John,
Gary Wilkinson would be the one to give you information on that. He and Ron
Cohn (who handles the radios for SCTA) have the greatest experience and full
time expertise on communications on the salt.
There are some funny interruptions that vary wildly from year to year. We
presently use hand held FM radios with repeaters to cover the length of the
course for technical communications and the CB radios for crew
communication. There is also a land line for the timing link from the
timing van to the return road timing ticket printer. At early World of
Speed events we used just CB and found that truckers in Southern Alabama
could override our signal with their equipment ... linear amplifiers,
illegal though they might be ... and there are still problems with CB
interruptions from truckers. What works just fine one year is impossible to
use the next. When GMC Motorsports ran their 210 mph pickup truck on the
salt they had a very sophisticated relay set-up to give on board telemetry
from the racing truck to a van driving along the course to another larger
van (now our timing van) which had a satellite relay to the General Motors
Proving Grounds. In theory it should have worked fine but the "Salt
Gremlins" also had their way. They abandoned the attempt for at least one
year and just ran the truck from the information they had on the salt.
Wes
----------
> From: john robinson <john@engr.wisc.edu>
> To: land-speed@autox.team.net
> Subject: talkabout radios
> Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 08:32:49 -0500
>
>Howdy,
> Has anybody used the Motorola Talkabout 250 radios out at the Salt? I
>have used handheld CB radios out there and they did not work very well.
>
> John Robinson, Mechanician
> Mechanical Engineering University of Wisconsin
> 1513 University Ave.
> Madison, Wi. 53706
> 608-262-3606
> FAX 608-265-2316
> Current World Land Speed Record Holder
> Bonneville Salt Flats
> H/GCC 92 cu.in. 1980 Dodge Colt
> 131.333 MPH set 1995
> 136.666 MPH set 1996
>
>
>
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