# Electronic Clocks



## Guest (May 18, 2009)

We have recently formed a club.We all have hand clocks.We are wanting to go for electronic clocks.Can anyone advise which ones to go for?Make and type?

Regards

Wallis


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## Lovebirds (Sep 6, 2002)

There's quite a few different types. Our club uses the Benzing and since that's all that we've ever used, I wouldn't recommend another brand since I know nothing about the others.


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

Hardoak said:


> We have recently formed a club.We all have hand clocks.We are wanting to go for electronic clocks.Can anyone advise which ones to go for?Make and type?
> 
> Regards
> 
> Wallis



*Benzing !!!!*

http://www.siegelpigeons.com/catalog-timers-G-2.html

That way you can all use the G-2 or the M-1, both will work at same time !! These are the *Cadillacs !!* (If you know anything about 1950's Brands)

M-1's are the most user friendly....G-2's are still easy to use...and as a Race Secretary...I can tell you, these are easy and fun to use. Invest in the good stuff, you won't regret it.


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## A_Smith (Aug 8, 2006)

If you order 5 Benzing clocks request a FREE club unit  I agree with Warren, It is a very simple unit to use.


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## learning (May 19, 2006)

My club and combine use the UNIKON system. It is fine as a flyer but as a race secretary it is a nightmare. There is virtually no user manual to guide a new race secretary on how to handle problems. Customer support is non existent. The only reason it works for our combine is the secretary has used it for many, many years and has figured out all the quircks in the system. The one year I was the race secretary for our club it was an absolute nightmare.

Just my thoughts.

Dan


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## whitesnmore (Sep 9, 2004)

Unikon is not compatable with the newer printers!! We use it and are worried about when our old printer goes out finally. It is also not compatable with the pigeon software such as Hawkeye. I would choose Benzing if I had a choice. There are more to choose from at a different price range where as UNIKON has one price no matter what your budget is. 
Ken


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## adamant (Apr 16, 2009)

I think my area club uses unicon , with that said I could not use a ben7ing unit at the race. Correct?


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## learning (May 19, 2006)

adamant said:


> I think my area club uses unicon , with that said I could not use a ben7ing unit at the race. Correct?


Technically you could, but your race secretary would have to be willing to download the software from both systems and be willing to merge the two onto the WinSpeed program after each race. Believe me, I am talking from experience, it is a pain in the butt. I would be surprised if they allowed you to do this.

Good Luck,

Dan


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## A_Smith (Aug 8, 2006)

learning said:


> Technically you could, but your race secretary would have to be willing to download the software from both systems and be willing to merge the two onto the WinSpeed program after each race. Believe me, I am talking from experience, it is a pain in the butt. I would be surprised if they allowed you to do this.
> 
> Good Luck,Dan
> 
> ...


To use the benzing loft clock you will need a benzing club unit to enter birds into race. I don't think the club units are conpatable.


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## learning (May 19, 2006)

A_Smith said:


> To use the benzing loft clock you will need a benzing club unit to enter birds into race. I don't think the club units are conpatable.


They most definitely are not compatible. It would mean that they would have to boot up both systems seperatly both enter the birds in the race and at knock off. It is very time consuming and a pain. It is not something your race secretary will be thrilled to do for you.

Dan


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## parrisc (Feb 14, 2007)

I might as well through in TauRIS. Our club and other clubs in the upper midwest use them. No some mentioned the traning feature so not sure if the other brands have them or not. I like to use this feature to keep track of my young birds and on longer tosses it gives you a idea at to which birds traped 1st. 

If you buy 3 or more they will through in the club unit. As one thing to keep in mind, the maintenace of them. For the TauRIS it cost around $125 to $150 to replace the batteris. They should last 3 to 5 years depending on usage. 

Good Luck


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## Lovebirds (Sep 6, 2002)

parrisc said:


> I might as well through in TauRIS. Our club and other clubs in the upper midwest use them. No some mentioned the traning feature so not sure if the other brands have them or not. I like to use this feature to keep track of my young birds and on longer tosses it gives you a idea at to which birds traped 1st.
> 
> If you buy 3 or more they will through in the club unit. As one thing to keep in mind, the maintenace of them. For the TauRIS it cost around $125 to $150 to replace the batteris. They should last 3 to 5 years depending on usage.
> 
> Good Luck


I know the Benzings have the training feature. I use it even when the birds are just loft flying so that I know when everyone is inside.


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## adamant (Apr 16, 2009)

you would think that Unikon would get compatable with the newer printers!! i seen at out club a old dot matrics printer being used.


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## learning (May 19, 2006)

adamant said:


> you would think that Unikon would get compatable with the newer printers!! i seen at out club a old dot matrics printer being used.


It is not a matter of being a dot matrix or not. There are many dot matrix printers that won't work. The problem is that you must have a printer with an internal drive. In other words, if your printer comes with a CD that has the drivers on it that must be installed on the computer, it won't work with UNIKON. That includes just about every printer out there. Several years ago the industry went to external drives because the internal drives made them so slow. When they made this shift UNIKON became obsolete unless you have a stockpile of dinosaur printers (which our club has about six of them). 

UNIKON has shown absolutely no interest in updating their setup and is not interested in hearing about it. Believe me, I know. It is an absolute deal breaker for an otherwise o.k. unit, at least in my opinion.

Dan


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

learning said:


> It is not a matter of being a dot matrix or not. There are many dot matrix printers that won't work. The problem is that you must have a printer with an internal drive. In other words, if your printer comes with a CD that has the drivers on it that must be installed on the computer, it won't work with UNIKON. That includes just about every printer out there. Several years ago the industry went to external drives because the internal drives made them so slow. When they made this shift UNIKON became obsolete unless you have a stockpile of dinosaur printers (which our club has about six of them).
> 
> UNIKON has shown absolutely no interest in updating their setup and is not interested in hearing about it. Believe me, I know. It is an absolute deal breaker for an otherwise o.k. unit, at least in my opinion.
> 
> Dan


See.....I give everyone the straight scoop as to which Unit to buy...but I don't list the dozen reasons why. Spend a season trying to work with all that old outdated junk and everyone will soon understand why a club should simply bite the bullet and purchase M-1's or G-2's. Someone shows up with a UNIKON piece of crap and I will do them a favor and throw it in the trash !! 
But, pigeon guys are often on the "cheap" side, so to save a buck or two, they will put the Race Secretary through all kinds of pain. If I had my way, I would smash every last UNIKON with a hammer.


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## learning (May 19, 2006)

Warren,

The UNIKON suystem isn't even cheaper than the Benzing. A new system is over $1200 now. Like you say, it is a complete waste of money as far as I am concerned, but when you are dealing with old timers that are sold on it you don't really have a choice.

I can guarentee you one thing, I will not be doing any race secretary duties as long as we are using the UNIKON system!

Dan


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## adamant (Apr 16, 2009)

I have been doing a lot of reading on electronic clocks and u guys are right,the benzing units are the way to go. Affordable and user friendly from what I have been reading. the club that I am joining loves unikon units and the wind up ones. I think my choice is limited to the wind up or unikon.


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## learning (May 19, 2006)

adamant said:


> I have been doing a lot of reading on electronic clocks and u guys are right,the benzing units are the way to go. Affordable and user friendly from what I have been reading. the club that I am joining loves unikon units and the wind up ones. I think my choice is limited to the wind up or unikon.


As a simple user, the UNIKON will be fine. There is nothing wrong with it on that end. It is as a race secretary that the faults with it become evident. If the choice is UNIKON or manual and I had the money, I would definitely go with the UNIKON. Any electronic unit is going to be much easier on the birds as well as the fancier. If I was starting a new club though, I would deffinitely go with one of the other manufacturers.

Dan


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

learning said:


> As a simple user, the UNIKON will be fine. There is nothing wrong with it on that end. It is as a race secretary that the faults with it become evident. If the choice is UNIKON or manual and I had the money, I would definitely go with the UNIKON. Any electronic unit is going to be much easier on the birds as well as the fancier. If I was starting a new club though, I would deffinitely go with one of the other manufacturers.
> 
> Dan


Yeah...if all one has to do is walk in the door and hand your clock to a race secretary and he has to figure it out, that is one thing. And like the one post said, his club uses that make and then it's either that or a wind up....well, once you have enjoyed an electronic clock...where you don't even have to be there....it's a long hard road back to using a wind up job. Don't think I could go down that road again......And my guess is, once a bunch of old guys have invested in one particular model, it may be a very long time before they ever upgrade. If faced with that kind of choice, I guess I would try to find a used electronic model and just deal with it.


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## irishsyndicate (Sep 19, 2008)

I have a used Unikon for sale (clubmember went into foreclosure and needed money). Feel free to contact me for more info.

Our club of 27+ members uses the Unikon system just fine. We can figure a race in less than 10 minutes with automatic uploads to WinSpeed without any problems. And we do also use updated printers. I am not sure why all the "Unikon bashing" - it poses no additional problems than any other clock. In fact in another club that I also fly that has Benzings, it takes them 1 hour to figure a race because they do the Benzings manually - go figure 


The Unikon is simple, reliable. I can get into "supplier" issues and support with Benzings, but that's another thread and nightmare.

Bottom line is: use the clock that your club uses!


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## Lovebirds (Sep 6, 2002)

irishsyndicate said:


> I have a used Unikon for sale (clubmember went into foreclosure and needed money). Feel free to contact me for more info.
> 
> Our club of 27+ members uses the Unikon system just fine. We can figure a race in less than 10 minutes with automatic uploads to WinSpeed without any problems. And we do also use updated printers. I am not sure why all the "Unikon bashing" - it poses no additional problems than any other clock. In fact in another club that I also fly that has Benzings, it takes them 1 hour to figure a race because* they do the Benzings manually *- go figure
> 
> ...


What do you mean? We use the Benzing too. Our biggest problem is the printers. It takes FOREVER to print the sheets.


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## adamant (Apr 16, 2009)

Pm me the info on the clock


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## kalapati (Aug 29, 2006)

Lovebirds said:


> What do you mean? We use the Benzing too. Our biggest problem is the printers. It takes FOREVER to print the sheets.



you may be using an inkjet printer and it really takes forever to print. try using a laserjet like the hp laserjet 1200. they are compatible with benzing system and it's real fast. BTW you can buy them cheap thru ebay.

also the trick in acquiring fast laserjets compatible with benzing system is that it should support " direct text printing with the `us-ascii' charset". here's a link that can tell if a printer model has it. (under Miscellaneous it should sayrinter supports direct text printing with the `us-ascii' charset.)

http://openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi

http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-LaserJet_1200


kalapati
San Diego
http://bluebarloft.from-ca.com:81/Jview.htm


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## Lakeview (Jul 14, 2009)

*Clocks*

I use Tarus, great


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## Homers (Mar 15, 2011)

Currently using Unikon and Bricon at the Southern California Y2K Club, flying 395Concourse.org

contact me
[email protected]


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## scotthorn (Nov 3, 2010)

All of the clubs in San Antonio and Austin Texas use TauRIS as well as other clubs across the country. TauRIS equates to QUALITY. 4 Fanciers can race out of 1 clock and the clock can hold 1,000 pigeons. Training birds can be clocked along with your race birds. You can print your training birds and you can print your race birds before the race is figured. You can enter one race in one club and go to another club and enter another race. I am a TauRIS dealer and fully support every club and individual that uses TauRIS. I will be going to Germany in May 2011 to be fully trained to do the clock maintenance here in the US instead of having to send the clocks to Germany. Please visit my website: www.tauris.us or send email to: [email protected] 
Sincerely,
Scott Horn


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## Crazy Pete (Nov 13, 2008)

Sure use Benzing send your money over seas, Just what ever happened to buy American. We use Unicon and as race sec I don't have a problem, its better than Bricon. Try using the HP desk jet 952 c printer it works just fine for us. Call Deister they have a list of printers that can be used.


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## pigeon_racer (Jan 12, 2009)

I've read all the posts thus far and all I have seen is personal preference bashing of another brand that you are not intimately familiar with using. The decent information contained so far has been contributed by the members that had solutions to another members problems, also hearing from a manufacturer's rep was refreshing and informative. It seems that most of the brands are all readily used and accepted somewhere in the world with the exception of maybe Bricon, possibly because it is a relatively new player. I place the blame with the companies that market these clocks because of terrible user manuals for club secrtaries. If they really want to prove that they think that their brand is better than all the others, make a layman's club secretary's manual to help them understand all the quirks of their system. The other thing that would help immensely would to have factory reps give free seminars to the poor club secretaries that have to support those systems. Those Club Race Secretaries derserve several medals!!!


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