My grandparents got me into RC when i was 9 which was 1980, they bought me a cheap one for christmas (it used loads of batteries and they didn't last long, god it was expensive to keep running) had that fro about 18 months before my parents bought me a tamiya subaru brat, it took my dad 3 nights to build and i thought it was the muts nuts, that soon got converted into a frog and got hammered on our local bmx track. When that got tired i went to beatties at nottingham and bought a hornet with my saved paper round money, that car was awesome. Then we had a new model shop open in sutton in ashfield called C&T models and thats where i found my tamiya Hotshot/Bigwig/Boomerang hybrid which used to belong to a guy called Phil Barlow (anyone remember him?).
I joined the origional Mansfield club at Mansfield leisure centre, this was early 1987 which was run by a guy called Malc Webb. The boomerang hybrid served me well for my year in racing, it was run on a Tamiya Technigold motor, I thought it was fast at the time, i then went on to buy a mardave meteor with my first weeks wages and bought the full ball race set for it and modified front wheels to accept ball races. That car didnt get much use because my parents bought me a PB Maxima which on its first outing was awesome. That run on the same technigold motor as the boomerang. I then bought 4 sets of sanyo matched 1400 scr's, wow what power in their day.
I soon found the PB to be very fragile and ventured into a Schumacher CAT xls (second hand and 2 wheel drive) that soon got changed with mms diffs and lay shaft and it also had wide shumacher wheels fitted with sponge tyres for carpet racing, that soon got moved on for a pro cat and then i decided to move to 2 wheel drive with a cougar 2 team car, it took a while get used to but when i did it took me to the midlands carpet championship win in 1993. The othe 2 wheel drive car i used to race out doors was a RC 10 worlds with stealth gearbox which i still posess to this day, that car was so planted and drove like it was on rails, awesome.
In 1995 i decided to move from electrics to 235mm i.c touring cars (serpent impact 1 which used to belong to Gavin Reece R.I.P) the power took some getting used to then i sold that and got an impact 2 which ended my i.c racing when i blew 3 engine up at tibshelf, i gave all my gear away to Phil Barlow(which he still has today).
10 years later my son turns 11 and says dad i want an RC car for christmas, so i went to PBM and bought him and myself an LRP S10 blast just to get us started
any way 9 months down the line we now have shumacher cougar sv's which are both competative and dont breake like the lrps did.
But i only have one gripe about modern RC (ok mabe more) there is no art to making your car go as quick as possible on low capacity batteries and last 5 mins, i mean lipos they can do 3 races with a car that breaks the land speed record without being charged????????? and the other is, there arnt enough people doing racing anymore, i can remember club nights at mansfield havin 12 heats 10 cars per heat, 3 rounds and finals?????
The good old days
