Indoor or outdoor
 

How many prefer the outdoor astro over the indoor carpet ?

Indoor is always " artificial " whatever the surface. Full carpet is interesting but as has been said, is touring cars with jumps..!:)
Outdoors is where it's at....surface, whether astro, mixed, dirt or good old fashioned grass, is very much down to personal preference. Astro is good, easy to maintain once built and cars stay clean.! Personally, I think that a good, well maintained, grass track is great but, probably, not many will agree with me..!

Hate both!!!:lol:

10th off road should be off road,not carpet with jumps

Grass, the smell of freshly cut turf on a hot summers day, that's my ideal!

Outdoors. Don't mind surface as everyone is in the same conditions
Not too keen on mucky tracks, but only cause it means a full strip and clean every week

I fully agree Alan

I prefer dirt for the "proper off road" feel of it, but standing on top of a container in the rain in December is miserable, we need an INDOOR DIRT TRACK (preferably with a heater):woot:

Its all planned ben!.....Just the 1st part is taking a while,I need to win the lottery:lol:

Out doors in summer grass. in doors in winter , thats my age talking .

Summer grass was terrible. Especially in the UK. If it'd rained within the last 72 hours it'd tear up like nobodies business and take a month to get anywhere near recovered.

So you ended up with a dirt track.

Then the caretaker at the community centre would go mental and you'd have to pay for sorting the field out......... I bet it'd be far worse with the motors we run now.

The current permanent out door track is good. Some astro, some slabs, some dirt.

Indoor we currently have to roll the carpet out in a sports hall. And buggies don't really happen!

You an actually detouringify a carpet track quite effectively with smart use of extra carpet and wood offcuts.

one i enjoyed years ago was racing on a cricket ground - very short lovely grass and although it started raining it didnt cut up as much as long grass did so that would be my ideal but suspect it takes a lot of maintenance :) the area we used was pretty ruined by the end of the day though so not really sustainable. think astro has to the be way to go, maybe with different types to change the grip levels.

I agree with that. Grass is self cleaning and renews itself. What more could we ask for :thumbsup:

Astro
 

Any of you ever tried running and maintaining a track? Time consuming, usually thankless, and hard work always done by the core few. For that reason most tracks are now astro! Low maintenance, cheap (very important as most buggy clubs just about break even), and yeah no mud!

Yes.... I was involved in running a club, Aire Valley Buggy Club, for many years..!
We started with grass tracks, then tried mixed surface and eventually a full dirt track.. Yes it is time consuming, yes it is usually down to the few committed members....we had a great committee for a good number of years, but very satisfying when you get to run National and even International events.
Still preferred driving on grass tracks though..
Maybe people just don't have time to continually maintain tracks these days , or their wives/partners won't let them..😂....so the, relatively, easy option is taken.

Yes mate, Head cook and bottle washer for NBC right now have been since 2006, was involved but in a smaller part in running it for 10 years before that, so yes Im quite familiar with whats involved, and its not thankless I quite enjoy seeing members have a good day be it a beginner or a pro ;)

Aire valley was a fantastic track for the reedy race

Fair enough
 

Fair enough boys! I change that to sometimes thankless! 😉 I used to race on grass and enjoyed it but in terms of ease, yes everyone usually runs with Astro. It will never recreate the natural dips and wear of grass but it does have certain merits of its own. Even American tracks are going to Astro now. I think a core problem is a lot of people have less time than they did. Modern life may have its luxuries but the work leisure balance seems to be getting a bit skewed atm.

as a mature father of a enthusiastic son and ex racer I like the comforts and facilities of indoor!!
As a regular follower and helper of the Schumacher sponsored "Indoor masters" at worksop its hard to beat in the winter .Get the big heaters on Lovely !!!

Out doors is nice in nice weather but wet and cold its miserable :D

over the years its seems less and less youngsters are joining our hobby some clubs do better than others .There are so many other attractions available .its noticeable on a rostrum how many "silver foxes" have hold of the transmitters.

running and maintaining an outdoor track is time consuming and is a thankless task no two ways about it someone will always moan !! usually the ones who contribute naff all!!
My deepest admiration and thanks
for anyone who does this for us

dave

part of Your post would bring me to another question, are high grip high speed astro tracks good for bringing beginners into the hobby? one of the reasons for so many of us silver foxes :blush: is we took to the hobby when club tracks were far more simple and more rough round the edges

Possibly yes. A week or 2 ago a group of us from Batley were assessing the track and what maintenance is needed after the ravages of winter.
I'm a believer that if everyone drives the same track I don't mind lumps and bumps, but I know some like it to be flat and fast.
It is all personal preference really, but I do think that off road shouldn't be too sanitised.

Must say though, I don't miss turning up to race and spending the first hour mowing the track, then the rest of the day with green hands from unclogging mower!!

And we had much slower cars which, in order to win, had to be driven very accurately ..! For beginners we ran 380 class, remember them, in the likes of Tamiya Hornets..! Great class for youngsters.. Now, youngsters seem to turn up with 7.5 turn motors and wonder why they crash.!

Permanent indoor but not on carpet would be good, best start looking for a warehouse that can open the roof and have a few bags of grass cuttings dotted about ;-)

all good points lads

I started in 91/92 on grass with 27t stock motors any more and I couldn't do 5 minutes without dumping the batteries (now im old my batteries last longer then my concentration or bowels !!

I agree with youngsters and fast motors too this can be the playstation generation where you can turn off all realistic features like crashing turn on abs TCS anti crash everything you like and racee flat out without crashing !!

thanks to us oldies !!

I help in running an indoor Astro track.

What indoor gives you over outdoor is consistency of running, no abandoning a days racing due to rain. This allows us to run racing EVERY Sunday throughout the year.

This consistency encourages racers to invest in their gear as its worth their while as they know they will get good use from investing in expensive kit.

We can also provide a practice evening EVERY week so newbies can practice & become confident before they tackle a race day.

We tend to change the track every 3-4 months, sometimes just reversing it which can give a totally different feel to the same layout. We have a chap in the club who has great ideas for track layouts & builds all our jumps. The challenge in designing tracks is that it needs to be challenging for the experienced drivers but also possible for the newbies to get around. There's no point in designing a track for the top 10% of racers in the club and the rest of us mere mortals spend all our race day rebuilding our damaged cars which equals no fun for 90% of the club members which doesn't make sense. Getting the balance right is the challenge!!

We try & put some 'character' into the astro by placing bits of wood under the astro & placing sleeping policemen and large sheets of perspex around the track.

Its impossible to keep everybody happy & I personally like racing outdoors but only get this opportunity a few times a year.

We have talked to other clubs who had to close down, who raced outdoors, due to a typical UK/Irish summer; too many rained out days and racers tend to drift away and go elsewhere and take up an activity that guarantees an outcome regardless of the weather!!

I agree that an ideal solution would be an indoor dirt track but the expense & maintenance would make it extremly difficult for a small club to keep running & maintain.

The club I'm involved in has grown and has attracted a lot of new members over the last 5 years due to being based indoors, so from a club running point of view indoors works for lots of reasons.

Had a very pleasant day indoors today away from the weather. Commented a few times that one particular car was set up well to go ferociously quick from one crash to the next.
Seemed to be enjoying it though

I totally agree with you. Astro track is amazing outdoor or indoor. Perhaps for indoor tracks carpet may be more suitable but any kind of surface these two make a difference.