Intro: Of Radio Control and Shack

Welcome to a number of firsts for me. This is my first attempt at a blog as well as my initial foray into the world of radio controlled (RC) drifting. If you're not really interested in how I got to this point, you might want to wait until I make my next post. I'll be perfectly honest with you -- this is a long one.

Some people have told me that I should put up a blog, but I've resisted the temptation, rationalizing it as avoiding another pit into which I can pour time and effort which would be better used doing something else. Of course, some would argue that those alternative activities would not be much different in terms of ROI. So having said that, I found myself starting this project and thought that it might be interesting to document the whole process.

I'm a casual RC hobbyist in that I like to drive the cars, work on them, install upgrades, etc. however I don't actually race them. While it would probably be very fun to do so, it also falls into the the temporal sinkhole that we discussed previously. I've always loved RC cars since I was a kid, and it wasn't really until my wife bought me a Radio Shack RC car about four years ago for Christmas that my interest was re-kindled.

Now mind you, serious RC enthusiasts will crap on any reference to Radio Shack RC cars, calling them nothing but toys and filing them away with last week's recycling. I will agree on the former, but I disagree on the latter. Yeah, the car wasn't upgradable, but it did feature things like coil-over friction shocks at all four corners, a rear differential, and digital proportional steering. As far as toys go, it was a lot of fun. It was fast, bulletproof, and I never had any problems with it until I hit a fairly immovable object (see also tree) going...well...full speed. After a few calls to Radio Shack, I was actually able to replace the steering servo along with all the stripped gears within that resulted from the ill-fated clash between car and tree.

It was this event that made me think that if I were to continue with this interest in RC, I should probably get a hobby-grade kit, complete with easily replaced parts. After doing some research, I decided to purchase a RTR 2WD Duratrax Evader ST EP (see picture below). For those of you new to RC, here are some abbreviation definitions:

• RTR = ready to run, which means you get pretty much everything you need to get out on the road immediately
• 2WD = two wheel drive, versus all four wheels being driven
• ST = stadium truck, which is the style of vehicle
• EP = electric powered, versus nitro or gas powered (see also cleaner and quieter and wife-friendly)

I drove this truck through the yard, across the street, in and out of the ditches and had all sorts of fun with it. As I broke things, I replaced them and learned about how things were put together and what effects they were supposed to have on handling. I say "supposed to have" because honestly, small tweaks don't really have much of an effect on handling when you're tearing through 2" grass and over 3-4" high roots in a 1/10 scale vehicle. Regardless, it was fun and fast. Using my handheld GPS strapped to the chassis, I got an informal max speed of 26.4mph

After bashing the yard with this truck for about 8 months, I got bitten by the bug to go four-wheeling, and the rig of choice at the time was the Traxxas E-Maxx. The E-Maxx is a 1/10 scale monster truck powered by dual 550-sized motors and powered by dual batteries. With the addition of 4WD to the equation, I was able to handle areas of the yard that had not been possible with the Evader. Even though it's a much heavier truck and less aerodynamic than the Evader, it was capable of a respectable 24.9mph in stock form. Probably not very impressive by racing standards, but it's plenty of fun in the front yard.

After a couple of months, the mod-bug bit, and it was necessary to pimp the Maxx. The most obvious solution was to replace the stock body and wheels. I got a Humvee body made by Pro-Line and designed a scheme that would look like the flag of Texas regardless of whether you looked at it from the left or right front. I thought it was a pretty decent first effort. I won't bore you with the rest of the mods, but suffice it to say that I'm at the point where the next mod will be the fairly expensive step to brushless. I've been able to avoid the financial expenditure simply by reminding myself that I don't race this truck and that I could buy another whole car with the amount required to purchase a brushless setup.

And that's pretty much how we ended up here with my latest project: the Tamiya TT-01D Subaru Impreza WRC with the DrifteSpec chassis. Drifting was started in Japan, and basically the point of drifting is to get the car to break traction such that it slides through a turn at a greater speed than if the driver were to slow down in order to maintain that traction. They do this by making the engine very powerful, the car very light, and the tires fairly hard. The best example I can give is that it's like rally car racing, only it's in the mountains, and now it's on the streets of the city. So since I can't really see myself getting my Honda CR-V sideways on the streets without attracting the attention of the men in blue, I thought I'd do it at 1/10 scale.

Now the interesting thing to note is that the seed was planted way back when I was in 8th grade. My parents bought me a Mattel RC Corvette. I remember it perfectly. It was maroon with blacked out windows, had a manually switched 2-speed gearbox, no suspension, but it did feature digital proportional steering controlled by a two-stick transmitter. Now the significance of the digital proportional steering is that with it, the wheels and throttle are affected throughout the throw of the control lever. For example, if you push the throttle stick 50% forward, the car will accelerate to 50% of its top speed. Most toy-grade RC cars these days have binary steering and throttle. They're either on 100% or off.

So why do I bring up this car? I bring it up, because I remember taking Scotch tape and wrapping the rear wheels so that I could make the car skid around corners like on the cop shows on TV. You are no doubt thinking to yourself, "Self, so what?" Well, this method of taping the tires was how drifting was initially accomplished in the RC world only a few years ago. Now, there are special hard-compound tires, but many people simply use ABS plastic pipe.

Well, I think that's enough for the history lesson. My next post will cover how I decided on this chassis.