oOple's Ultimate After School Club

[racingben]

So as a bit of an experiment I decided to offer RC racing as an after school club at my daughters School. I wasn't sure how it would go and I decided to price it just below the Karate Club.

It went down rather well! I've blurred the kids faces for reasons of Political Correctness. The club is full at 14 kids (not bad considering its a small (<100 kids) village school and I only allowed year 2-6 to do it)

I supply the cars, timing equipment and track. The Kids design tracks for me using a piece of freeware I found. Some like to race, some just want to practice and lets just say it isn't the quietest 75 minutes of my week :-)

The equipment is all of the stuff I use for my www.modelcarparties.co.uk events.

[ianjoyner]

Looks awesome

[Dombrasky]

Good job Ben,brilliant way of getting kids involved in RC

[racingben]

Now wondering if it'll work as the basis of an RC club as well.....

Let's face it it's an attractive thing for parents to be able to pay eg £6 entry fee with no other costs instead of £300+ on gear then the same fee plus pay for broken bits.

I've developed these little losi cars to the point now that they just don't break - I lose the odd servo but that's about it. They're also fast enough that we could have a rental class and an owner class for people who wanted to buy their own. Add some weight, run unrestricted on 2s lipo and play with shock oil and you've got a quick little car.

[alex97]

wish my school did this, sounds great fun. how do the cars hold up to the kids driving them ?

[racingben]

They're pretty strong. The weak points are the steering servo and the wheels (strip too easily) fixed by backing slipper right off and covering tyres in heat shrink. This way the cars slide too which adds to the fun! The servo just needs the end points setting properly.

Other than that I don't think I've broken anything yet. I've modified the transmitters so I can limit the top speed (about 8mph in the video - they can do just over 20mph with a 2s lipo)

[Loheswaran]

Great idea and effort - such a good way of getting people into racing

[racingben]

Wonder if I could start a club with it too...... Have a rental race and then gradually start an owners race too. The cars are £100 and pretty bullet proof. Quite twitchy but if you throw some lead in the back of them (they only weigh 200g!) and put thick oil in the shocks they're ok.

Here's a video of me mucking about with the truggy version
http://youtu.be/9kW45TmhmHo

[racingben]

And a quick video of one of my recent events
http://youtu.be/JsGILymZIFQ