Stan Pope wrote: The mini maglite was used to "back light" the display?
Nope- It's a 7 year old timer with the red LED displays, and those are fine.
The burned out LED was the infra-red that is used to make the beam for the lane 1 detector at the finish line. So when the timer was set up, lane 1 showed a "c" indicating a connection failure. After checking and re-checking the alignment, we got out a flashlight to test it the detector.
The flashlight is hot enough that the infra-red detectors can see it, so we duct-taped the flashlight in place on the top bar next to the infra-red LEDs and aimed down at the detector. The "c" goes away, and you can function normally.
My Nephew's pack has a different brand of timer that experienced the same failure last year, and we were able to rig it the same way. (Hopefully they got it fixed properly before this year. He's crossed over so I don't know.... That might actually be worth a phone call to remind them!)
The company that makes those timers hasn't been in business anywhere near that long.
