Now and Then,,,(13)

New challenges,,

First R/C Car

Since finishing that P-51 I had taken a break from airplane building and wanted to try something new. The R/C Car crowd had been around since the 60's. I had some slot-cars when I was young but being able to actually steer a car was want we kids all wanted to do. R/C let you do that. The R/C Cars looked like race cars with glow fuel engines. The were raced on courses set up in parking lots and sometimes indoors. Indoor carpet was put down as bare concrete floors were just too slick. There were special tires and tire "goop" (it made the tires sticky) people would use on bare floors and that helped but control was still an issue and the tires and goop made a mess of those floors. Carpet improved the traction and made real racing possible.  Outdoors or indoors those racecourses might be as simple as straightaways and a few turns or elaborate layouts like a LeMans track. The cars were fast but temperamental and noisy and you had to build them yourself. This all changed when Ni-cad batteries and electric motors arrived on the scene. There were electric cars before Ni-cads but regular batteries were heavy and didn't provide the power needed for racing R/C Cars. They were mostly of the toy variety. New motors, new batteries, better radios and many new kit manufacturers made it easy to get into R/C Cars. By the 1980's you could even buy a complete ready to run car. Around this time a new genre of car appeared. It was not a road racer, it was made for driving in the dirt. Off-Road had arrived. The early Off Roaders were just road cars with bigger tires and a chopped up body. Soon kits were being produced that were very different from road cars. Independent suspensions with shock absorbers and with frames built for rough use outdoors. Roll bars and body styles that looked like full size off-road vehicles made for some cool looking cars and trucks. Tamiya made a lot of these Off-Road kits and also had the same vehicles available already built. Other manufacturers played catch-up and many choices were soon available both as kits and "ready to run". Off road tracks were popping up everywhere and the hobby shops all had large sections of their stores filled with off-road vehicles and stock and upgrade OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) replacement parts. Off road was tough on these cars and they sold a lot of parts. Many people also made modifications to existing parts or completely new parts that were better than what was available in stores. Many of these people soon started selling those items and the "After Market Parts" scene took off. Some of those sellers would become major players and still are in the R/C World.
 I had seen the Off-Road sections take over more and more space in the hobby shops and started checking out what was available. The cost and complexity was just like in planes. The Tamiya Brat and Frog were available and provided good performance as did the Hornet but they seemed too basic and a bit cartoonish to me. I wanted something that stood out. I looked at many of the available options from the different manufacturers. Some I liked but had read bad reviews on and some were just too costly. I continued my search until while visiting one of my favorite hobby shops "Franks" I spied a Tamiya Hot Shot. The box art made this thing look mean! The big tires. The body shape, roll bars and spoiler in back made it scream out "Performance" and it had FOUR WHEEL DRIVE! This might not have been the first 4WD Off-Road but it was one of the first available that was semi affordable. It was $254.00+tax. That was without a radio or battery pack! Oh well, I liked it so I bought it along with a Futaba Pistol Grip radio and a 6 cell battery pack and charger. I think the radio was a Magnum Sport. I went home and was going to build me a racer.
 That Hot Shot was a kit with a lot of parts. You had to assemble every piece of that car from many smaller pieces. Since it was a 4WD vehicle you had two differentials that had a lot of gears that had to fit and mesh perfectly. I had gone back to the hobby shop and purchased the optional ball bearing pack because the mags all said to get the bearings. I think there were 18 in all. These bearings helped to make the tolerances between parts more consistent and provide much less friction. The build took about a week to complete. I charged everything up and give it a quick test in the yard. It seemed pretty fast for the yard so I got everything together and took off to the local park.
 At the park I set the Hot shot down in the parking lot and turned on the transmitter and then the car and it took off before I even squeezed the trigger on the transmitter. I tried to turn it and nothing happened it just kept going straight. I kept turning the little wheel on the transmitter back and forth and it kept going straight. Straight out of the parking lot onto some grass and then through a hedge. I knew that on the other side of that hedge was a drop off into Santiago Creek, a mostly dry creek bed. I took off after it and after getting through that hedge I saw it on the other side of the creek bed, spinning its tires trying to climb up that steep embankment. That drop off was about 15 feet and it must have hit that creek bottom hard. Fearing what kind of damage my little runaway car had sustained I found a way down and went over to where it was still spinning its tires (all four) and turned it off. I picked it up and unbelievably I saw no damage. It had taken that drop with no problems. I went home and set about taking it apart to get to the radio receiver which was buried inside a two piece plastic tub held together with many screws. I got it apart and tried the receiver and it was unresponsive. What to do?

Off to Futaba