Fun in the Dirt

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scottg

April 18, 2010

I made it back to Latrobe Raceway today, for my first 8th dirt racing in a few months. A fun day out for several reasons – not least the fantastic condition of the track. Truly excellent!
I ran the RC8T in truggy, my first time in the class. Truggy is super fun to drive, because they are so forgiving. You can be a lot more brutal with jumps and bumps when compared with a buggy, and get away with it most of the time. The RC8T I ran in pretty standard format, with a Sirio Kanai Evo4 .21 engine. Power was fun, run-time was good, and the truck handled very safely. If I run again I’ll go searching for more steering, but for a first play it was comfortable. The racing was close between myself and club champ Matt, until Matt flamed out several times in the final leaving me with a cruise to win. 30 minutes is a long time to wait to see if something will break or I will crash….fortunately neither happened on this occasion!
I also had a run in the mixed EP offroad class. I ran the HPI Blitz SC truck during qualifying. It was outclassed in a heat full of 8th buggies and truggies, but lots of fun to drive. In the final I ran the LRP S8 BXe RTR buggy. This is fitted with LRP’s new 8th ESC & motor. The straight line performance is a little down on some of the others I was running against, but the ESC/motor combo is very smooth, in a way that many of the 8th EP rigs are not at this point. The buggy (an out of the box RTR with the exception of the steering servo which I replaced) was awesome. I kid you not that it was the best handling 8th scale buggy I’ve driven. 8th EP buggy racing rocks! I had a very enjoyable and close race with the two other fast guys at the club, before sneaking away over the last couple of minutes (15 minute final) to win by about 10 secs or so. Super fun….I shall have to do some more of this!
Life on the Tassie race tracks is good. We have an excellent 10th EP onroad circuit in Hobart, a fantastic 8th offroad track and Latrobe, and our fun indoor venue in Launceston. You should all move here and race with us.
More photos from today here…from the excellent Mark Rayner.
😉

3 responses to “Fun in the Dirt”

heavy

April 18, 2010

About this time next year you might regret that invitation. 😆 😆

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Adrian R

April 19, 2010

I’ve never had a big interest in off-road but SC Trucks are just awesome looking things… I want one 😈
Tassie is on the to do list… as long as the big van can go on the boat 😕

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scott

April 19, 2010

They are heaps of fun Adrian. They are a really good spec class that are fun to drive, visibly identifiable as a “car”,and pretty robust.
We run reasonably tight rules here, sticking with spec electronics or up to 13.5 bl, plus only any of the kit tyres or proline switch. that means racing is close, and reasonably affordable.
The tyre controls we run because the stock tyres in most cases provide relatively low grip – which further removes the importance of horsepower – we all have more than we can use. RTR electronics are competitive with the BL stuff on our tracks if we limit grip by staying with our list of tyres. Until last week a stock-as-a-rock slash had been winning everything. If we open up to any SC tyres (from proline, aka, jconcepts etc), then grip outweighs power, chassis setup becomes more critical, everyone has to spend on electronics etc. We’re keeping it tight to keep it close, simple and affordable.
I’ve played with a few SC’s now, on 8th scale offroad track, small 10th dirt track, plus our indoor concrete surface. Each of the main brands has its strengths, but all are generally competitive. The only exception is that I’d steer clear of the Strike which seems pretty fragile, and not up the same standard as SC10, Blitz, Slash. The Ultima SC we haven’t seen here yet, but I do hear that it’s a bit fragile too – but seems more of an issue for those running open/modified motors.

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