RaceAmerica Online Forum

The past two events using our 2900 drag system has intermittent odd system lockups. We stage two cars without any dialins, full tree, left lane finishes, right lane stalls out just past 60 foot. The PC shows times and speed for the left lane and the right lane shows RT and 60 foot. Then the system locks up. Rebooting the computer seems to clear everything out. How can I stop this from happening? Rebooting takes time and the drivers get anxious.

BillGorman wrote:How can I stop this from happening? Rebooting takes time and the drivers get anxious.

Actually, this is normal operation but does not require a computer reboot to resolve. The timing system will look for a finish in each lane where there was a start. If two vehicles start, the system waits for both finish beams to be tripped. In your example, note the RT and 60ft times for the right lane. The timing system is waiting for the right lane to cross the finish line. If the vehicle breaks down and cannot cross the finish line, press the END RUN button on the software to end the race. This tells the timing system the race is over and post the race results without the end speed or ET and print the timeslips. The software will reset the timing system for the next race. No need to reboot the computer.

We had volunteers help setup our timing system for a race. They reversed the finish line right for left on our wireless system. Every BYE run would end with the system in limbo and never end a race. When two cars ran, times were off. With the finish line setup reversed and a BYE run, the start was in one lane and the finish was in the other lane so the system waited for a finish in the unused lane. With two car, starts trips where in one lane and finish trips in the other so ET''s were a scramble.

Once we discovered the finish line setup error and corrected it, the system ran correctly. We discovered the setup error by going into alignment mode and walking through each of the beams and noticed the right lane finish was showing up as the left lane finish.