Anyone into RC?

I have a hyper 7 (I know, it is quite old)
It has been upgraded so much that I cant remember if there are any original bits on it.
After upgrading the servos, radio gear, nitro engine, batteries, shocks, springs, all the servo tray posts, braces, exhaust, tyres, everything really, it is now almost indestructible and very fast.
Problem is that I dont have the time for it any more and so am now contemplating selling up.
 
Hunders said:
Never really thought about it to be honest but it would be quite cool. I imagine carting to be quite a bit more expensive in the long run though. I don't really know about RC cars but if they are anything like helicopters the initial outlay can be costly but once you have everything it's not too bad(unless you like crashing :p).
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You could race a full championship of 11 rounds in something like club100 (www.club100.co.uk) for £1600. That's arrive and drive, so no outlay on equipment, but unlike any other arrive and drive karting you will have tried, it is in direct drive 2 stroke karts (proper karts - a world apart from any 4 stroke rental karts)

Racing your own machinery doesn't have to be much more expensive than that either. For example an easykart (www.easykart.co.uk) will cost you from about £900 second hand. Testing for fun can cost very little as long as you don't bend too much!- £40 circuit entry, £10 fuel, £10 engine life . But these things will blow your mind just how quick they are. A twin engine pro kart has 10hp and weighs a ton .... the easykart has a screaming 16k rpm 2 stroke motor that gives 35bhp, the kart weighs half as much as the pro kart, and uses very sticky tyres. Not for the feint hearted!
Racing will cost you more ... anything from about £1500 for the season upwards, but if you have the talent, you can still run at the front and make the world finals with a budget of under £3k for the season. There is always the temptation to spend more on shiny new bits, and you can spend a lot more! - same as RC no doubt :)

Feel free to drop me a message if any of you are thinking about giving it a go :)
 
marc mercer said:
You could race a full championship of 11 rounds in something like club100 (www.club100.co.uk) for £1600. That's arrive and drive, so no outlay on equipment, but unlike any other arrive and drive karting you will have tried, it is in direct drive 2 stroke karts (proper karts - a world apart from any 4 stroke rental karts)

Racing your own machinery doesn't have to be much more expensive than that either. For example an easykart (www.easykart.co.uk) will cost you from about £900 second hand. Testing for fun can cost very little as long as you don't bend too much!- £40 circuit entry, £10 fuel, £10 engine life . But these things will blow your mind just how quick they are. A twin engine pro kart has 10hp and weighs a ton .... the easykart has a screaming 16k rpm 2 stroke motor that gives 35bhp, the kart weighs half as much as the pro kart, and uses very sticky tyres. Not for the feint hearted!
Racing will cost you more ... anything from about £1500 for the season upwards, but if you have the talent, you can still run at the front and make the world finals with a budget of under £3k for the season. There is always the temptation to spend more on shiny new bits, and you can spend a lot more! - same as RC no doubt :)

Feel free to drop me a message if any of you are thinking about giving it a go :)
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This got me thinking who would win a race, someone in a kart or someone with a nitro buggy, on a track like buckmore park.

I would love to see that!
 
Ewww electric...

I have a nitro Traxxas hanging around somewhere that won't start :'(
 
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Im not a fan of nitro, noisy, smelly and a pain to start. Also you need to charge glow plugs overnight and make sure you have petrol. Electric you just charge a battery and 20mins later your off to play. Also its a lot cheaper motorwise and running expenses than nitro.
 
dandos23 said:
Is it petrol or nitro?
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Sorry, nitro >. <

I like the smell and real engineering, however I cba these days to play about with an oily, cold metal engine for hours just to try and make it start for 10 mins, I think my battory for the started morot is dying anyway.
 
matthab said:
Im not a fan of nitro, noisy, smelly and a pain to start. Also you need to charge glow plugs overnight and make sure you have petrol. Electric you just charge a battery and 20mins later your off to play. Also its a lot cheaper motorwise and running expenses than nitro.
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Yes it is quieter and less noisy/smelly. But I can run my buggy for over 4 hours straight without having to change anything, just re-fule.
 
xJcBx said:
Sorry, nitro >. <

I like the smell and real engineering, however I cba these days to play about with an oily, cold metal engine for hours just to try and make it start for 10 mins, I think my battory for the started morot is dying anyway.
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They can be a little tricky, but you are well rewarded for your efforts though.
 
Hunders said:
Thanks, I'm looking forward to flying it. I was looking at various 500 size electrics and the 500 ESP was a hard deal to beat. Other helicopters were around £150-200 more expensive so the T-Rex was a no brainer. The ESP is fully blinged up too.
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Not sure if you've seen my last post in the other thread but just incase: Don't go below 3.4v per cell often, if at all.. That turned out to be the problem I was having and since sticking to the 3.4v rule (The Spartan G4 is a big help in following the rule) I've had no charging issues at all. I'd also be intrested to hear what you think of your 500 v's the 600.

Hope the build goes well :cool:
 
Car wise; I have a very old Kyosho Super 10 GP with a Subaru Impreza body, and an electric Tamiya M-03 mini which is front wheel drive.

The Kyosho Super 10 is in a bit of a state of disrepair right now, on my to-do list are:
-Fit tuned exhaust if I can find one, when running 16% Nitro the tank currently over-pressurises at high power and it just slows back down.
-Work out why the Clutch bell isn't staying where it should on the crank.
-Try to stop the N/S rear axle unscrewing itself from the diff.

The mini has several upgrades:
-Ball bearings throughout.
-Limited slip diff.
-Hydraulic shocks and progressive springs.
-Anti roll bars.
-Up-rated motor, nothing expensive though.
-Digital speed controller.

Currently has a few issues:
-Speed controller keeps loosing calibration, needs replacement.
-Tyres are only just available again, the kit having been out of production until they did a rally version. It goes through tyres quite quickly.

I also want to try an make a supercap battery for it, the capacitors are ready for this application, and they're not expensive, but a charge pump is required, which means very high current transistors and diodes, which ain't easy.
 
dandos23 said:
Yes it is quieter and less noisy/smelly. But I can run my buggy for over 4 hours straight without having to change anything, just re-fule.
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Is that all? With my truggy or buggy and 2 batteries I can run non stop. I have a 350w charger which will charge my 6500mah packs at 20 amps, meaning my battery charges in about 17mins and takes about 22 minutes to discharge in the buggy/truggy. They would whoop any Nitro in terms of speed and acceleration too.
 
Just to add my bit Im off tommorow to here:

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http://www.ardentracing.com/raceway/index.php

Open practice session for 4 hours at 1.30pm then club night after. Ill be there, the guy with the yellow touring car.
 
Hector said:
Not sure if you've seen my last post in the other thread but just incase: Don't go below 3.4v per cell often, if at all.. That turned out to be the problem I was having and since sticking to the 3.4v rule (The Spartan G4 is a big help in following the rule) I've had no charging issues at all. I'd also be intrested to hear what you think of your 500 v's the 600.
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I have an ESC which drops power to the motor when a single cell drops to 3.2V which seems to work well.

Cant really say what I think of the 500 too much yet as I have only put it through three flights where I had to spend most of it setting electronics and such. Since then I have also made some mechanical changes which should make things tighter although I haven't had a chance to try it again due to bad whether. It seems like a good little helicopter, though. Very fast, with a lot of punch and quite a bit more stable than my Blade 400 but no where near as much as my 600n.

If you are worried about LiPo fires, you could have a look at getting a LiPo bag which you can use to store them in and also charge them in. It's basically a heavy duty fire proof bag made from the same material as a fireman's suit. Pop the batteries in there when charging and you don't have to take so much care and keep an eye on them quite so much. The cheapest place I have found them from is from here, which is also a good place to buy batteries from. I have three of the 3000mAh 6S jobbies at ~£40 a pop.
 
I have some lipo bags, only place I have to charge is in the house and so I brought a few a while back. I keep a window open during the charge and so if it does ever go up in flames, I'll give the bag a quick yank to disconnect the wires and then send it flying outside asap :D The bag will contain the short burst of flames but the smoke is pretty darn toxic.

Align have since updated their information and now state that 3.4v under load should be the minimum, it was the ESC/BEC/Alarm descriptions that got me confused when I first started out. They make it sound like 3.2v is for those wanting to be on the safe side and while that maybe true for saving the lipo from puffing up/popping, it's not true for the 80% rule which will aid in the total lifespan of the battery.

And thanks for the link, good value batteries :cool:
 
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Got an Ansmann Virus which came ready to run and an Ansmann Vapor which I built from kit form and added the W3 Ansmann 2.4ghz radio gear and a dynamite platimum 21 9 port engine.

Bought the kit one after getting the virus mainly cause I fancied building it more than anything. They are good cars for the price, pretty tough and fast enough for messing around with.

In the process of building an Ansmann Smacker for my son but really struggling to find a good motor for it. Wanted to get an Orion SV2 19 turn but damned if anyone seems to have one in stock so if anyone can recommend a non-brushless motor which has reasonable power , please let me know :)
 
I have never got what the attraction is to RC land vehicles the most exciting thing possible is taking a corner.... hmm thinking about it a crash probably would be. ;)

When I took up my first RC aircraft 5 years ago I quickly realised it is about 100x more fun than any RC land vehicle and adds a totally new dimension.

The challenging and exciting nature of controlling a model which is doing something amazing.. flying! Not just rolling around on the ground.. this aircraft has the middle finger up at mavity and you are in control! There is more risk involved but it leads to a much greater smile on the face, knowing that this thing is flying and you have to bring it back down to earth. Pure fun!

All in IMO of course :p
 
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Rusty_Noob said:
Is that all? With my truggy or buggy and 2 batteries I can run non stop. I have a 350w charger which will charge my 6500mah packs at 20 amps, meaning my battery charges in about 17mins and takes about 22 minutes to discharge in the buggy/truggy. They would whoop any Nitro in terms of speed and acceleration too.
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You reckon? My Schumacher XTR does 70+ mph and will accelerate to 40 in around 2 seconds. TBH it can be classed as a little too fast (oh it's a stadium truck, not road racer as well).:D

I also assume the 4 hour limit would be caused by the death of the batteries in the transmitter and servos.
 
2StepSteve said:
I have never got what the attraction is to RC land vehicles the most exciting thing possible is taking a corner.... hmm thinking about it a crash probably would be. ;)

When I took up my first RC aircraft 5 years ago I quickly realised it is about 100x more fun than any RC land vehicle and adds a totally new dimension.

The challenging and exciting nature of controlling a model which is doing something amazing.. flying! Not just rolling around on the ground.. this aircraft has the middle finger up at mavity and you are in control! There is more risk involved but it leads to a much greater smile on the face, knowing that this thing is flying and you have to bring it back down to earth. Pure fun!

All in IMO of course :p
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I almost got an RC plane about 10 years ago, unfortunately the company I bought it from ran out of stock after I bought it so I only recieved the glo start, transmitter and fuel before cancelling. Guess who got to keep the transmitter etc. :D

The most fun part of RC cars however is dodging the speeding gravel, picked up as the car goes past you at 50+. Even 10 ft can be dangerous! :p

Realistically the most fun part is taking the car off road and flying it over hillucks and off jumps. :)
 
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