Planning for the British Summer
Well, having had our glorious british spring, so the Summer is here, and we all know what that brings… rain!
Obviously, electricity and water don’t mix too well, but given we’re British, we’ll race whatever! So how to keep things from going pop?
Well, on display at the first national were a lot of different methods to keep water out, and magic smoke in…
-
- Duct Tape – the choice of champions…
-
- Fish food pots are a popular choices!
-
- Resorting to brushed is also an option…
-
- Custom made ATL fuel cell styley!
-
- Maplin box, with metal base plate… & Snorkel!
-
- Maplin box again, with snorkel & external connectors for a rapid change…. if you plug them in right!
Written by ed.
Tamiyaddiction part 1
“The term addiction can be used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user himself to his or her individual health, mental state or social life”.
Thanks to Wikipedia I can confirm I am an addict.
My name is Mark and I am hopelessly addicted to Tamiya.
When Simon asked me, somewhat tongue in cheek, to write an article about my collection of Tamiya RC cars, I thought OK I’ll just let you all know I have built up a small collection of cars and I enjoy a couple of shelves in the spare bedroom that house a few of my favourites.
But then I got to thinking, I should say about the cupboard full of NIB kits and the fact that the loft has all the ones in it that don’t fit in the cupboard. Which is OK because that leaves space in the loft for all the NIB body sets and NIP spares for the restoration of several cars. So hands up who knows what NIB and NIP stand for? I have found these acronyms invaluable in finding ‘new in box’ and ‘new in pack’ items to complete ‘the collection’ using auction sites.
Which is what Simon wanted me to wax lyrical about. ‘The collection’.
This is how it began.
Since before I can remember I have been fascinated with cars and when dad came home in 1986 with a Tamiya Holiday Buggy. Sporting a massive (literally) 6v of power and a Mabuchi 380 motor I have been hooked by the red and white Tamiya logo. The red side meaning passion and the blue side meaning precision. Well our passion was ignited and in time my 13 year old thumbs would cope with the precision of racing these bad boys around our local race track.
We lusted after the more powerful cars. The Fox, Boomerang, Hotshot, and the pinnacle of all things Tamiya the Avante. Never earning enough from the paper round to upgrade to the latest model. Tantalisingly close but always out of reach. We raced our Hornets and Sand Rovers on the beach, in the forest, on holiday, after school, even at school when it was show and tell, I can tell you all my classmates confirmed me as the single biggest geek known to man that day.
We only paused to charge our 7.2V 1200mAh batteries on an old 12V battery and a simple resistor charger. Not even a timer in those days, leave it too long and come back to a pile of smoking metal and acid. Not the safest thing in the hands of easily distracted teens!
It was relentless, new tyres, new bodyshells my poor parents must have been going insane. No homework got done, very little revision. How things have changed as I write this article from my work bench trying to look busy on proper work stuff. Halcyon days indeed.
Then as quickly as it started it was all over. College, real cars, Uni and perhaps the single biggest drain in any man’s life – girls.
But it lurked. It waited. It waited for 10 whole years before sneaking into a men’s magazine. FHM, August 1999 in among the semi clad babes and essential man articles sat two small pictures a Subaru Impreza and a Mini Cooper and a tiny red and white logo. Something distant stirred, those stars, the superb scale bodyshells, those two words ‘radio controlled’. Were Tamiya selling an actual Mini Cooper and a Subaru Impreza? What had happened to the off road buggies? Before I knew it I was stood in the local model shop staring in wonder at shelf upon shelf of proper scale RC cars. The ubiquitous Impreza, Toyota Corolla WRC, Evo IV, BMW Z3, no off road buggies but it didn’t seem to matter. I had to have one. Just one, it couldn’t hurt, could it? After much deliberation I was leaving the shop with a shiny new Subaru Impreza on a TL-01 chassis.
And then came the killer blow, my new best friend Richard said the immortal words to me. “Are you going to race it?” Race it? Where? when? how?
I know now that Tamiya had won. I tried deserting the fold for years but they had me.
Worse was to come though Tamiya had two aces up their sleeve.
