Sunday at PDA

Well while leader was at RHR pushing the boundaries [he means hitting the fence - Si] of off road. The rest of the Lazy team were enjoying another simply brilliant day at PDA, Bicestershire.

It was the final round of the winter championship and it brought out the big guns for the two respective titles. Staples, Truman, Rasey and Howett

We managed to avoid hearing anything about the Ozzie GP and started racing at 10 after a superb breakfast from the kitchen at PDA. Thanks Mrs T you’re the best.

Team RCLazy were gifted brand new hoodies with shiny logos and pointy hats. Good work Si, we can all carry it well now.

Lots of antics during the day, bodyshell vandalism, MAHOOSIVE air from Howett and my 511 doing some rapid laps with some shiny new pink wheels.

The team managed BQ for Rob in 4wd, which he converted into an excellent win after stripping 3 (yes three) spur gears in 3 races. Big thumbs up for some amazing jumping action keeping the crowd well and truly entertained. Topped only by him falling out of his chair a lot.

Haskell Jr made B2 and was unlucky to not convert it to a win. Dodgy marshalling was a bit of a theme…

I made A8 and Staples A4. I made a 4th in one leg of the final and a 6th overall which made my day and Gray came 4th (I think) overall.

Like I said Championship day and amazingly RCLazy drivers made 3rd (Gray) and 5th (Me) overall. Big thanks to all the Truman’s (even the sleepy ones) for a great series and venue.

Happy days, roll on the regionals.

Robin Hood Raceway Club Meeting

I had some business Oop North, so I planned it around a Robin Hood Raceway club meeting, run by YORCC.

The Track

The RHR track is really quite cool.  Built on top of the site of the old Worksop club track it’s basically a lot of astroturf (of varying types) on top of a big pile of (sandy) soil crafted into a load of bumps and humps.

They designed it with permanent features, such as doubles, tabletops, bomb hole, sweeped banks, and concrete ‘apex islands’.

Hoses then create numerous tracks very easily, and means any layout is really challenging, and different every time.

Cleverly, the apexes often have a feature, such as a lump or hole close to the apex, so if you fall off line you end up falling off something, or going up something, thus slowing you down.

It’s a work of genius, if you get chance to race there do it.  If you get chance to build your own track, build it like this!

Saturday

The kindly land owner let me camp the night before, so I got down there on the Saturday do find a handful of racers doing some testing.

And they weren’t holding back I can tell you, proper car breakages were the order of the day!  Hurrah!  Snap!

I pootled around the track with the RB5, and it wasn’t too good, I think the weighting was all wrong – I realised I was running different lipos.  It needs sorting out.

So the 511 went on track instead, a good idea seeing as I was entered for 4wd for the Sunday meeting.  It was nice, until I flipped it and then it refused to go again. Seems the land owner killed it with a Fandango or something…

Actually, I think the (LRP) motor sensor board or connector or something went awry, that’ll teach me for buying second hand motors…

[Whilst testing the motor I managed to fry the spare car speedo, but don't tell anyone, I reversed-polaritised it...   Duh...  So the spare car is as usual incomplete...]

The 511 had a bit of understeer, pushing mid and exit, I tried newer front tyres but that made it snatchy and grip-rolly.  I remembered I’d not put on the shiny blue new 12 degree castor blocks, so I’ve chucked those on now, reset the end-points and I’m sure it’ll be improved.

All we need now is nice weather on the Sunday.  And a jolly good sleep, I’m a bit knackered after the 8 hour drive up here…

Evening: I’ve just spent ages looking at Hupo’s Astro Euros setup, and it’s all familiar, apart from inner top links are a lot lower than mine…  I’ll be doing that then…  I think it will reduce roll, which is good on high-grip?  Oh, and his front top links are longer, I don’t know what that means.  I might ask someone who looks clever.

Sunday

Clocks went forward…  An hour less sleep…

I was woken by the sound of the burger van sneaking around the back of the van, I’d clearly slept like a log.  I peered out of the window and there was half a field full of cars already.  Tents were flapping in the wind in attempts to be erected.

I got up and set up.  And somehow managed to miss the queues for both booking in and practice…  The car was ‘fine’.

After round 1 Moss and Yardy are topping 2 and 4wd.  Whereas I’m DQ after the first round, but hey, there’s about 7 guys below me!  Not last, hurrah!

The car went okay, I didn’t like the inner top link change I made, so I’ve put that back, and it seemed overgeared, down a couple of pinions.

I rolled a good few times and needed marshalling, I think to do okay on this track, as always, slower may be faster…  Great fun track though, hard but enjoyable, I’m loving it!

Round 2 I improved, the motor came off cooler, thankfully.  But still ended up 3 from bottom.  Fastest lap was quicker, the car was okay, needed a bit more stability, so changed the wing for Round 3.  Went down a couple more pinions.

Round 3 I had a nice run, improved by a whole lap, was only marshalled a couple of times, which is good for me, a few other mistakes, but better.  The motor came off hotter again, I think this motor is about to die…  Went back up a pinion to see what happens.  The wing improved it a lot, especially at high speed.

Round 4 was great, the car was good, the motor didn’t go soft (but still coming off at 93 degrees, seems a bit hot to me?) and I drove harder and smoother.  Improved the time again.

So I’m pleased with qualifying, it’s round by round, so I think that means best 2 rounds.  I had a 31, 31, 24, 24 so that made me, err, 32nd…  I’m not sure how all that works to be honest!  No matter, that means I’m not last, and I feel I’ve done my best.

Lots of generators here today, and the award for the quietest has to go to the Honda EX650, old but really really really quiet.  A lot quieter than the Kipor ig1000, which I thought were quiet until I heard the Honda, I nearly tripped over it before I heard it.  I’ll be ebaying of those then.  [Update: found one, £71 spares or repair, runs fine, no output...  umm...]

I always forget to say how the winners are doing, but they’re up there, winning, and I can’t work out how they are going quicker…  Well, I can, they’re just getting it done…

Finals time, 2 leg finals which was nice.  The car was fine (apart from a cracked front shock tower), the motor certainly wasn’t, it was dying rapidly, and to be honest I’m very surprised it kept going. It had no power, jumping was a nightmare, and down the straight I had a nice nap.  I came in 2nd in the end, and got a super trophy too!

The drive home (5 hours) was fine, and my general thoughts on the way were:

• The 511 handles like a dream
• Electronics are the devil
• Robin Hood Raceway is just brilliant
• The chuckle bus seems to prefer Shell fuel

Some random photos…

RCLazy at the first Scalextric Invitational GP

Whilst we were all competing for top honours at the recent PDA 2 dayer, we all got to talking about our younger days and racing those tiny Scalextric cars. So one pint led to another and the Scalextric GP was born.

Monaco, Melbourne and Abu Dhabi were mooted as venues but we thought they just didn’t have the atmosphere required for such an event.

Eventually we decided on my front room. Set in picturesque Totton on the south coast, local amenities include a fish and chip shop, chinese and Dominos. We felt these provided the best selection of catering for the event.

March 18th was chosen for no apparent reason and 7 o’clock was the time.

Leader Crabb arrived promptly with Schumacher Minispikes in a green compound. After pointing out the scale differences and lack of grip on a plastic track he put them away.

We discussed off road and racing tactics whilst waiting 45 minutes for Rob. Who in true F1 style arrived in a helicopter (Seat Leon 1.4 ) and expected a track and us ready to race. Remember this is RC Lazy?

After much Ecclestone-esque track layout discussions we decided on Dominos and a nice figure of eight layout.

The format followed strict guidelines of winner stays on, unless it was Simon and he lost, then he needed ‘practise’. So essentially Simon stays on.

Anyway we had a really great night and some night racing with all the lights off. Well once we could find the controllers in the dark and Simon stopped sitting on the track.

Overall winner was never really decided but everyone’s a winner in the RC Lazy Team.

Thanks to Dominos for providing an excellent internet based system of ordering take away food, it gave Rob something to do while me and Si built the track.

Next round, somewhere at some time in the future. If only Bernie ran such a tight ship as RCLazy…

TORCH – Titchfield Off Road Car Hants

Last Sunday I popped over the other side of Southampton to TORCH – Titchfield Off Road Club Hants, a neat astro track that’s been there for years, but has been keeping itself quiet.  We drove away saying why on earth had we never been there before!

They race on a Sunday morning, and like to crack on with the racing at 9am, to get home for a nice lunch. Not such a bad thing actually, as you can then if you wish stick around for a bit of testing and then head off, making a fuller day of it if you prefer.  There are plans for some all day meetings in the near future.

The track is mature, a traditional 90s off-road track, relatively flat, a couple of humps, and lots of little bumps.

They’re working on it this year to make improvements – the only ones it really needs (in my opinion) is to make it a bit wider in places (perhaps by making it shorter) and to include more 3 dimensional features.  In the afternoon they made a start on the 3d features by adding an excellent table top.

The lap length is rather long, lots of full speed sections but the track flows well, and reward neat smooth lines.  It’s certainly not an easy track, it’s nicely challenging to get good lines.

About 18 racers turned up, split evenly between 2 and 4wd. The nice sunny day brought the track grip up, and it was sensationally grippy. It seems that Schumacher BLUE minispikes are the order of the day here, with possibly 2wd fronts on 4wd. There’s huge amounts of grip available.

There was bizarrely only two heats, and then big gaps in between them.  There could have easily been 4 heats with a couple of minutes between each one and the morning would have flowed very nicely.

They run the usual AMB timing, and have a small selection of handout transponders, if you don’t have PTs.

Ability was pretty good, everyone could get around the track, and some were obviously faster than others.  I was somewhere in the middle of the field.

I loved it.  I’ll definitely be back, it will now be my regular ‘local’ track methinks.

Tamiya TRF 2wd Buggy

It’s been many years since a proper Tamiya 2wd racing buggy. And now finally there’s one on the way.

There’s a pre-production prototype being raced by TRF team drivers, and photos are slowly leaking out.

It was first spotted at the Yatabe Arena being raced by Satoshi Maezumi.  And now there’s (at least) one in the UK, it appeared at PDA piloted by Lee Martin.

(Pics of Lee’s 2wd at PDA by Ross Whitelock, click here to see full set on Ross’ site.)

So from the photos, and the gossip, what does it appear to be so far?

It’s all pretty traditional 2wd layout, rear motor affair, but we don’t expect Tamiya to reinvent the wheel, they know better than that, just improve on what already works.

The details?:

• Moulded  tub chassis
• Rear motor
• Front TRF dampers behind moulded front shock tower
• Rear TRF dampers behind moulded rear shock tower
• Rear wishbones from 511
• Rear hubs from 511
• Rear driveshafts NOT from 511
• Bearing in wheel front wheel fitment
• Cells down centre
• Servo in front of cells
• 511 steering rack
• Body clip wing mounting
• Moulded rear motor guard
• Slipper clutch
• 3 gear gearbox
• 511 type ball diff with geared pulley

It all looks very familiar, suitable for Tamiya to do a normal ‘plastic’ kit, at a cheap price, and a TRF bells and whistles carbon fibre one.

I had a quick chat with Lee, and got a few confirmations out of him, and it’s close to production and the above list is pretty accurate…

One rumour is it is to be released end of May.  There’s the Euros warm-up around then, so I guess we’ll see lots there.  I’m certainly sure we’ll get it this year though.

But, the big question, what will it be called?  211?  212?  Manta Lee?

Has RC Ever Been This Big?

Just lately I’ve been amazed at the amount of effort going into the RC car industry. The sheer number of manufacturers, tracks, racers, specialised press websites etc is so encouraging. Has RC ever had it so good?

The Cars

So many manufacturers are out there these days. Back in the day there used to be the big ones, such as Tamiya, Kyosho, Associated, Schumacher, Yokomo, Losi.

But now we have fantastic efforts coming out of much smaller companies such as Xray, Durango, V-Dezign, Atomic Carbon. And that’s by far not a comprehensive list.

And these new companies are winning too – V-Dezign did jolly well in the recent 12th Euros.

Durango is busy, no sooner has it brought out a 4wd buggy than we’ve seen not one, but two flavours of 2wd prototype.

And Tamiya seems back on form with it’s TRF efforts, topping the touring car and off-road mains everywhere. It too seems to be working on a 2wd buggy as well.

So much development is happening at grass-roots level too. People such as Fabien Simonini busy working on a mid-motor chassis for the RB5. And other’s working on their own custom chassis cars.

It’s all so very healthy, a lot of competition, a lot of manufacturers.

The Racers

RC really does have professional racers these days it seems. Manufacturers are now employing top racers to race and develop products for them.

Watching the international reports, you see some of the top guys racing all around the world, all the time.   One week they’ll be in Europe, and the next in the Far East.  Racing multiple classes, working hard.

And club racing has never been so good. In my local area there’s no less than 3 or 4 clubs within 10 miles or so. And I’ve heard of some local clubs getting 70-100 drivers for normal club meetings, OUTSIDE IN WINTER!

That all means there’s more and more racers all the time.

The Tracks

Tracks come and go, but there’s been more and more interest in the UK of late for indoor facilities. Maritime, PDA, Ardent are all excellent indoor facilities.

Then you look overseas and see even more amazing facilities that must have cost someone tens of thousands to set up.  Multiple tracks open all week long.  Sounds brilliant!

And it’s not stopping, I know of several more tracks that are in the planning stages in the UK.  There are certainly some gaps to fill geographically…

I’d predict in the next 5 years we’ll have year-round racing on whatever surface you desire.

The Press

There’s many websites out there now, Red RC, oOple, RCRaceChat, RCTech, etc, etc, etc, there’s dozens of them. I can’t keep up. I should probably get my act together and create a directory of them.

These sites are mostly amateur affairs, but more it seems they are gaining sponsorship, especially to cover large events. The quality of event coverage has increased so much in the last year or two.

And we’re not only limited to words and pictures, video is getting bigger and bigger. And RC Racing on Motors TV is bringing RC direct to the television too.

The Future?

I guess where all this is heading is soon the sport will move out of it’s traditional cocoon, and begin attracting sponsorship from companies outside the sport.

And when that happens, more and more money will start pouring into the sport, meaning bigger and better everything.

What will we all do? We’ll carry on messing around with toy cars!

A Day In The Life Of The Baby Lazy

[Welcome wee Daniel Horton to the Lazy 'team'... S.]

As the newest addition to the World Wide Web phenomenon that is RC-lazy, I (self dubbed “the baby lazy”) feel that I should give a tidbit of my 17 year old wisdom. This particular tidbit is 1/365 of my annual tidbittage and for those mathematicians out there that would make this tidbit about one particular day, which is of course today. (Saturday 6^th March, i dunno when or if Si will post this.)

It is 9:02 am and my driving instructor arrived 2 minutes late (which did not get added on the end by the way). Anyway, outside my mum’s house is a lay-by which I would have to pull out of to get going. Amidst the panic, fear and celebration of pulling out of the lay-by without getting flattened by a mega death lorry of Dan squishing doom I had forgot to put on my seatbelt, however my driving instructor had not noticed. So with complete subtlety I tried to reach my seatbelt, in a way not unlike a samurai reaching for his sword (albeit a life saving, torso restraining sword) and I admit I did feel a bit like a ninja, unfortunately my seatbelt just happened to be the most distance ever a seatbelt could possibly be from a seat and Mr Instructor was less than impressed with my assassin-esque seatbelt techniques (if I tried a nonchalant whistle I may have got away with it).

Note to self: Brush up on assassin/ninja moves, preferably by pretending my arm is a sword and stabbing mum when she’s not looking.

Fast forward 12:56 and we’ve just arrived at Aldershot club and we plan to test my brand new Mi4 LP. Fingers crossed. Pressure’s on. Need a wee. Toilets locked. Damn. My first impression was, I quote, “like driving a cloud”; perfectly pleasant, not much substance, bit soft and too many of them wouldn’t look nice. As I haven’t raced since the first round of the Thrashnalls I drove it cautiously like hedgehog on a motorway at night who has a “bad feeling” that something may “go down”. Anyhow after a few runs we discovered that the front droop was 0.5, the shocks were the wrong springs and back to front. I really should not have built this car (LOL as the kids say) but after we (Derek) righted these quintessentially unblameable wrongs… I got really cold and wanted to go homeL. However, we persevered and got the LP running very well indeed (High Five!) thanks to the fabulous XXX Main Chassis Setup Guide. I strongly recommend this to beginners and veterans but not to Si because he does off-road now, he doesn’t deserve it.

20:38- Listening to Ant and Dec making some sort of derogatory joke about holes, *sigh* they don’t know what it’s like to feel the pressure of racing toy cars. They’re so naive…so naive…

From the Desk of Daniel Horton’s mum

PDA Dirt Challenge Report

I’ve already written this report twice, the first time on Saturday night I got writer’s block.  Then on Sunday I wrote it and managed to lose it in the tinterweb somewhere…

Day 1 – 2wd (& SC)

An early start, 5am ish for me, pick up the boys on the way and get the campenwagen to Bicester.  Traffic was light, and cheese power helped us reach Mach 8.8.

Rob revealed his breakfast choice as a gourmet romantic picnic.  His girlfriend Steph had bought fancy cheeses, tiny fish, olives, meats, crackers and other delights, so Rob stole them and brought them racing, nice (but smelly)!  It’s okay, they’ve gone on holiday today (Monday) so she hopefully wont read this until they get back.

PDA was full and buzzing at 7:30, we squeezed in opposite some Welsh chaps and went to order bacon.

9 heats were booked in, 2 short course trucks and 7 2wd heats.  I was in the first 2wd heat: this is because I’m shit at off-road.

The track was cool as always, nice dirt, a big jump over the table top and the double double under the rostrum.

Practice was in heats, and my car was slow, and hard to drive.  I fiddled with it a bit and run the first round and decided to pull the nice and safe 10.5 out and put in an 8.5

The next run I discovered my speedo wasn’t set up correctly (that Novak always seems to forget it’s settings…) and reset it.

Third round was a decent run, and I was going okay in the last run until a ball joint popped off.

So I ended up 40th out of 42.  That’s not very good at all is it!

The rest of the ‘Lazy tem faired better, Staples was up in 9th (!), Townsend in the 20s, Haskell and Howett in the 30s.

Finals were unusual for electric, running a double-sided Christmas tree bump-up format.  So I won my first find (16ths), bumped up and ended up 4th, so that wasn’t too bad in the end really.

Up at the top the boys were flying, Lee Martin lapped pretty much everyone in the A main with his Atomic Carbon Losi XXX-CR2 Red Speed Passion Yadda Yadda machine.  It was dialed, great racing.

We trucked up to the Travelodge, and I got very bored and grumpy whilst Mark built a Tamiya and tested it in the corridor.  Finally we were allowed to go for dinner, and the Fox & Hounds provided amazing pies, and those Welsh boys provided far too much hilarity!  Great crack!

All tucked up in bed before midnight, ready for sleepies for Sunday’s 4wd.

And what do you mean no-one wears sleeping hats anymore?

Day 2 – 4wd

I woke up an hour too early, so got up and showered and dressed, then realised I was knackered so got back into bed.  Another couple of hours whilst Mark faffed around and Bob watched children’s telly then to the track.

Tamiya was out in force, with about a dozen 511s, all looking nice and shiny.  And practice showed them all performing well.

I was trying my shocks at the rear-rear, and it didn’t really cut it, so I put it back to the conventional position and the car was ace.

I couldn’t drive it very well, I could do a decent single lap (quicker than Mark or Bob, thankyouverymuch), I just need to figure out how to do it for 5 minutes…  Lots of mistakes…

Round 3 I thought my diff was knackered, and I popped in a fresh one and the final round was nice.

All three of us ended up at the top of the same 8th final with Nick Wilson joining us.  The first handful of laps I was flying, catching Nick nicely and then I put it into the rostrum with a nice crack of plasticky parts… So my bump up chances were shot.

Bob bumped up and his dugga-dugga, I mean Cat, was looking great.  All credit to Nick though, he bumped up, and I think he might even have bumped up again?

Up at the top the usual suspects were getting it done, the main started with Lee Martin dominating with his 511, and the other 511s of Newton and Griffiths looking good.

Kifo Newton did very well in qualifying, his car totally kit settings apart from slightly harder rear springs and some front toe out.  He even ran Tamiya shock oil, whatever that is!

Lee Martin somehow managed to lose a rear driveshaft, popping out of the diff drive cup so it was left to Truman to take the win.

Brilliant weekend, the PDA guys and girls doing an excellent job, and everyone providing lots of entertainment.

Random Quotes of The Weekend

“He carries it well.”

“Blog that!”

“Go on Downramp.”

“Mmm Manta Ray.”

“Nice Fruit Basket”

“Cheese?!”

“Yellow card.”

“That’ll be £13.79 please.”

“The curry’s sold out now.”

(I can’t remember any more, comment below…)

Videos

2wd main

2wd main (2 camera very amateur edit)

4wd main

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