[GravityBolivia]

Hello there!!

Just looking for some help, here in Bolivia we are looking at getting our DH racing events more professional, including a Red Bull sponsored Urban down hill at the end of June.

What we need at the moment is an economic but effective automated system for timing DH runs. Either a full unit we could buy or plans for a kit that we could build...

Any ideas or suggestions welcomed!!

Here is Dandy practicing on the Red Bull Urban course

 

[dhtahoe]

A Tag - Heuer 520 chronoprinter is what I use. It costs about $1000 USD and they do the job great. Go check out www.reliableracing.com

 

[GravityBolivia]

Perhaps I should give a little more explaination ... Bolivia is a third world country! Race licences cost US$4.50 for the YEAR, and race entry fees are US$1.25 ... and we have trouble collecting that much ... that's why we have to be pretty damn budget to make it all work! We put quite a lot of our personal money into the scene here, and RedBull will be sponsoring one race (but with a pretty small budget) ... so any economic solutions to the timing thing would be greatly appreciated, we definitely cannot afford a professional off-the-shelf solution.

Thanks dhtahoe, we have contacted the guys you mentioned to see if they have any less pricey solutions for us as well.

What would be ideal is a kit, or reconditioned, or secondhand kit that we could get hold of!!

 

[dhtahoe]

What can you afford? I do have my old 505 cronoprinter that I no longer use. It has all the same features as a 520 except for the communications feature. When I used this system I just used handheld radios to talk to the start house. I works great and I will sell it to you cheap to get you guys going. All you need is the trigger beams, but its not needed. You can do time of day timing and hand trigger the finish. Or you can buy a finish beam only and do time of day start and trigger finish. If you need ANY timing help just PM me any time you want. Ask anybody on this board my races NEVER had timing problems. I kept it simple with this system and it never failed and is 100% portable.

 

[scottishmark]

my suggestion would be to go onto the forum on ww.descent-world.co.uk and send "timingman" an email (or if you cant find any details for him just send one to descent-world) as for the last season and a bit he's been developing a system for use it all the scottish races.

and the system has been brilliant so far, doesn't give live timing at the moment (due to the $$ involved) but is a very efficient and accurate system.

In other words i'm sure he'll have some advice for you anyway!