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.

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.

Our current set up was home made and has a board with switches that you use to turn on/off the stopwatches. We use the south end of our local road course for the autocross event so our speeds tend to get higher than the average parking lot autocross. We allow no more than 2 cars on the track at any time - usually put the next one on after the car before it has started his second lap.

So does anyone have a manufacturer they know of and can recommend?

Hi Solo, We just bought new gear for our autocross last year here in Edmonton. Check out the web site at Polar Region of the PCA, a e-mail to the pres. will get you in touch with those who were involved. As I remember they used some info from the SCCA.
Good luck, Marsh

The timing lights should be put in some kind of protective box at the finish. Last 2 events the timing light was punted across the lot from over zealous drivers. Milk crate survived better than the fiberglass bumper did.

I looked, and both of the Midwestern SCCA regions I used to run with are on the JA Circuits customer list. This is, to me, a strong endorsement. Both regions are chock-full of aerospace EEs from what was McDonnell Aircraft (now Boeing), and if they find it acceptable, it must be decent equipment.

Enough of the regions use this stuff that you certainly couldn't go wrong with this supplier, much like not being able to go too far wrong by buying IBM once upon a time...