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OK, here's the situation.

I'm to measure a course (actually remeasure one whose certification is to expire shortly).

There's a calibration course just off the race course near midway. I'll be staying near the finish of the course (it's a point to point layout).

Although it doesn't follow the directions in the manual, would it be acceptable to ride from the finish to a midpoint and take a reading - detour to calibrate, go back to the midpoint and ride to the start, back to the midpoint, take another reading, detour and recalibrate, then ride from midpoint to the finish?

The entire ride should take a little over an hour, and will be done in the pre-dawn hours due to traffic, so there should be little temperature change, thus little change in the constant.

Thoughts and opinions appreciated.
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I guess when you calibrate you would find how many counts you need to ride the distance to the start(with SCPF).

Hence, on the way back to the finish you would ride the course as you measured it and then make a comparison between the 2 rides to see if they are within the .08%.

All this said, I feel the course would probably be accurate. I would not want to accept this from any measurer, but in a special case with an experienced measurer it could fly.
I think your initial proposal pushes the envelope more than a little bit. You're essentially asking to measure with an uncalibrated bicycle, and although the bicycle would have been calibrated for both of the start to midpoint rides, it would have been calibrated for neither of the rides from the midpoint to the finish.

I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this myself, and I certainly would not endorse if if even an experienced measurer proposed to me.

What do you save here- the time involved in driving to and from the midpoint of a course that takes half an hour per ride to measure?

The plan suggested in your second post sounds a lot better.
AS it turned out, I was staying closer to the midpoint cal course than to either end of the race course. So I calibrated, rode to midpoint, measured course Mid to Start, Start to Finish, Finish to Midpoint, then back to cal course.

Of course, right after that I had the brilliant idea to add 200-400-600-800-1,000m To Go marks. Could have easily done that during Finish to Midpoint ride, but didn't think of it. So I drove to the finish and rode out 1,000m and back. Didn't calibrate again afterward, but since these are not certified splits I don't think it matters. The race organizers and runners were appreciative of them, though.

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