We would not recommend putting tags straight onto the bib with no spacing. Sure it is a poor mans way of timing but the day it rains hard, or the athletes wear tight fitting vests in hot conditions, will be the day you start missing reads. Think of the spacer as an insurance policy. Having said that you would still expect something like 96% of tags to be read without a spacer most of the time. With twin tags that might be 99%. To miss one in 100 is not really good enough for an important race!

There are a number of ways to prepare a foam spacer. The most popular is to just get adhesive backed EVA foam sheet cut up at an establishment like Kinkos (USA). You are looking at a few cents per spacer. Otherwise other timers have used single sided adhesive foam on roll and precut these strips to match the length of the tag.

RFID Race Timing Systems is also working on a precut foam spacer to match the width of the most popular tags. More on this in the future.

Finally we have been working with a company to produce a high quality fully finished tag on foam spacer (printed and encoded as an option) and can get the pricing below 40c each if bought in minimum qantities of 20,000 tags. Prices will be further reduced at higher quantities.

Please email us at info@rfidtiming.com for more details.

Do you have any suppliers who can provide us with rolls of spacers that we can print on (preferably with the tag under the spacer so we dont need to manually apply the spacer on top of the tag on the back of the bib.

And as a poor mans solution, is it possible to just put a standard wet mount tag on the front of the bib rather than the back?