Welcome to my blog. I’m a radio controlled car enthusiast who has been in and out of the hobby at various points in my life. I got back into the hobby about three years ago, and decided to start this blog to detail my projects, and share my r/c experiences. Enjoy.
A little about me:
Most radio controlled car enthusiasts can remember vividly how they became interested in the hobby, and their first r/c kit. For me, I was 12 and was over my then-best-friend’s house and he took out the Tamiya Blackfoot he received as a present. We played with it for hours in his backyard that day.
The next day, I asked my father for one. Of course, he made me wait until a holiday, as I didn’t normally get presents for no reason. In the meantime, I scrounged what little money I could and bought a Radio Controlled Car Action magazine. It was there that I decided that I wanted a 1/8th scale, nitro Kyosho Inferno. With a pricetag upwards of $330, my father knew this was an r/c I wouldn’t be getting from him.
Instead, for Christmas he bought me a Tamiya Super Blackfoot, the newer version of the truck my friend had. He got me everything I needed to run: a radio, batteries, etc. Christmas night, my twin brother, who also got a Super Blackfoot, and I stayed up all night putting them together. Back in those days, charging batteries took forever. When we completed building, we still had 12 hours to wait for the batteries to charge. We didn’t charge them while we were building, because we were young and didn’t have common sense, I suppose.
Anyway, I played with that thing for almost six months, until a bevel gear broke. It sat for a few months until one day, I saw it in my closet and decided to buy the gear — it cost less than $3 — and fix it. The gear took a couple of weeks to arrive from Tower Hobbies, but I got it and fixed my truck.
I ran it a few more times until I got into a pretty good wreck. We never upgraded to electronic speed controllers, and when truck got out of range, the mechical controller would stick, letting the truck run away. One time this happened, the truck hit a light pole at full speed and flipped into a ditch. The wreck broke the shocks and the front axle. I never fixed it after that, though I’m not really sure why.
About three years later, I decided to reward myself for a particularly good semester, grade-wise. I bought myself a Tamiya JACCS Accord, which was a limited edition FF01 chassis. I loved the front-motor chassis and had hours of fun with the car. But, about a year after getting it, I became more interested in other things and it began collecting dust in my closet. I remember moving around a lot during college, and eventually I became tired of lugging the car around. So, I decided to sell it. Looking back, this is a decision that I regret. I loved that car.
I sold the car for a little more than I paid for it, but ultimately ended up breaking even because of the amount of hop ups I added to the car. I didn’t do much to it, as the limited edition FF01 came with a lot of hop ups as it was.
After selling the car, I stayed out of the hobby for nearly seven years. By chance, I received a free copy of an anime show called X-driver. One of the extras on the DVD was a video of the cast having an r/c car race. After watching it, I wanted to get back into the hobby. So, here I am.
