Thursday 13 August 2015

Sometimes RC racing just isn't that important

Regular visitors ( I know, you never miss it right?) will have noticed its been 3 months since I posted anything here. To be honest there has been a lot happening and this has just fallen by the wayside. It's more for my own personal presence that I write this thing anyway. The main factors that have kept me away have been (from least important to most) - 

1) Its been too cold to go and race.
2) I've gotten bored racing 5+ year old cars.
3) My partner was diagnosed with cancer.

As you can imagine the last one was a bit of a biggie, and while I am not going into details here, it was a quite intense and life confronting period of time. Thankfully, the initial outcome has been relatively good, but there still might be other less good times ahead, but we just have to make the best of what we have.

OK, back to lighter things.

My slow moving (almost glacial) FWD tourer project is still progressing slowly. I've spent some time learning more about CAD and milling and I believe I am a few steps closer to achieving the end goal - a drivable car. I've found a more reliable source of various thickness CF sheet to make a chassis out of and I should be at the stage where I can get the motor mount done (finally!!) and continue mock-up. The goal is now to have the car ready and race-able before the end of September so, given its mid-August, I need to get a hurry on.

The other big news (for me at least) is that I finally bought a new F1! After a couple of years of umming and erring over the releases of other brands, it was Tamiya's TRF102 that finally drew the credit card out of its sleeve in my wallet. I've only built the basic chassis so far but I've been impressed. The rear suspension is far smoother and free-er than any link car I've built or felt recently and reports from other users have postulated on the amount of rear grip the car has out of the box. Given that rear grip is always at a premium with F1's and RWD pan cars, this could be a good choice for my heavy-throttle-finger driving style.

I'll be writing up a build post once I have it ready to race. Until then...

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