pair of AA batteries all day long. It's nothing more than a memory stopwatch with 0.001sec accuracy and an external trigger.

For small fields, unless you have the space to routinely run long courses, multiple cars on track at once seems unnecessary. Four cars on track at once would be a wonderful feature for 100 car fields. I've never seen more than three at even the biggest events, but I've never been to a really big event (> 200 cars) before.

Most of the equipment I've seen used has been home-made, or looked like it was home-made despite being purchased. Wireless is easy to get wrong, and subject to interference. I'd avoid any low-end wireless gear.