remembering the old hobby

[Kevin Olson]

Spring cleaning the basement and orginized the R/C work bench. Been 10 years since my son and I raced these stupid little cars as we called them. One summer we raced a weekly parking lot series where he took 1st place. That was a 1/10 scale gas powered on road series. Lots of good drivers but he came out on top. That same summer we did a out of town series that raced in Blue Springs Missouri and Lincoln Nebraska. 1/10 scale gas. Each of those was a 450 mile one way drive for us. The points came down to the last race of 6 for the series between him and another guy. The winner would take the series. I misscalculated a fuel stop and he ran out of gas. Have to fuel every 5 minutes in a 20 minute race(ugh) but pulled off a second place for the series. So close! Dumb dad! The bodies pictured are on top are 1/8 scale 4 wheel drive gas car with the car on the left. Actually the fuel was 30%nitro and 70%methanol. Smells like the top fuel drag cars. Very cool! Lower left are the Trans Am bodied car that is reminiscent of the real TA racers back in the day. 1970 cuda is what I chose. Raced indoor on a special carpet. Electric powered. Lower right are 1/12 scale bodies electric raced on carpet. The lonely car up front is the 1/10 gas he won everything with. The body must be buried in the traveling cases we hauled everythin in. But look very similar to any sedan on the road today. The 1/8 can stretch her legs out to about 60mph at the end of the straight and the 1/10 is close to that but does not corner as well due to smaller tires. The 1/12 scale is super fast on the small carpet tracks and corners like shes on rails. Look it up on youtube. They are crazy fast! Miss those days. That summer we burned 8 gallons of fuel in all the racing we did. Racers could not believe we used that much. Got out because our budget could not keep up with technology.  Now I have the much cheaper addicting blacksmith hobby. Maybe one day we can go back racing. Only time will tell. 

[ausfire]

Must have brought back some memories. You weren't tempted to fire one up just for old time's sake?

[Kevin Olson]

we have from time to time. The nitro cars are cool but we have to configure power to the starter box and get radio and reciever batteries that work. Its a process to do so it dont happen very often unfortunately. :-(

[Frosty]

Ah, the smell of 30% nitro methane fuel burning! I crashed a number of roundy round planes, RC were just too expensive to crash learning to fly.

Modern RC controllers and servos are WAY cheaper than they were even a couple years ago and batteries much MUCH better. Look at how inexpensive drones are now. An upgrade could have you sitting in the driver's seat wearing VR glasses. Hmmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Latticino]

23 minutes ago, Frosty said:

I crashed a number of roundy round planes, RC were just too expensive to crash learning to fly

My one foray into flying control line ended very badly (I made it from a design in an old modeling magazine.  .049 motor, flying saucer shape.  went up, went down...many pieces).  My power ships were all Free Flight, but mostly I competed with gliders.  Times have certainly changed.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

My Dad was big into u-control planes. Mc Coy Redheads were a favorite engine of his. I have a Ringmaster JR built that I never flew with a Fox 15 on it. Dad also had two Dooling 61 tether cars. One did 114 mph and the other did 121 mph.  Mom built a free flight while Dad was station at Wiesbaden AFB during the Berlin Airlift. That plane had a 1/2 cc diesel engine.  We still have the engines, planes, and cars. Dad also did the model HO trains for Christmas.

My childhood hobbies were wood carving, and leather working. I also built quite a few plastic model airplanes - Monogram, Revell.