[Land-speed] British Steam effort 139.843mph

[Jon Wennerberg]

On Sep 2, 2009, at 10:28 AM, MEIERLE Mike wrote:

> I didn't say it wouldn't work, your synchronization idea was to use  
> GPS,
> Public GPS isn't accurate enough for our application, the military
> purposely vary's the signal to thwart our enemies, you have to have  
> the
> correction frequency to get the precision military signal. And It's  
> just
> more expensive. Think about when someone hits a timing light on the
> track, now they're hitting a expensive sensor. The SCTA is happy with
> what they have and have it worked out. The discussion is with them.
>
> Mike M.



Ah-HA!  No, I surely did NOT mean to suggest GPS system, nor to imply  
that it would work.  I imagine a timing clock running here at a  
central location on the Salt -- say, the timing tower - sending the  
clock signal to the various individual sensors.  And since the  
individual stations are in fixed locations - it should be doable to  
correct for delay in receiving the clock signals within a few minutes  
of system initialisation.  Once that's done -- no changes, no delays  
to consider.  Each clock/sensor would send a packet saying "I had  
something happen (someone broke through the light beam) at such-and- 
such a time", and that time would be used with the other event times  
to compute time between entrance and departure of the timed stretch.

That's what I meant to say, at least.  Thanks for letting me know what  
it seems I said, Mike.

Radios are down out here at Bub's by the way -- everything is on  
hold.  Bub is pre-staged at the south end of the international course,  
Sam Wheeler is reported on the way out here with the 999 liner to get  
in line.  Wind is about 4-7 mph down course -- nobody running right now.

Jon