That's another good point.

One other thing that would explain some of it - it doesn't make a lot of sense that all these errors have been because of the microphone or button being triggered - as the pauses are very short and someone (an official or the scorer) would have to restart the clock if the system tripped.

Most of these appear to be pauses that nobody recognizes, so therefore nobody is restarting the clock. It appears the clock is stopping and starting on its own. Could still be the PTS, but it seems to be a malfunction rather than the signal being tripped accidentally.

Then we are talking software or hardware problem and that is difficult to pinpoint and fix.

AFAIK, the PTS not only detects one frequency but all three frequencies coming out of the whistle. Not only does it detect their presence but it reacts to a sudden increase in their level. So, noise around the arena shouldn't both contain substantial amounts of the three frequencies of the Fox40 and suddenly increase in intensity at the same time.

My guess, as and Engineer, is that it is not the sound that is being mis-detected but a malfunction somewhere else in the system.

Also, given that PTS only stops the clock on the whistle, what makes it start back????

Could it be that switches in the belt packs, which have buttons to start/stop the clock, are starting to fail after a few years of use....from years of vibrations from running up/down the floor and getting tossed around after the game.

It could also be radio interference....but it short pauses would not be likely.

My best guess would be that the clock operator is resting his finger on the button ready press it and, accidentally or deliberately, slightly presses the button such that it both stops then re-starts the clock. It does seem to have only happened when the clock operator's team has the ball in the closing seconds of a close game where the home team was trying to tie/win the game on a last second shot.

I have been thinking along the same lines. If PTS were erroneously picking up a whistle, it would stop the clock. You'd see very lengthy pauses as the clock remains stopped until somebody notices and restarts it.

Also, my understanding of PTS is that the switch on the belt pack only starts the clock. It will not stop it. So it shouldn't be anything like a nervous rookie fiddling with the switch.

Since the belt pack is capable of sending both the start and stop signal, it could still be something going on inside a belt pack that's starting to go south after a few years of being jogged around so much. But it would be remarkable indeed for it be sending a stop then start every time.

Could be in the PTS receiver. Could be in the clock itself. Could be in the timer's controller.

Could be the home school timer.

It could also be the case that all these timing issues we're suddenly seeing are merely a result of being aware of the issue and looking to find them where we never did before. Perhaps they are happening way more often than we think, but we have just never looked to see if the clock "lost" a second somewhere in the first half.

The exact same thing happened in one of the ESPN games last night, but in the first few seconds of the second half.

Basically, with 19:45 to go, team inbounds at their backcourt endline. The clock started and I saw the T with his hand on the belt pack, so I believe he started the clock correctly. The clock counted down to 19:44, then stopped.

About the time the team got to halfcourt, the L saw the stopped clock and whistled play dead. At around this same time, the clock actually started and ran for several seconds before someone got it stopped again.

The bottom line was that now the clock was about right, so they just inbounded the ball and everything worked fine from then on. But, there was definitely an odd pause of several seconds. I assumed that the clock had one of these mystery stops and someone noticed and got it restarted right about the time the L noticed and blew the play dead. At the beginning of the second half, it's not such a big deal, but the way it's been happening at the end of games is a real problem.

JT