Me and Frank

Ok, this is be a bit of a stretch but starting at last weekend's meet left me feeling like Frank Sinatra singing at one of his famous concert performances. Here's the story.

About an hour into the first session of the meet the battery on the Colorado starting system died. We thought the battery had been fully charged but it wasn't. We learned that while you can run this unit while it is plugged in the battery still runs the unit. The wall power just recharges the battery. It doesn't power the unit. Normally that's fine because when the unit is plugged in this will keep it charged at whatever level it was at when you began using it. Unfortunately for us the battery was dead and even when plugged in it wasn't going to work until the battery had a chance to charge up. And there wasn't a back-up starting system readily available. What to do now?

Since the rest of the timing system was still operational we had a few alternatives. The timing console, pads, and buttons still worked and we would still get automated finishes. The start would have to be manual. We could either have the timing console operator use their start button or connect a button to the primary cable and have the Starter push it when each race began. We went with the console operator hitting the start button on the timing console.

Now here comes the Frank part. I had to use the public address to give the "take your mark" command. I had a nice wireless Shure microphone similar to those often seen on TV and concerts. Since the acoustics were poor I had to use my best silvery voice to be clearly heard. Kind of like Frank belting out New York, New York. As a starting sound we used an air horn which I held up and away from me so that I wouldn't go home deaf. As you can see from the pictures I think their might be some resemblance between me and Frank.

As it turned out, we could not get the starting unit charged and after about 4 hours of singing  starting this way a replacement unit from MN Swimming arrived.

A couple of notable things about all things ...

Coaches didn't like the horn. Air horns don't make one distinctive sound. As you press it the sound starts out weak and gets stronger. It's more like two sounds. Instead we mostly used a whistle.

Swimmer don't react well to anything other than the usual starting sound. They appear really tuned to it and anything else doesn't get the same reaction. When we went back to the normal "beep" the change was noticeably for the better.

So that's my story. All that's left to say is that I did it my way!