RC Dork: The RC history Part 9

Crawling into a new discipline of RC.

Yes, we saw a crawler video on youtube. It looked like fun to the both of us, it was slow enough for the offspring and I figured it would teach him a thing or 2 about steering and throttle control. So I bought a couple of FTX Outback Mini 1:24 scale micro crawlers. And it was an instant hit.

FTX Outback Mini, finally, my own pic :)

Now we weren't ripping up the livingroom, we were tearing it apart to create obstacles and try to get our little crawlers over them. We had finally found *our* RC hobby. My RC hobby had always been about the thrill of the speed, but this crawling, it was so relaxing. The crawler bug bit, and it bit hard. Soon I bought an Axial SCX10-II kit for myself followed by a second SCX10-II (Deadbolt RTR) a few months later. I also joined a local RC club, who have a off-road circuit and a crawler track.

My 2 Axial SCX10-IIs

And hey, whaddaya know, the kid liked crawling too. But I told him, that I wasn't going to buy him anymore RC vehicles for him. He had to want it enough to save up for it himself. He was reluctant at first, because the bar was set pretty high for him. But he stuck with it. To motivate him and to give him some more options to choose from, I told him I'd double his savings if he found the crawler he was going for and stuck with it. And he did it. One day I saw the Carisma SCA-1E Lynx ORV online. I knew my kid would like the styling and the chassis was quite affordable and got decent reviews.

My kids Carisma SCA-1E ORV (after I added some lights)

I showed him some pictures and he fell in love. He would have had to save up all of his allowance to be able to buy it in December, but as there is at least a chance of nice weather now, my better half decided to lend him the money, so he could still enjoy his very own crawler before the weather turns all nasty.

So, that's just about it for my RC story so far. I may have left out a few vehicles, but I'm sure they'll pop up in future posts at some point. I hope you will join me on my (and my kids) further RC journeys.


Greetings,

    RC Dork

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 7

The revival.

I had rediscovered another old love, my love for music and over the years this love for music grew into a new hobby: Headphones. This is not really relevant, but I felt like mentioning it so you won't think I spent a decade without hobbies :P
One day, I found my old Corally C4.1 in a box in the attic, I think I was looking for Christmas decorations or something. And the sight of that chassis in that box instantly brought me joy. I immediately knew what to do. I had to revive the old C4.1.

Not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

I ordered a bunch of parts to give it new life. A brushless motor with a matching ESC, a new LiPo saddle pack and some new rubber. Well, things had changed a bit over the years. The battery didn't fit any of the standard mounting options so I had to stick it in with dual sided tape, which was a pain, as I didn't want to risk charging in the car. The new motor was so powerful that the ball diffs wore out in the runtime of a single battery and spares were extremely hard to find. I found some compatible parts, but the chassis, while fully featured was a pain to work on if you didn't want to take it apart completely. I had some fun, I wanted more, but I decided to abandon this project to save the chassis for historic purposes. That, and there were even less suitable spots to run an on-road competition grade RC in the area I now lived.
But my son was growing up, and started to show an interest in Monstertrucks on tv.
So, I had an idea. I would buy a small 1:18 scale cheap semi-hobbygrade monstertruck, give off-road a second chance and see if my son would like it too. If we liked it, I planned on buying a nicer monstertruck for myself and passing the small one on to my son.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 6

The dark ages.

My brother in law had moved in with his girlfriend and now lived far away. Racing alone was no fun. Occasionally I would come across other parkinglot bashers, but I wasn't really welcome to join them, as my competition grade car was faster than even their quickest 3 speed Nitro. I got caught up in life, work, started hanging out with a group of 1:1 street racers, started to have more problems with my ADD (which I didn't know I had at the time), came close to completely blowing it with my girlfriend (it all worked out in the end, as you might have guessed from the fact that I referred to my RC buddy as brother in law), lost my job, found a new one, but in general went through a pretty dark time. I didn't notice it a lot back then, but looking back, it was pretty bad.
RC went on the back burner again. And life took my wife and myself through some pretty dark times. We moved to another city for work, had too many cancer related deaths in the family, including my mother in law (it's just not fair, you finally find a good one and then they bail out on you :( ). Lost my job twice in 6 months to outsourcing only 2 years after moving to a new city for that job (the 2nd time was a similar job at a different company, in the same city i used to work before I moved. The second time I lost my job came just after I had found out I was going to become a dad. But by now I had married the girl I loved, bought a house, had 2 awesome pet bunnies and a psycho dingo for a dog. And I would be a dad soon... So I had a lot going for me too. I decided not to mope around and went looking for a new job. Found it, and managed to tell my old boss to go f#ck himself before the end date of my expiring contract was reached. As you can imagine, there was little place and time for RC in my life. But the love never died.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 5

The Racing days.

The 1:10 tourers had my preference after the disastrous experience with the messed up 2nd hand Kyosho Ultima ST. I had been looking at Tamiya kits, but couldn't really decide what to get. Then, I stumbled across a Corally C4.1. A competition grade chassis with a 40% discount at a hobbyshop. They were shifting focus to model trains, so all the RC stuff went on sale. I decided then and there that this was the chassis for me. The kit and the build was of a whole different level than the ones I had worked on before. Carbon fiber, graphite, glass fiber reenforced plastics, aluminium bulkheads, ball diffs, it had it all. I added a 12 Triple motor, a no turn limit ESC and a Nissan Skyline R34 body. Boy was this thing FAST, it made my Nitro cars look like kids toys (and they were no slouches either). Soon I realised that just a few milimeters of groundclearance brought along some problems when racing parking lots. The last bash spot we had had a nice smooth asphalt surface, but even the tiniest bit of debris sent the car out of control if you were unlucky and happened to hit it the wrong way.

Not mine, but one just like it, right down to the NiMH cells used. Picture courtesy of the internet.

It was time for the next phase in my hobby. I joined a RC club. But they were just a bit too far from home, and I still had some sort of a social life back then, so I couldn't visit the practice days very often. The club was Electro only, so my brother in law didn't join as he was still running Nitro. I participated in the club competition, but with no time to put in any practice it wasn't much fun as even 10 year olds were able to run better laps than I did. But with a chassis with all the bells and whistles and desparate to have at least one race where I didn't end last I did learn a lot about setting up on road cars. Switched my body to a Dodge Stratus, which was a downforce monster at the time. Bought a set-up board, learned about how to fine tune gearing to the track. And in one short moment of glory, I managed to finish a race in 8th place (out of 10 drivers). They say you should quit while you're ahead, so I cancelled my membership and went back to the parking lots.

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.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 3

My first kit.

My love for RC went on the back burner for a few years. We moved to a new town, high school happened, music, computers and other things big kids do took up my free time. I lusted after the Tamiya kits the local hobby shop had on display for years, but I was never able to afford them as I blew all my money on CDs, concerts and beer.
But once I was old enough to start driving, I got an after school job and bought a car (my moms old car, which was actually cheaper than a Tamiya kit at the time). Well, the car didn't live long, so I borrowed money from my parents and bought a classic Mini Cooper. A car I had loved since I saw my kindergarten teacher drive one. I had a few more after school jobs to pay off my debt, and at one point, I had some money saved up and bought a Tamiya M-Chassis based Mini Cooper.
The idea was to make a replica of my real car, but little did I know about painting polycarbonate bodies. Free advice: Never paint an RC body with metallic red and back it with black to make it look darker. It will hardly look darker, just dirtier and it will highlight every single imperfection in the red paintjob. Even if my little kit didn't turn out like I wanted it to at all, my love for RC was alive and kicking again.

Over time, this little car was upgraded a few times. Full ball bearings, limited edition aluminium 4-spoke revolution wheels (the ones I wanted on my real car), a LRP Runner ESC, bigger capacity battery, better tires. It was so much fun to drive, almost as much as my 1:1 Mini. Unfortunately, it was the M03 chassis, and parts/hopup support was mediocre at best. So when I, once again, broke a few parts that would have been pretty expensive to replace, the little Mini was retired. I still have it though, in all its busted up glory. I'll add some pics once I dig it out from the attic.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 2

A small step up.

When I was a little older, Santa (well, his brother Sinterklaas, or actually my parents) brought me a Bandai Black Max, a (for those days) futuristic looking buggy. Still toy grade, still non-proportional steering, but this one actually had some speed and power to it.

Again, not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

Enough power to keep up with my the Nikko Turbo Panther that one of my friends had. And to make me break a steering knuckle in the first few weeks I had it. I was devastated, but my dad somehow managed to get a set of cast aluminium steering knuckles for it. This vehicle actually had a low and a high gear, but the high gear was pretty much useless, as the distance it took to get up to speed was just about as long as the range of the transmitter. Over time I broke off parts of the rear wing in some spectacular crashes and I wore down the tires to beyond slicks.
I can't really remember what happened to this car, so I assume that my parents threw out its worn down carcass at some point.

P.S. If you have one of these for sale, in decent working condition and for a reasonable price, drop me a message :)

RC Dork: The RC history Part 1

The introduction.

Hey there! How nice of you to visit my little corner of the web. As this is all new to me too, I'll start by introducing myself. And taking you along through the history of my RC hobby seems like a fun way to do that. Over the next few days I'll post a bit about my journey through RC every day.

My name is Pepijn (yeah, if you don't speak Dutch, don't bother trying to pronounce the :P ) and as you might have guessed by now, I'm from the Netherlands. And in various places on the internet, you can find me under the name RC Dork (or RCDork, or RCDork79). I've been into RC vehicles for most of my life although it has varied a bit how active I have been over the years as life tends to get in the way of things. I have played around with a quadcopter and some boats for a bit, but my first and true RC love has 4 wheels.

Not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

It all started out somewhere in the 80s of the 20th century, when I used my savings to buy a Nikko Big Horn toy grade RC. A funny little car, somewhat based off an early 80s Isuzu Big Horn/Trooper. It was a fixed axle rear wheel drive with approximately zero torque (carpets were a challenge), it had non-proportional steering and was pretty horrible to drive. But it had a working winch and with all its shortcomings it was a good way to learn how to drive an RC. I really loved the thing to death. And at some point, it actually died. At the time I wasn't really concerned with preserving childhood memories and my curiosity got the better of me, so I took it apart. It's gone now, but I think I may have the battery cover somewhere in a box in the attic.

P.S. If you have one of these for sale, in decent working condition and for a reasonable price, drop me a message :)