There is a stretch of by-passed straight dual carriageway near me that we used to drag race up in the early ours of the morning a few years ago.

We had the ¼ mile measured with a trundle wheel and marked with some spray paint/traffic cones. Races were started with the drop of a headlight. Nearest house is a mile away and we never had any trouble from the old bill.

Was thinking last night in bed that it would be pretty cool to make some portable timing gear so that we could log some times.

I’m pretty sure it would be fairly easy to do with bits available from your local maplins?

I was thinking:

A home made christmas tree that activates a simple timer circuit that is stopped by the broken beam. I would use a 12v FM radio transmitter/reciever for the comms from beam to timer.

The timer and radio gear can be had from Maplins and I would use a IR beam kit like this: http://www.electrokits.com/electroni...-timers/42.htm

Anyone ever done anything like this before?

Any help from electronics wizzes would be appreciated.

 

This does 1/4 mile times and, iirc, terminal speed

http://www.gtechpro.com/

 

I have a Race Technology AP22 Automotive Performance Meter www.race-technology.com

Has loads of good features and you can link it upto the pc and download the data etc, but yesterday I ran at Shakespeare county raceway and most of the time it was well out, I stopped using it halfway through the day so think am going bang it on ebay.

 

get one of these: G-tech Pro SS



theres a few on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/G-Tech-GTech-P...QQcmdZViewItem

Rich

 

Yep the in car based ones are fine, but no good for actually triggering/controling the racing.

 

Never done anything like it but sounds a good idea.

 

Boing!