NewsIn its first year of general release nearly 100 copies of bbkRC have been sold.
bbkRC is used in England, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa and Malta GC.
Why is it so popular? Here are some reasons suggested by users.
Managing Meeting Entries
If you have a meeting
to organise you have to keep track of who is confirmed or a
reserve, which competitors have paid, competitor race class,
teams, abilities and contact details and 1000 other things.
With bbkRC the entry status of every competitor
can be tracked. You
can make up the heats leaving out the reserves, but still have
them on the computer, ready to drop into any spaces when the
drivers book in on the day. There are facilities to publish the competitors on the
Internet with their entry status so everyone knows who is in
and who is out.
You can set up some practice races and then make up the heats based on the drivers’ performance in timed practice, best 3 or 5 consecutive laps for example.
Late book in and Change
meeting format
If someone turns up
after the meeting has started and there is space for them,
they can be booked in while races are running, or even just go
out in a Heat and get booked in while they are racing.
If you decide that you want to run one less or one more
round in qualifying then that’s no problem either.
Just add an extra round or make the finals early.
You can even change the qualifying format for Finals or
just view (and print) the qualifying under different rules, to
see what the finals might have looked like.
Finding drivers on a given frequency
The
race is just about to start and a competitor shouts
“INTERFERENCE”. Just click the mouse on his frequency in the race screen and
you will see a list of all the other drivers on that
frequency, along with the race they are in (and car number in
case the Transmitter Pound needs to be checked).
You can quickly announce the names of the drivers who
need to check their transmitters, or maybe tell the driver he
is the only competitor on that frequency.
If during a meeting a driver needs to turn on his transmitter (maybe to set up his speedo) you can enter his frequency and immediately see who else is on that frequency and which race they are in and determine a safe time for the competitor to switch on.
Check that transponders are working and Drivers present
During
the “warm-up” period before a race, the loop is live so
you can see on screen when each car arrives on the track,
handy for Nitro. When
you have a number of cars flying round the track it is an easy
way to check that all the correct drivers are there and spot
someone in the wrong race.
You can also see how many warm-up laps they have done.
When the cars are racing the Transponder signal quality
is displayed. This gets stored with the laps so you can investigate any
transponder problems.
Move competitors between heats
Once you have started a
meeting, sometimes it becomes apparent that someone is in a
totally inappropriate heat.
With bbkRC you can move drivers from heat to
heat easily, even after they have started to qualify. The times and laps just “move” with them.
Find missing transponders
Keeping
track of the rechargeable transponders is no fun at all.
If you are using 2 sets it is not uncommon for a driver
to pick up the “wrong” number 3. When the drivers for the
next race turn up the “correct” number 3 is missing.
Where is it? If
you are using bbkRC relax.
If it is in the number 3 car on the track, the race
screen will immediately show you this.
If not just a couple of mouse clicks will give you a
list of all the drivers who have used that transponder. The
last user will be at the top, together with some contact
details (Team, Mobile Phone Number).
Culprit found! You
will also see the average transponder signal quality, useful
if you want to know if a particular transponder is “playing
up” or it is just badly positioned in a particular car.
Check for missed laps
During
the race the complete lap table is shown, not just the last
lap for each driver. You
can quickly check back to see if a driver has missed a lap and
take action straight away, rather than waiting until the end
of the race to see the printout.
In the longer Nitro races you can scan the comparative
lap times to see if a car is starting to slow.
It all adds interest to the commentary.
No need to pick up the mike
- Automated Commentary
As well as automated
countdowns and race orders, the computer can “call up”
drivers for the next race and you can even get it to call them
to race control. You
can construct announcements for drivers with frequency changes
to come to race control as well.
You could run a meeting without ever picking up the
mike.
If you are thinking that a computer-generated commentary is a gimmick, think again. The commentary will be consistent for all the races, even when you are busy doing something else. In fact a lot of timekeepers are getting back to racing. Even men can do two things at once!
Frequency Distribution
Listing
Knowing who is on which
frequency is essential information for the race director. A
growing number of Race Rules require frequency information to
remain confidential at RC Race meetings.
This is just one of the many reports available with
bbkRC. It also
demonstrates the efficient use of the available channels when
bbkRC automatically allocates frequencies.
The algorithms used to select frequencies can be set to
avoid consecutive heat frequency clashes and you can choose to
select 20Khz separation on 40Mhz.
“Live” Qualifying
results
While heats are
running, bbkRC constantly recalculates the qualifying order
based on estimated finishing times.
With bbkRC this information is available on the main
Race Control computer in all program versions.
You can really go to town on the commentary, telling
drives that they are on for a better time AND where it might
put them in the finals.
The bbkRC features list is not restricted to the above, there’s BRCA Affiliation Management, configurable and fully detailed HTML, Automated Open Practice and of course DRIVERnet for multiple information screens at all meetings.
With the next release, which will be available by the end of the year, there will be even more reasons why bbkRC is the UK’s fastest selling Race Program.
10 More Reasons why Race Directors & Time Keepers love bbkRC
November 2004