The whole transponder thing has gotten bogged down
badly.
Caution Charlie, Revisionist History Lesson #397!
In the beginning, a group of us started an upstart
racing club within NASA. We had about 4 of us to do
T&S and were way too understaffed to do it The SCCA
Way. So one of our local electronic genii, Dave
Benzel, set out to make up a transponder system to
eliminate all the tradition. We went through about 4
variations before it worked as we hoped but we
eventually got there. It is still sold as the DB
system. The sending units were $100, and are properly
called transmitters. Transponders are two way devices
if anyone cares at this time.
A couple of years later the SCCA decided this stuff
would be a good backup system to the One and True way.
They quickly rejected the local and relatively cheap
version and went with the much more expensive AMB
setup with the $200+ transmitter/transponder. Of
course it came with a "free" computer setup so that's
sort of why it costs more, sort of. It also has more
middlemen in the marketing plan. So now local racers
get to have two slightly different setups.
Since those days of development a couple of things
have happened in technology that are not in use with
those systems. I think another local electronic genius
could do a wonderful thing in an updated
transmitter/transponder setup with this new stuff. I
alas am no longer the creative sort to do this.
1. Wildlife trackers. These sell retail at under $10
each [stick one on a weasel community and guess how
many get lost! kinda like having free ones at an
autocross I fear] and seem very like the existing
$200+ senders in tehnology, only newer and smaller. I
have been tempted to try one on an SCCA car that is
known to have one to see if it reads, but with a
different ID code. I think this would be unpopular
with the local folks selling the expensive units.
Remember that middleman marketing problem....
2. GPS stuff has reached the consumer electronics
level and may well be adaptable to our purposes. It
may or may not be precise enough for our purposes.
Dave Benzel has developed military priced systems that
are certainly accurate enough, but not close to our
budget I am afraid.
If a new system could be developed with senders under
a $25 autocross entry and computer costs at current PC
levels, everyone would enjoy the changes.
The real test used with modern electronics is whether
it is Both better And cheaper than what it replaces.
The transponders to date have had difficulty with both
features. AFAIK SFR still uses the transponders only
as a backup system to the older manual one. Most of us
in T&S left when the system was brought in "to help
us".
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Dennis Hale
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