Stopwatch timing is still a perfectly valid way of timing a Head race. You need a watch that has: a certified level of accuracy; enough memory; and a way to export the data. Here is a stopwatch that meets the criteria best: TAG-Heuer HL400.
This watch came out at the end of 2014, so it is quite new in stopwatch terms. I don't own one, so this is not a review. But I have an interest in what equipment can be used to time a race accurately.
I have seen a few different makes of stopwatch being used for timing a Head race. I drew up a table of what is required, and which stopwatches meet the requirement: Stopwatches. When I started timing, I got the impression that the NK Interval 2000 was the normal standard, but over the years I have seen several different types being used. The NK stopwatch is fine, and might be easy to borrow because coaches use it for split times. But it has a couple of problems: no certified level of accuracy; and an obsolete export to Excel. This works on Windows XP but not on Windows 7. It takes an excruciatingly long time to download the times; AND downloads them in seconds since the watch started, so you need some Excel skills to use them to produce results. My point is not to criticize it, but to point out that even such an obvious thing as the choice of stopwatch is not easy. The Seiko S143 has great accuracy, and exports to a printer, but only 300 times so not enough for the bigger Head races.
The TAG-Heuer HL400 has several really good features for Head race timing:
- Certified level of accuracy, of +- 0.7 parts per million, or 2.8 ms per hour. This is more than adequate. It is about 25 times more accurate than a normal watch.
- 800 times in memory
- A modern export to PC over USB.
The USB interface can connect to a PC to export the data in real time. This solves the problem in laptop timing that the laptop is not an accurate timing device. So you could: connect the HL400 to a laptop; use the HL400 to provide accurate time; use the laptop to calculate and display results. You still have the problem that a laptop requires power and shelter.
One of the models, the HL400-DF, also has a Bluetooth interface. This is used to send timing data to a video stream created by the Dartfish Express app. This could be very interesting for Head race timing, as it gets round the problem that the clock in a video camera is not an accurate timing device. If we could overlay the time from a TAG-Heuer HL400 onto the video from a 1080p video camera then we could have a not-too-expensive video timing system.