[Spridgets] Rally Stopwatches

[Kitterer Bob]

In the USA rallies were/are time, distance, speed (TDS) events.  The total distance is broken up into legs and it should take you a particular amount of time to do the leg.  However, you do not know the distance for the leg nor where the leg will end.  You also do not know what route you will be taking, you are handed instructions less than a minute prior to your departure.  The instructions are not the type that you can look at a map to determine where you are going, at least for the rallies I'v done.  They also indicate a that when you get to a certain point what average speed to maintain.

Now to the stop watches, I am familiar with three watch boards.  There was one watch for total time, started at the beginning of the leg. One was the time for the current average speed.  The third was the ending time for the last average speed section and for any specified stop times.  These along with the instructions were all handled by the navigator who was also constantly doing calculations to determine if you "were on time" or not so the driver could correct their speed.  By the way he was doing these calculations with a slide rule and using the dual Odometers for those who were really serious about these events.

For those not familiar with TDS rallies the difference between the time it took you to do a leg and the it should have taken is your "error", early or late and can not be made up.  The error for all legs are added up and the lowest error wins.

At least that's the way it was in this neighborhood.

On Dec 29, 2012, at 8:13 PM, Dean Hedin wrote:

> Explain to me (and others on the list)
> 
> How are rally stopwatches used?
> Why are there usually two and why are there two diferent kinds of
> stopwatches?
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