Category Archives: Radio Control

racing, Radio Control, RC Trucks

TONIGHT! Final Round – Treads Gone Wild!

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Kyosho Ultima SCR

Tonight is it! The final round of the Treads Gone Wild Summer Race Series at Bremerton R/C Raceway. If you have even the slightest curiosity about local R/C off-road racing, tonight is the night to check it out!.

LOCATION:

Bremerton R/C Raceway
1123 N Wycoff Ave
Bremerton
WA
98312
USA

Telephone: 360.627.8703

Competition in the series is tough, and the class champions will be decided tonight! Adding the excitement, for the first time at BRCR, we’ll be racing Triple-A Mains! What does that mean? It’s quite simple really. Following the standard qualifying cycle, racers will be started in qualifying order, in THREE separate A-Main races. The best 2 finishes will be used to decide the night’s winner, whom will take double points (60 points for the winner), and most likely the serious championship!

Classes that will be racing tonight for the big win:

  • Stock Short Course ( 17.5 motor limit no boost )
  • Mod Short Course
  • 4×4 Short Course
  • Stock Buggy ( 17.5 motor limit no boost )
  • Mod Buggy
  • Mod Truck
  • Novice ——- (No points in novice class)

It’s going to be an exciting night of racing!

Qualifiers start at 6:00 PM

Mains should be underway by 9:00 PM

Don’t miss out!

racing, Radio Control, RC Trucks

Treads Gone Wild summer race series is heating up!

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Round 3 of TGW is now in the books, and it’s becoming a very VERY tight series. Two rounds left and unfortunately, I’m in danger of losing my 3rd place standing in the series.

Bryan is how tied with me for third, and he’s brought his A-game, winning last nights A-Main.

I qualified 5th running my black and yellow Cow Car 3 Kyosho Ultima SC-R Short Course, controlled with a Spectrum 2.4GHz DX-3R DSM2 controller.

Kyosho Ultima SCR

Here is the video of last nights race:

Race Video – Round 3 of “Treads Gone Wild” Stock Short Course

Watch the battle between me and the green Kawasaki truck of Bryan Schoening (whom I’m now tied for 3rd with in the series).

Stock Short Course “Treads Gone Wild” Series Points Standing
     STOCK S/C  (17.5 no boost)
					   
NAME	ROUND 1	ROUND 2	ROUND 3	ROUND 4	ROUND 5 	POINTS	PLACE	   
PHIL VANDEVER	30	30	25			85	1	   
DANIEL CORRENTI	25	21	21			67	2	   
DAVID DEMARTINI	21	16	18			55	3	   
BRYAN SCHOENING	0	25	30			55	3	   
JOE HASELBERGER	16	14	14			44	5	   
CHARLIE KRAUS	18	12	13			43	6	   
BRYAN HONSTAIN	13	11	11			35	7	   
PAUL HUDSON	0	18	0			18	8	   
JAKE EVERSON	0	0	16			16	9	   
GRACE HONSTAIN	14	0	0			14	10	   
RICH EVANS	0	13	0			13	11

Despite some mistakes in driving, the Kyosho Ultima SC-R is a nearly unstoppable machine. In fact the series points leader is also running a Kyosho SC, which seriously mitigates any advantage in running the best short course R/C truck money can buy. Regardless, it was a worthwhile change out from the SC-10. By changing trucks I went (virtually overnight) from a back of the pack running to a consitant podium finisher, and have a handful of wins, something that seemed impossible for me to accomplish with the SC-10.

Radio Control, RC Trucks

Evolution of a theme – New race body debuts at “Treads Gone Wild”

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With the slow destruction of my old race body, the damage done to the very old temporary body, and the debut of the BRCR Summer Race Series “Treads Gone Wild”, it was high time for a new body. But, time was not on my side, so my original plan of a complex and amusing theme was out the window.

When I originally started to race the first Cow Body truck a few months back, it was a big hit at the track. Despite it’s very simple design, and the multitude of very nicely done air-brushed artwork on other trucks, the amazing acceptance was, to say the least, surprising!

SC-10 "Cow Car"

Short Course racing takes it’s toll on these little Lexan bodies, so replacement is just part of the hobby. The neat part is that you are not stuck with a design forever. The bad part is that you can’t keep using your awesome design forever. I purchased a couple of new bodies on sale, and set them aside for the future. You never know when one will develop a catastrophic crack and need to be quickly replaced. With speeds of 30 MPH+, aerodynamics actually does matter.

“Cow Car 1” suffered a pretty nasty break in the rear mounting locations, and had to be retired about a month ago. But I was not ready with my new design concept, so I pulled an old Traxxis Slash body out of the dustbin of bodies past (for reference Traxxis is a good basher brand, but it does not have a reputation for real race performance). It was a musing for a while. People were shocked to see a crappy old Traxxis running so well and so smoothly on the track. LOL. Little did they know, at first, that it was covering arguably the best Short Course currently made, a Kyosho SC-R. But the body is pretty cheap to start with, and it was not long before the stresses of a very competitive race class took it’s toll too. Again, I was not ready with a new design.

After procrastinating for months, and with the start of a new Summer Race Series at our track “Treads Gone Wild“, despite my air-brushing skills being squarely in question, I had to come up with something fast! I literally had but a handful of hours to get a concept, design the pattern, lay it on the body and paint it up! Traxxis body was severely damaged in practice Friday night (so was the truck, but that’s another story), so I could not simple use the Traxxis body for the opening of the serious, and I had to fix the truck too. All in the matter of a few hours yesterday morning. Plus, it was the first warm sunny weekend day this year, so I also had to squeeze in some motorcycle riding. Had to act fast.

The “Cow Car” theme had stuck, racer announcers started to call me “Cow Car Dave”, and people expected to see me cowing it up. But I didn’t want to do the same old thing, again. Plus I wanted to experiment around with some design elements, like flames or tears. I spent some time looking at all the awesome designs in this RCTech air brushing thread, and It hit me. I could do both! So, I did!

In less than 3 hours, I knocked out this little gem, combining my first attempt at airbrushing rips, and adding drop shadows, but still sticking with the “Cow Car” theme (between “Cow Car 3”, shown here, and Cow Car 1, I also painted up a Cow Car for my daughter… more on that later.)

TA DA!

Cow Car 3

It’s pretty rough, and there are a lot of mistakes in it. Some of it because I was rushing, most of it because this is only the 2nd body I’ve tried to airbrush (the first body was “Cow Car 2”, in the middle).

A lot of people liked the design, and I do too. I got my rips, my neon color and stuck with the Cow theme. All in all, pretty good. But, now, I’m really starting to enjoy the air brushing thing, and I want to keep practicing, and paining more bodies, but, I have all the bodies I need for my race vehicles. I guess I could just go and buy more bodies, paint them up and maybe sell them for cost at the track, so that I can practice, and not go broke doing it.

Finally, here is the full family of Cows, 1, 2 and 3 (left to right).

Original Cow Car, Strawberry Cow Car, TGW Cow Car

Radio Control, RC Trucks

MooOOoooOOOoOoooo – The Milk Man Delivers!

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Oh yeah, what a nice of racing!!!

This is the second outing of the ‘Mooo Mobile‘, drive by me, aka The Milk Man.

Had a good couple of hours of practice, and the truck was running pretty good. Did some baseline laps with the setup from two weeks ago, then I started tweaking the suspension.

For the last few days, I have been researching suspension from the other manufactures. Seeing what they do differently, and working up some research for a new iPhone / iPad App. Yes.. going to see about making this hobby pay off in $$$, not just silliness. During this research, I saw a possible solution to a setup problem in a set of springs designed for Losi trucks.

Here is the issue. For front springs, AE (aka Team Associated) maxes out with the ‘Red’ spring at 3.90 lb./in. Which is pretty stiff for a vehicle that weights maybe 4 lbs. total. The Associated spring is 2.25″ long, and right now I have to run it at the max length, just to get it to sit at the right front ride height. Adding to the issues, the setup sheets recommend cutting a coil out of the spring, making it shorter and stiffer. I’m thinking that cutting a coil will make for a sloppy suspension, since the top of the coil will no longer be flat, and not sit right on the spring perches.

Then I get this brilliant (well, different, if not brilliant) idea to purchase a set of the Losi front truck springs in the 4.1 lb./in. rating. They are close in diameter. Plus, the Losi spring is only 2″ long, also giving me the ability to lower the truck more using the shocks built in threads. Something I could not do with the stock 2.25″ spring.

It turns out, the Losi springs have a slightly larger ID. Almost too large. But, they fit well enough, and under tension do not move around adversely. So, I gave it a run tonight. And I must say, it did help quiet down the front handling, making the truck handle more neutral. Less sliding in the rear end. I took some notes tonight on what I tried, which I’ll be including in a different post later on this week.

I did OK tonight, again making the A-Main in Stock (17.5 motor) Short Course. We had a couple of pretty full grids tonight. I held my own in the main, finishing where I started, in 7th place. Not stellar by any means, but the track was also VERY loose, so those with better skills really dominated. Not finishing last is always a plus, when racing against so many more experienced drivers. Most of these guys have been racing for 10 years, a few more like 30! I’ve been at it for a total of 7 months so far… so.. I don’t feel to bad about my progress.

But, the best part of the night, was the post Main rounds entertainment. We call it Hack for Cash. This little race has a different set of rules. And they are pretty simple.

  • Race in an oval, skipping the inside, making the track 1/3 as long, and cutting the jumps down to 7 and 2 table-tops.
  • There are no corner marshals. You crash, tough. You wait out the race in humiliation, unless another racer hits you and accidentally knocks you back into the race. It happens a lot when things get dicy, so it’s truly not over until the fat lady sings.
  • Punting other trucks is encouraged. In fact the race leader has a big fat target on them, everyone wants to take them out
  • Last man standing, or the driver with the most laps when the 10 minute buzzer goes off wins the entry fees. Tonight it was 14 racers at $2 a head. 28 bucks on the table for the winner!
  • It’s OK to work as a team to take out other drivers, but in the end, only on person wins.
  • You cannot stop on the track. If you stop, you’re OUT! That does not include being crashed out. See the rule above about how you might get back into the race.

So, with 14 trucks in the race, starting in a modified Motocross start (trucks lined up side by side all the way across the lane in the back straight. Overflow trucks are placed *on top* of the front line trucks. When the buzzer goes off, it’s anyone’s guess who’s left standing. I was 2nd truck on the inside of the front row, so I started with a truck on top of me, as did most of the front 9. When the buzzer sounded, I made it 1/2 way down the straight before the truck that was on me, came up from behind and knocked me onto my side. I was out. I sat there for many laps being passed. Trucks trying to dodge me. Finally, I was able to wiggle sideways enough to get clipped by another truck and end up ride side up again, and back in the race!.

It was brutal. Crashing trucks, people yelling ‘Get the leader’. Take out the owner’s truck!! Brian, the owner, is a pretty damn good driver, and he’s won just about every single one of these Dash for Cash events. Tonight, we were all gunning for him. One of the racers said.. “It’s going to be tough to keep track of who’s in front.” I told him that it would be a little easier that he though, since he didn’t have to worry about it being me.

After a few laps, a couple of trucks were upside down, and one of them even flew completely over the wall and off the track. That one was NOT coming back. It was about 1/2 way into the race when I got my truck jammed up into one of the upside down trucks in the main sweeper (corner for you non-racers). Nice high speed WHAM!, CRUNCH!. My front wheel was jammed up into the other truck’s suspension. A truck with a reputation for being built like a tank. The best outcome I could hope for was someone else understeered into us exiting the sweeper, snapped off my first right control arm and gave me a chance to drag the chassis around the track until the end.

I didn’t have to wait long. One of the mod truck guys went in to deep on the corner, hit the wall then shot off it into me, knocking me free of the big Traxxis 4×4. Except, it remained upside down, and I didn’t lose my control arm! And, I was back in the race!

Nearing the end, Brian was clearly the target, and I was clearly driving way too fast, at least that’s what everyone was yelling. “Slow down! Brian is behind you.. slow down and take him out!” So I sped up! And in a few laps had run him down, and I had him square in my sights. On the last straight to the main fishing I had my shot, and I had to make it good. It’s a tight left-hander to the Start-Finish. He was 3/4 of the straight ahead of me but going slow, trying to make sure he didn’t catch up too lap traffic and also make a clean jump. I punched it. Let all 250A blast into my torque motor and did my best to t-bone him as he made the turn.

I missed. And with ever bit of speed my truck could make, went straight into the cinder block wall on the outside of the turn. Completely perpendicular to the wall. I could not have hit it harder. This time, it was game over.

Or, was it? NO! It was NOT! I bounced off (thank YOU RPM products for not letting my frame snap in half) and ended up on the complete other side of the lane, across the start finish, pointed in the right direction! I punched it and chased him down again! This time there were three of us right on his tail, and we were going to nail him to the wall on the outside of the big sweeper. We lined him on the front straight, and at the last second he jammed on the brakes and two of us shot straight past him into the turn at full throttle. Again it looked like a trip to the parts store for me. But this time I was on the binders, slid the truck in backwards, tapped the wall and was off.

Back in the throttle again, I put the hammer down trying to catch up to Brian. I was concentrating on the fact I needed to catch up to him, I sort of missed the fact that he’s been clipped by the 3rd truck in our assault, and was on his side! I just kept pouring it on, and then I noticed, there were only two trucks still running in the race, Steve and myself. As the timer counted town, Reid (Race Director) called out for a big “Mooo” and to not blow it. I only had 2 turns and two jumps and I was going to take the checkered flag.

Which, of course I did, because, I’m The Milk Man. It was and EPIC Hack for Cash. high-fives for me all around. It was a blast, and at the end of the night, all my racing was paid for with the winnings, and I split the rest with Steve for being the driver to finally knock Brian out of the race for good! Thanks Steve!

What a night! What a great design and paint job on the body, courtesy of my daughter, and what a blast!! I just have one last thing to say.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

racing, Radio Control, RC Trucks

Short Course Racing Status, January -> April 2011.

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BRCR implemented a track change in mid April, so I’ve closed out the previous dataset, and started a new one for updated track.

During that time I also acquired the TLR22 buggy, and sold off the AE B4 (took less than 2 hours to sell, yip!).

So, without yammering on, here is the graph from that dataset.

Right at the tail end, I was experimenting with some new setup strategies, and it’s clear that they were NOT helping out at all. The upper graph shows the upward blip in times during the heat races.

However the main events, which are the ones that matter, show that I continued to lay down fast times, when I went back to my ‘standard’ setup.

More to follow, including a different way of looking at the numbers. Those should be posted soon. I want to wait for a decent dataset (showing a trend of 2 days is not very useful) before I start trying out the new metrics methods and crunch the numbers.

Radio Control, RC Trucks

It’s here! The TLR22. And it’s built!

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Ah.. YES! Months of waiting. Reading the press releases. Seeing the sneak-peek spy photos, hearing the team drivers talk about this amazing new car. This (r)evolution in 2wd 1/10th scale RC Racing. Innovation, engineering, a radical remake.

The Hype surrounding this new (model / toy) car was intense! Just read this little blurb from Team Losi Racing (TLR) about the brand new TLR22!

The Team Losi Racing 1/10-scale 22 2WD Electric Race Buggy Kit is an entirely new racing platform. Without a doubt, it will reignite 1/10-scale electric racing throughout the world. The TLR 22s innovative design takes full advantage of envelope-pushing Li-Po and brushless power. It is the only platform of its kind to offer all the hardware needed in a single kit to build a rear- or mid-motor configured chassis. The 22 is about to change all the rules.

So.. I, of course, had to order one. And on April 1st, it arrived at the local Hobby shop (along with 11 others) for a bunch of the local racers. Mine, was #7 (at our shop, 1533 worldwide, based on it’s serial number), so the body of the car carries that number.

Without further reading, here are some pictures of the new TLR22, along with the older Associated Factory Team B4 I’ve been racing for about a month now. As you will see, the 8 year old AE design is really showing it’s age.

AE FT b4 (left), TLR 22 (right). The difference in body is astounding.

The side view of the car exemplifies it’s sleek new design.

TLR22 In Profile

Compare it to the ‘current’ B4 class buggy from Associated. It’s a bit like comparing a runner, to a bowler.

Current offering from Team Associated (AE), the B4 (and B4.1)

Here they are with their bodies off. Both are fitted with Stock Club Racing 17.5T brushless power systems, SAVOX high-speed servos, and the new 96mm compact 60C LiPo, which was designed specifically for the TLR22 by Losi’s battery division.

AE B4 is on the left. You can see that positioning of the electronics is a lot further off the center line, increasing the tendency for the vehicle to roll over in turns. Compare that to the compact, down the middle design of the TLR22. But the differences go far beyond that. If you notice, the older B4 is a rear engine design. By contrast the new TLR22 can be built either rear motor, OR, as I have done here, mid-motor! I’m aware of only one other off-road 2wd mid-motor buggy currently available. But this is the only kit that was designed to be built either way, and comes with all the parts to do it right in the box.

The guts, that bring the glory. (B4 left, TLR22 right)

In mid-motor configuration, the power controller (ESC) is located on a bracket right above the motor and transmission. Space is VERY limited so wiring must be compact and tidy. No room for sloppy just wire it up work (which I never do anyway). It was a challenge to get it even this tidy. Others have produced even cleaner looking installations by using all the same color wire. I decided to stick with the stock multi-color wiring supplied with the ESC, and power leads from the battery manufacture. You can’t hardly go wrong doing that.

Speed controller and battery wiring.

Here you can see the motor, it’s wiring, transmission (to the left of the motor) and receiver antenna. Even with the smallest 2s battery in the RC off-road industry, space is at a premium!

Motor wiring and installation.

Servo and receiver location was no picnic either. Here I’m running a 3/4 length Titanium geared .07 ms high-torque servo (yes, yes.. it’s as expensive as it sounds, and without a servo-saver in the design, it’s also in a fair degree of peril!). Just behind the SAVOX SH-1257TG servo, is the Futaba sport 3-channel 2.4GHz FHSS receiver. The control center for all that is fun and right in the buggy. One of the many advantages of the 2.4GHz system (aside from eliminating the need for crystals and frequency pins or flags) is the very show length antenna. Running an old 75 or 27 MHz antenna (about 11″ long) would just ruin the look of this car. And I’m sure you understand how important it is to look good!.

Just behind (to the right) of that is the 7.4V 3800mAh 2S2P 60C 96mm LiPo. It’s the battery that makes all of this possible.

Finally, one last photo of just the TLR22, wired and ready for racing:

TLR22

Radio Control, RC Trucks

Expanding Race Fleet – adding more 2WD fun

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If you read my post on 28-February, you might recall that I mentioned the purchase of a new 17.5T power kit,


I also said there would be a post about about what I planned to use that in. Well, so maybe I didn’t post up soon, but I am posting about it now.

The kit was ordered from TQRacing in Southern California and it arrived in 3 days! They shipped it within hours and the USPS had it on my door step in plenty of time to get it all sorted out before the next race!

Package of goodies from TQRacing

What’s in the package? 3 things. A Speed Passion ESC (aka speed controller), Speed Passion 17.5T Club Spec motor, and the required mini programmer. And the thing at the top is a well worn Team Associated Factory Team B4 buggy, circa 2007. If there was a VIN on thing thing it would show many, many owners, me just being the most recent. In fact it’s quite amusing to run it at the track. Already two different people have come up to me and mentioned that they used to own my buggy at one point. So it’s not the freshest horse in the race, but it was well maintained by the previous owners, so it was a very worthy purchase:

  • B4 Factory Team Roller: $90
  • SAVOX High-speed Servo: $25
  • Speed Passion 17.5T (Club Spec Stock) kit: $90
  • Futaba 603FG 2.4 GHz FHHS receiver: $45
  • 3 full tire and wheel sets: Included
    Total Cost: $250

Quite a savings over the $260 cost of just the factory kit alone.

Parts for next race class - 2wd Stock Buggy.

Only one problem with this kit. The sensor wire is WAY too short! This kit is designed for on-road vehicles primarily which use mid-mounted motors, as opposed to the off-road designs that use the rear-engine (ala VW Bug) mounting. This was the only problem I had getting the buggy running that night. Time was short and I didn’t get to the track / hobby shop in time to get a longer sensor wire until race night.

Speed Passion 17.5T motor and sensor wire loom

This little hitch was not enough to keep me from getting everything else mounted up in the buggy. It’s a nice thing that the ESC is so small, the dimensions of the buggy are pretty tight!

Assembled B4 2wd Race Buggy

You may notice that the batty wire leads are still bare. That was the 2nd thing I need to complete, was purchase of a male DEAN’s connector and adapter cable. Or, at least that was the plan! It turns out the deans connector costs $4.00. The adapter cable for my batteries cost another $12. BUT, for only $8.00 I could get an 8-pack of 4mm plated bullet connectors (good enough to do two vehicles) and eliminate the 2nd connection resistance in the DEANS, and go direct from ESC to battery. And that’s exactly how I solved the problem. Sorry, no photo of that at this time. I’ll try to add one later.

So.. finally, here it is. Ready for action. Most of the guys said I should practice my first few hours with the tires as is, before I go ahead and convert the to slicks, which our off-road cray track is best suited for. So, you see the worn Panthers in this photo.

B4 built up, and almost ready to go (sensor and battery soldering would be completed later)

Here it is ready for action, with it’s bigger team mate, the might SC10.

SC10 and B4 ready to run.

More to follow about buggies. I won’t say exactly what I have in store next, but it’s going to be one trick kit. I just hope the rumors of shipping to the hobby stores before the months’ end is true!

RC Trucks

Converting from Open to Stock Short Course

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It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I had A LONG way to go before I belonged running Open Short Course trucks. Even though I had the monster motor in the class with a 7.5T Novak (most other racers were running 10.5T or 13.5T – lower the turns, the faster it spins up and higher the max RPM, more akin to 2-stroke, as opposed to the torque motors in the 17.5T and higher windings, which are more akin to a big displacement thumper).

Even with quite a power advantage… I was.. well.. toast. 5 laps down on the leader. This is no place for a rookie.

Open Short Course Racing

Still being fairly new to the hobby, I was a little light on motor options, having only a 13.5T Novak and the 7.5T Novak I was already running. Having been kicked up form novice, I was either stuck racing Open class with those motors, or I’d have to spend about $100 on a new 17.5T motor. And in stock class you can’t afford to skimp on the motor, you need the best 17.5T motor you can afford. Add that to the fact I HATE THE NOVAK GTB speed controller. It’s so complex to program with the little push-buttons and lights. And it never seemed to really take the programming, even though the status lights clearly showed that I’d done it right. It was frustrating to say the least. So, in a state of excitement, frustration and resignation to my own personal quirks (let’s just call them imperfections, shall we, at least I’ve learned to recognize them, if not yet fully control them), I knew I’d stew over the purchase for weeks and weeks, eventually it would become the source of anxiety and finally depression, after which I would spend the money. So, I saved myself the 5 states of loss and took the $270 medicine up front:

Tekin RS + 17.5T Kit

Thus, I set about removing my Novak GTB system and installing the RS. However, I had one unresolved matter I had to attend to first. My last race with at the wheel of the uber-powered truck, had really done a number on it:

Serious damage to chasis. Trucks are not supposed to be 'Two Piece' afairs.

The cost of a new chassis is not really a consideration (under $30), however, it’s the chassis! That means everything mounts to it. To replace this part would require a 50% rebuild of the entire truck. That’s potentially hours of effort. Effort that would have to be duplicated again if I have just one really bad landing, or under-dump and lawn dart the thing.

However, I did have a solution. One that requires the purchase of a $19 aftermarket front bumper kit, of which 2/3 are discarded, and the other 1/3 requires modifications to perform the job of taking the place of the broken chassis nose.

RPM to the rescue!

RPM SC10 Heavy Duty Front Bumper Kit (only lower section is retained)

Following the Frankenstein repair to the front clip, the next order of business was a complete rebuild of the front shocks including a re-valve, new springs and silicon oil change. Here is the final setup:

Rebuilt SC10 Shocks. Rear (l.) & Front (r.)

  Front Dampers Rear Dampers
Valve Piston: #3 #2
Shock Oil: 40 wt. 30 wt.
Spring: Red (3.90 lb./in.) Silver (2.10 lb./in.)
Down Stops 4 (.120″) 7(.210″)

Mounting the motor was very mostly straight forward. However, there was not enough adjustment in the motor mount plates to get the 29T pinion gear I needed to fit with my 84T spur, so I bought a new gear set with a 75T spur gear and 27T pinion. With the 15 degrees of physical motor timing (see photo) I have on pretty quick stock truck. Sure I’m topped out on speed by the end of the straight compared to the Mod trucks, but I have gobs of low-end torque that gets me up and over the jumps with almost no run-up. 6′ of air time is no problem at all with this setup. I can easily clear the 4-hump rhythm section with a quick punch of the throttle.

Some of you new or simply unfamiliar with surface brushless systems might wonder what the extra cable bundle is near the bottom of the motor. That’s the sensor harness. This measures the inrunner’s RPM, feeding back position and speed to the ESC, which allows it to automatically detected cogging at low RPM, and smooth the pulses, giving the driver very smooth and easy to control power compared to non-sensored systems. Having had both, I can say first had that this *DOES* make a difference. You lose some of the potential torque of the motor, since some magnet space is given up to the sensor, but power is nothing if you can’t get it all to the ground. The sensor provides the ability to do just that.

Tekin 17.5T mounted.

Mounting of the speed controller was simpler than the big and bulky Novak I was replacing. The profile is so low it barely extends above the sides of the chassis. The solder posts on the controller are also a thing of beauty. Vastly superior to the solder points on my Novak and most other ESCs I’ve seen so far. Easy to heat, plenty of post length, and slotted so you can mount wires horizontal (as I did) or vertical, depending on whim. The three wires on the left control the motor, the two on the right (with capacitor) are the battery power leads. Sensor harness plugs into side of ESC (right). Another bonus on the Tekin is the topside status LED bar, not on the side like the Novak and XP I’ve had in other vehicles. Another example of learning from racing. Put it where people can see it! Seems simple, yet.. so difficult for some companies to ‘get’

Tekin RS Speed Controller

The last two updates made with this conversion, was the witch to the light-weigh 2/3 height SAVOX SC-1251 Metal Gear Digital Servo. This is a lot smaller than the stock XP (sloooooow) or the black body SAVOX I was running before. Also in this photo is my personal truck transponder. Other than the ESC, this was the single most expensive part in the entire truck. This is the newest RC4 compatible hybrid transponder from MyLaps. A lot of tracks (including the one that I use) had track transponders available to borrow for a race. They are basically free. So why buy my own at such great expense? 3 reasons: 1) I can get my practice day times logged for analysis 2) the RC4 hybrid is about 2/3 the size of the others and also lighter 3) I can permanently mount it anywhere I need for best signal.

SAVOX 1251 and MyLaps Transponder

I’ll say this right now, the position in the photos is good, but not ideal. The metal gear servo interferes with the transponder (another advantage to owning your own, you can test transponder positions to find the optimal signal). I have since found a better position for the transponder. However, it’s exact position is now a closely held secret and an advantage I have on the track.. so.. don’t expect me to spill the beans on the net, you’ll have to join me at the track to see what I’ve since done.

Radio Control, RC Trucks

Novice SC10 Racing in Review

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You never really know anything, unless you measure, at least, something. So, a while back I started to keep track of my lap times recorded during racing.

Now that my NOVICE R/C days are behind me, I thought I’d look back at how long I’ve been racing and how far I’ve come from that first round of racing on 27-December-2010.

My run in NOVICE consisted of 14 events, between 27-DEC-2010 and 21-FEB-2011. Roughly 2 months worth of racing every available event at BRCR (Bremerton R/C Raceway).

All of the racing represented here was done with the following setup, with the exception of 21-FEB (I’ll cover that next).

Truck: Team Associated Factory Team SC10
ESC: Novak GTB speed controller
Motor: Novak 13.5T brushless*
Power: Venom 3800mah/35C and Venom 5000mah/50C
Radio: Futaba 2PL

* Ran single race with Novak 7.5T brushless

Now, here is a look at the data in graphs. Where the lines start to converge, those are the heats or races where I was most consistent. Looking over the 14 round history, my fastest times have not improved that much. However my consistency has, and that’s one of the more important factors in winning. Crashing is a REAL time killer. It can easily cost you 1/2 a lap, sometimes more.

Heat Races

Novice Heat Races - Short Course SC10

It’s pretty clear in this graph, that although I had one of my best laps in my first race, my consistency was garbage. I was trying to go fast, really fast, and what I ended up doing was a lot of crashing, and a few decent laps.

Towards the end, in the last few nights running in Novice, you can see that my times have tightened up a lot, and my 5-lap average is starting to get pretty close to my all-time fastest laps. Not crashing, and running good consistent laps is crucial to being able to win races.

A-Main Finals

Novice A-Main - Short Course SC10

Here it’s a little less obvious. In my 3rd round of racing, I put down my fastest times, and my averages were pretty good too, but I was not yet winning. It was just a fast race. Track conditions are also a factor, this is why it’s important to include the fast-5 and fast-10 averages, to give some context to that fast time. It looks like the track was just ‘fast’ that night.

It’s also important to point out that right about the middle of January the track underwent a massive chance for ETC round #4, head at my local track.

When I start the analysis of my ‘Stock Short Course’ racing times, all of those will be on the same track we are currently running.

Radio Control, RC Trucks

Monday Night Racing! 2nd round of racing in the Stock Short Course Class

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2nd night of racing in the Stock Class was last night. Turn out was a little down, and there were only 2 Stock class trucks, so we raced with the Open Class Short Courses as well. It was quite a battle. I slowed myself down, just trying to put together clean runs, and my times clearly show that I started going slower.

What was encouraging, was that the other stock truck (driven by Evan) placed very well compared to the unlimited modification, unlimited power, unlimited budget trucks. Pretty impressive! 🙂

Monday Night A-Main Results

* I need to get Bryan to fix my name!

I spent some time in between rounds talking to a few of the really fast guys. All of them said. “If you want to get fast. If you want to get better, Race Buggy!“. Hm… really? Buggy? I’m going to have to look into that.

For now, here are the 3 rounds from last night, in graphic form. Even though I was slowing it down, I ran a few of the fasted laps ever in stock, and some of the slowest laps I’ve ever run too. I really need to work on my consistency!

Since Stock class racing is where I’m going to focus in the short term, I decided to get a second Stock ESC system. This one is a CLUB SPEC system to toss into one of the other fleet vehicles here. I saw a couple of good comments on RCTECH.NET about ordering from TQRacing, and as noted by them, the pricing was the best I’d found anywhere. Plus, I’m glad I checked RCTECH.NET and found out that you NEED a programming card for the thing! Well, TQ had it in stock, at 1/2 what A-Main was listing. All in all, I saved about 25% over the price at A-Main (and another 9% by getting free shipping). That’s a pretty big savings!

Ordered a 17.5T *STOCK* power system.

I’ll post a photo of what it’s going into later. 😀

Looking back at my race lap times… I ran my fasted in Novice. Maybe because I had a better chance at a clean run? In most of the stock races I’ve been taken out with great success in the first couple of laps. Once I had a 58 second first lap!

Here is a list of the fastest times since I started to keep track:

Fast Lap Fast-10 Average Power Class Date
23.67 (16) 25.31 7.5T Novak Novice 21-FEB
24.7 (10) 26.76 7.5T Novak Open Short Course 23-FEB
24.73 (11) 26.72 17.5T Tekin Stock Short Course 26-FEB
25.38 (7) 27.76 17.5T Tekin Stock Short Course 26-FEB
23.97 (5) 26.02 17.5T Tekin Stock Short Course 28-FEB

Here is a neat little graph of the available data:

Fast times and Fast-10 Average for last week.

The good news from all this, is that I’m staring to get back to the same times I was running with my big 7.5T motor compared to the new 17.T motor, which basically has 1/2 the power.

The old adage seems to be proving itself out in the numbers. It’s mostly the driver!