>> You mean I spent the off season perfecting my lights for nothing??
> Assuming you don't make the challenges....yes. :-)
But as the Challenge is the whole point of the event, that R/T is still
pretty damned important. And there's the bonus money for best class comp.
R/T too.
> Dennis, what is an Announcer Repeater Panel and what do you mean by
> consistant rollouts? I have no experience with legal drags.
An Announce Repeater panel (which may or may not be a separate panel on
this design - it may be built in to the main timing display) is a display
that puts information in front of the announcer in a timely manner, and in
a ready-to-announce format. At the very least, it'll have who won, and by
how much. Fancier systems include driver/car data, and will highlight *why*
the winner won too. The idea is that the announcer has all the info he
needs, right in front of his nose, all the time.
Or in other words, no more waiting in the staging lanes for Howard to
mentally carry the one and figure out who won - the announcer will know the
winner the instant they cross the finish beam.
"Rollout" has to do with the way the timing systems work. On a drag race
system, the ET clock starts when the front wheels leave the Stage beam, and
R/T is the time between the green light lighting and the clock starting. On
the old ProSolo system, the clock started when the light went green, and
redlights were triggered by a third beam placed a little downsteam of the
stage beam.
The distance you can roll forward before triggering a redlight is called
"rollout", and it is an essential part of knowing when to launch. Because
all drag systems work the same way, the timing of the launch point is
pretty well the same everywhere you go. But the ProSolo lights had
different rollouts from the rest of drag racing, so the timing you used
everywhere else in the world didn't work at a ProSolo - and because the
system was incapable of presenting a reaction time, there was no way to
tune it. Frustrating as all hell, and the number one reason why I've been a
champion of an R/T capable timing system.
Lemme put it this way - if one were to spend lots of time on a simulator or
a dragstrip practicing lights, expecting to have that practice carry over
into ProSolo, it doesn't work with the old timing system, because they
don't work the same way. With the new system, it will work.
For the curious, if I used my normal drag racing staging technique (well...
ritual is more like it) with my normal drag racing reaction point (the
first flicker of the last yellow) I'd redlight every time. If I
shallow-staged, and left of my normal launch point, I'd redlight about 1 in
3. So in competition, I'd shallow-stage and give the last yellow until it
was fully on before launching. My drag racing average R/T is 0.545. In
bracket competition (actual eliminations, not just time trials, when I'm
really trying) it's 0.514. Based on some experiments I did last season
during practice starts, I estimate that my average ProSolo R/T was about
0.750, which is well and truly asleep at the switch in drag race terms.
That's over 2 tenths a side....
DG
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