One of the most important things for running a Fixed Time scored stage is having the timer configured properly to beep when the par time ends. The timers from Competition Electronics and CED are easy to configure and have been used without issue for Fixed Time for years. However, there are a couple settings that need to be changed to use the AMG Lab Commander Timer to time a Fixed Time stage without issues.
At the recent Area 1 Championship, there was an instance of the timer not beeping when the par time expired. The stage staff did a deep dive into the Commander timer User Manual and found a couple settings to adjust to avoid this issue. The first step is to access the advanced settings menu. To do this, turn the timer on while holding down the M button. On that menu, the first option is the self-beep setting. This should be set to ‘yes’. When this is set to ‘yes’ the timer will ignore any shots during the beep at sensitivities above seven, but will detect shots when the sensitivity is 6 or below. After the self-beep setting, make sure your timer sensitivity is 6 or below because we do want to detect shots that could occur during the beep because we want to detect shots that occur after the time ends.
Once they adjusted the timer with these settings, there were no more timer issues. As we have mentioned before, if you use electronic hearing protection, you might want to turn that off too. My protection mutes when shots occur and I have missed the beep on Fixed Time stages before. This year I didn’t have any issues hearing the second beep because I remembered to turn off my electronic protection. But that is the choice of the shooter, and not required.