Speedway Tilburg track maintenance & layout update

It's not all about crawling. As I wanted to do more than crawling the backyard and go to the occasional crawler meet now and then, I decided to join a local RC club last month. Yeah, they have a crawler track too, but the main focus of the club is the faster off-road stuff.
The club really has quite an interesting history, from a couple of friends that shared a hobby, to a club with their own racetrack. And a track needs maintenance, so a bunch of volunteers sacrificed their free Sunday for 2 weeks in a row to get the work done. I wasn't able to join on the first Sunday, but yesterday I was there to support my fellow racers and help out with the work.

Almost done

And while I feel like I did very little (I mean, all I did was do some digging, cut some Astroturf*, carry some rolls of the stuff, think of some ways to put the pieces together on the track and make some smartass comments), it really felt like it was appreciated.

It was cool to see how a group of people that share a hobby can come together and work their asses off, have fun at the same time (the only thing faster than the RC buggies were the wisecracks flying around). And the ultimate reward was that, at the end of the day, the first laps around the updated track could be driven.

So thank you to all the people who got their hands dirty. I'm looking forward to trying out the track, even though my China Special buggy will probably look like a joke compared to the other vehicles out there... But then again, I like a good joke...


*Astroturf as in not necessarily actual Astroturf, but just using the term to illustrate the type of material as it is still early and right now I can't think of the English generic name for the stuff.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 8

The next generation.

Well, it took a lot of getting used to the high center of gravity of a monstertruck when coming from on-road. But it was fun. I had fun, my kid sayd he loved it too. So I gave the little truck to him and bought a HPI Racing Bullet Flux MT for myself. We went out to drive our trucks a few times, but I noticed my kid didn't seem to enjoy it much. I was pissed off, I only went with the monstertrucks because he liked them. Had he not said he wanted this, I would have gone with a very different RC vehicle. The little one tends to keep things inside, but after a while I managed to figure out that he was overwhelmed by the speed of his truck. I told him he should have told me before, because we can fix such things. So I soldered together a speed limiter and installed that in his truck, but he was still not confident.

Not ours, but ones just like them. Pictures courtesy of the internet.

So I bought a couple of cheap 1:28 scale trucks, so he could practice driving without having to worry. We made a cardboard ramp and blasted around the livingroom. We both got a lot better with the trucks, but he was still scared of the speed.
In the mean time, I kept bashing with the HPI Bullet as well, but usually not much more than running up and down the street and doing jumps over the speedbumps. My better half didn't like us ripping up the livingroom, the seasons changed and the weather outside was wet and nasty so street bashing was not much fun. And then we made a discovery.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 4

The Nitro days.

After the little M03, I wanted to take it to another level. So at the hobbyshop close to where I worked, I picked up a Carson CR4. A 4WD Nitro powered 1:10 tourer, with a 2-speed gearbox and a Porsche 911 GT3 body. It was a fun car, fast too. And noisy and smelly and greasy and a pain to adjust the engine every single time I took it out. But I loved it. My brother in law picked up the bug as well and bought a Tamiya Nitro. We tore up the local parking lots together and as I wanted to try something other than on-road, I bought a 2nd hand Kyosho Ultima ST (and got a Kyosho PureTen GP Alpha to go with it for free).

Not mine, but ones just like them. Pictures courtesy of the internet.

The Ultima proved to be impossible to set up right and tore up slipper pads like mad. By the time I figured out what the problem was, it needed so many repairs that I decided not to bother with it anymore. As parts support for the Carson CR4 started to dry up in my local shops, I decided to strip whatever I could use and put it on the PureTen chassis, to build the ultimate parkinglot racer. I had tons of fun and learned a lot about setting up RC cars in those days. But local development and real estate projects started to limit the places suitable to run. After a while, there were only 2 suitable spots left in our area. And the best of them now had a fence and was locked up after business hours. The last suitable spot was close to peoples homes and there were complaints about the noise. I didn't want to give up my hobby, so it was time to look into Electro RC again.