Today Tassie racers gathered in Launceston for the running of the semi-annual on-road race at Archer’s Manor. It was also my first race since landing over two months ago and boy was I hanging out for it! What a sweet sound to hear that alycat ‘voice’ call your name!
The truggies and buggies as you might expect seemed a little out of place on this wide open and flowing on-road track. A modified track with a shorter front straight helped and there was certainly some entertaining racing.
In the truggy/monster truck class race organiser Andrew Barrett drove a VTX truggy to win from Scotty Wilkes’ Traxxas Jato and Tim Hanson’s wild Losi LST. Most of these guys were hiking wheels, or pulling stands at every opportunity!
In buggy, Andrew did it again, taking the Hyper 7 to a big win from the Kyosho of Rocket Rodney Haughton (who some Queenslander’s will remember as a regular visitor) and myself in the LRP S8 BX.
Two 8th scale guys showed and and struggled manfully with the lack of traction all day. There was just enough to get a sense of the potential of these things – with Tim Hanson left standing at the end of the day (Mugen) and David Slama (Serpent 960) succumbing to mechanical challenges
Nitro Tourer was the domain of Rocket, always looked comfortable and won well (Kyosho FW05) from Andrew Eberhart and Jamie Evans (sorry guys, not sure what chassis).
There was a good field of 10 cars in 540, dominated by the guys from Hobart. Lee Harvey, Allan hall and Peter Townsend fought some entertaining finals battles and finished in that order.
Mod Tourer was lots of fun. 8 cars some with full-house mod motors, some guys running 19t (or brushless 10.5),and one running a stock motor. I managed to take the x-Ray 008 to the win from Allan Hall and John Beggs. Rocket broke in one of the two finals, so finished further down the order than is the norm.
The Story of My Day
I thoroughly enjoyed the racing today. It was great to be back on the race track again, and it was just a great, grass-roots race day. The guys from Hobart did a fantastic job with the gear to run the show, Rick (from the Devonport offroad club) generously ran the computer all day, and Andrew did a great job with organisation (including convincing the visiting police at one stage that we weren’t being too noisy despite the complaints of neighbours!). Rocket and Andrew designed a fantastic track taking advantage of the dips and rises in the car park.
I ran the LRP pullstart/rtr buggy in the buggy class. It was pretty good all day, though the steering servo which seems quite good in the dirt didn’t cope with the extra traction of the tarmac. The LRP pullstart motor was good and my car was as quick in a straight line as anybody. It was lots of fun, though a bit frustrating not to have the steering capacity to battle with Andrew and Rocket in the finals.
In modified I ran the x-ray T2 008, and used a Core lipo and Novak 4.5 motor. Needless to say it was fast! I struggled for traction early in the first heat, running sorex 36 tyres and with no tyre warmers on a cool Lonnie morning! Tony Harris had a spare set of warmers he generously loaned me and for the rest of the day I enjoyed (some) grip right from the start. The track, as I said, was lots of fun. A layout that flowed well, was open in places and tight in places. Fast lap times were in the 13 second bracket, and the front straight was probably 50 metres long (certainly long enough to get the x-ray up and running). In the last final I was having a great battle with Rocket until he tangled with someone on the front straight and handed me the win. I look forward to some more good races with Rocket when I get to Devonport and hobart to race.
Great day at the race track, great bunch of blokes. Nice to be back racing again…

• And I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos here.
• Full alycat results files available here
• Daniel has uploaded video from Archers Manor here including some nitro, mod electric, and the Baja doing a demo run at lunchtime