Dirt 100 2011: Freelap Timing Poles and Watch
No matter how much we all try to profess not to be competitive, deep down I think we all are, even if it’s just on a personal level, and the superb Freelap system allows that streak to come out wherever and whenever you like. Put two poles on a track and you’ve instantly got yourself a race, or I suppose an ideal training setup. The full system might not be cheap, but if a few mates club together for the poles then you can easily get it down to the cost of a night out each, and then that just leaves you having to bite the bullet when it come to the watch. With an ever increasing number of venues like Gawton installing permanent Freelap equipment it now means that even buying just the watch is a worthwhile purchase. Hopefully one day we’ll see the world covered in Freelap poles…
Check out the Freelap Watch
Check out the Freelap Timing Pole
PrIce: watch £160.98, pole £91.65
hs sports 01260 275 708
www.hssports.co.uk
www.freelap.ch
It’s a nice setup for training, but for longer runs a Sportcount Velo-X provides enough accuracy (timer on your handlebar) and is much cheaper.
http://solidbikes.de/de/parts_timing.html
If you’re racing with your mates, not all watches will give the same time. A watch will be accurate to 1/100th of a second but when we rode with three watches on one arm, they all gave different results. Many days battling on the hill were then void. It’s still handy for training though. Poles are a bit shitty quality wise. I bought them when they were £60… £90 is a ripp-off!
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Watchdog-Eurobike-2010.html
good alternative
Tim -> How much did the results differ in between the three Freelap watches?
Dear Freelap users, you cannot wear many stopwatches on the same arm. Need 20cm between each stopwatch. Regards
jukka, no more than 3/4′s of a second or so. Which meant tim had to find another 1 1/2 seconds! hehe
I like my Freelap watch, especially here in germany there are many bikeparks equipped with permanent transmitters for 24/7 – timing without the need of carrying your own poles on the hill. Check out http://www.freelap.de for the trackmap. They also have Kit-Prizes for stopwatch and poles.
^^^ Once again ruthless German efficiency has proved superior to our crap… Thats is a quality idea and we should have it over here!
Jukka, Andy ‘baldy’ Smith had been claiming a false victory for many weeks.
We were mainly timing on a short track 1min 30s. I think 9/10ths of a second was the worse difference, so on a reg three and a half min track that could be over 2 seconds. Do this test, put a pole down on the road, hold two watches side by side an walk backwards away from the pole until they start then walk back towards the pole till they stop and see if there’s a difference.
The reason it was so annoying was because we were racing/training over such a short track and the times were so, so close, every nano-second was becoming a win or lose moment. I was farting out the gate to try and gain an advantage.
At the end of the day, if you put a stop watch on your wrist, YOU WILL TRY AND GO FASTER! So, job done. Just a shame it costs £160 for the pleasure. Also for the record, we are using the first gen watches, not sure if the new ones are any different.
In Portugal you can get the stopwatchs for only £123,41 and the pole for only £68,21…The prices of bicycle products in Portugal are very high, Hotspot Products is trying to change this…
See here: http://hotspotproducts.blogspot.com/
Thanking attention,
Daniel Branco – Hotspot Products
P.S.: The problem is the Portuguese pilots did not know this product.
@tim
please give me a mail: teamjung@web.de
It’s true, i am bald and the watches were giving different readings. Not enough to give Tim the overall win though, he’d need to do a lot of farting for that. Would the difference in times be the result of having the watches so close together Mr Freelap man? Also, why are we getting absolutely pumped for watches and poles when you can clearly get them cheaper elsewhere? I have a good few friends who’d buy a watch/pole if it wasn’t so expensive..
Hey Guys,
i can´t understand your problems with your watches?
I made an accuracy test today in two ways:
1. I took two watches on the same side of the handlebar (10cm distance), and passed two TX Junior transmitters. In this way regarding to “Freelap Official” there are disturbances because of the small distance of the watches. I made three tests and the max. difference was 0,04 seconds, which is not so good.
2. Then i took one watch between Grip and Brake on the left and one on the right side of the handlebar and passed the transmitters again. In five tests i had 3x exactly the same time on both watches (00:21:55, 00:23:43, 00:19,88) and two times 1/100 difference 00:23:74 00:23:75 and 00:21:12 00:21:13
So when you use the watches in the right way , they work perfect, and 1/100 difference is quite ok for this small and easy setup in my oppinion…
Jon P…we do…at Gawton, and i think they’re planning on putting them in at the forest of dean, plus there could well be some others i don’t know about.
Freelap has released an IrDA Capture Utility that will transfer the timing data from the Freelap watch to a PC using an IrDA device. The utility and the user guide can be downloaded from http://www.freelaptrackandfield.com/download/manuals/irda-capture-utility.php