QUOTE (joker75 @ Aug 5 2011, 11:45 AM)

There is one family at our local track that has these and brings them out to the track occasionally on practice days. They set up the first transmitter off the side of the start hill near lane 8. They place it part way down the hill, so it doesn't start until you roll passed it. They set up the stop transmitter line near the fence along the last straight on the finish line. You have to be on the side of the track nearest the transmitors as they won't pick up from acrossed the full width of the track.
Other than needing to have the starting transmitor part way down the start hill, to prevent premature starting while in the gate, they seem to work very well. And this is only a pet peave of mine, in that it won't give you an accurate start to finish lap time. However, as long as you set up the transmitors in the same place every time, you can fairly accurately guage how your lap times are looking, or if your training is actually helping your overall track speed.
Also is this just for you, or are you looking for something that you can allow others to borrow the stopwatch and see how they are doingas well? If it is just for your personal use, you may also want to look into the Ripxx. It monitors you for the entire track. You can set up sections to time seperately, as well as timing the full track. It shows your speed during turns and jumps, so you can take different lines through turns and rhythm sections and actually see what lines allow you to go the fastest. I don't know how much of the info you can dig into straight from the device, but it looks like on your PC, you can get very detailed logs of what you are doing.
Good luck in your search and let us know if you get one and how they work out.
I talked to them a few years ago and they said that it was possiable tie there system into the gate controls and put a loop under the gate that when triggered would start the timer. You would then put a timing loop at the finish line. My hangup was the cost of the timers. All in all a pretty neat setup.