I decided to take one week off from racing RCGT since I have been using one car for both classes.  I wanted to focus just on one class, 17.5 rubber tire, and try some setup changes.  Also, I wanted to pull out my 416 and copy Jilles Groskamp’s setup from Snowbirds since his car looked absolutely dialed!

Some days my driving is spot on and other days I just have a hard time focusing.  This past Sunday was one of those days where I kept losing my concentration.  My 415 was still having a slight problem from the previous week of diving in too hard on the nose.  I reset my droop to 2mm in the front and slightly less in the rear.  This seemed to help the car but there was still something I was missing.  I had been running Protoform’s new LTCR body since I was in Snowbirds.  This body worked fantastic, but I had a feeling it was some of the cause of my aggressive car.  I tried the 415 with the Mazda Speed 6 and that calmed the car down considerably.  The car was fast, but since I had a slightly less than perfect driving day, I was starting from the back of the pack.  Up front in the main, I had trouble working around a car for position.  I was parked in the board for about a lap since the corner marshal had left their post.  I regained my composure and tried to make up as much ground as I could on the leaders.  I was just too far behind to make it to the front of the pack.

My hopes for next week are to load up the 416 with electronics and hit the track! This will let me have a separate car for RCGT and rubber tire.

So I'm back from the Snow birds and have plenty of work ahead of me with practice and racing. I had one week off right after the 'Birds and I was right back to my Sunday racing. My first race day back went really well. The 415 handled great in the RCGT class all day. The car has plenty of traction with the spec HPI X-pattern tires. RCGT is one of my favorite classes to run since it relys a lot on driving skill and consistancy. I had a good battle all day with the second place qualifyer but I came out on top and was starting on the pole for the main. At the start of the main, I got a good hole shot off the line. I was able to work through traffic clean and stay out front of a hard charging second place. With my consistant, clean laps, I was able to finish in first in the RCGT class.

Since my 416 was still not 100% ready for a race day, I also used my 415 in 17.5 rubber tire. The 415 was handling good but on two of the high speed corners the car was transfering too much weight to the front and pivoting on the front end.  made some set up changes to try and accommodate this, but the car didn't get much better. It was leading me to believe I had a bad set of tires on my car. Since I had mistaking left my spare sets at home, I adjusted how I drove the car into those two corners. The main for 17.5 rubber tire was a good challenge between me and the first place of Casey. Casey was fast all day and his car was well hooked up. We were bumper to bumper for most of the race. A few bumps on the board gave Casey a little breathing room over me but I made up ground quickly. I ran out of time and was unable to put a good pass on Casey. I ended up second place overall.

Heading to the 2010 Snowbirds, I had a confident feeling with my 415 being the faster car over my 416.  The first day of practice went really well. The 415 had a slight push with the Protoform Mazda speed 6 so I went to the new body from Protoform the LTCR.  This body gave the car more downforce and more steering.

The first qualifier was my fastest for the weekend.  I had a few taps on the board and had some trouble with traffic.  I did end up with a 24 lap run but the field was pretty packed and fast.  For the 2nd qualifier I was in the A-main resort.  Unfortunately I went to a different motor and esc software change and it was definitely not the fast route. For the third qualifier, I went back to my original setup.  The car was fast again but I had gotten in some trouble with a leader and cost me a lap.  The 4th round was rough with everyone trying to get into the A-main. So needless to say I was unable to gain any ground.

In the end of the weekend, I actually went backwards a little bit and fell to the C-main.  But as I always try to make the best of the situation and learn for the next time that I have a lot of work to do.

The January Jam was our first unofficial trophy race on the new carpet track at R/C Madness. This race had about 115 entries and was a good practice for the Snowbirds in Orlando, FL.  I was running 3 classes (17.5 Rubber Tire, 1/12th 17.5, RCGT) so my day was pretty busy.  After about a month of racing and practicing I felt more confident of my 415MSX running quicker times than my 416 so I chose to run the 415 in both touring classes.  I'm still working on my 416 to get more infield speed.

The first qualifier in RCGT I had a pretty clean run.  I was able to set TQ in the RCGT class with a quick 24 lap run.  I had changed my gearing to get the motor to run cooler but it backfired and actually ran hot.  So hot, it had burned up my motor.  Back to the drawing board, I went back to my original motor setup from the previous week before for the 3rd qualifier and it worked beautifully. I then reset TQ with a 25 lap run.  In the main, I got a good hole shot off the start, but 2nd place qualifier, Rob, was faster than me and on my tail.  I kept with my consistent line was was able to win the race with a lap on the field.

In 17.5 rubber tire, competition was pretty tough with many of the fast guys from around New England practicing for the "Birds.  My 1st qualifier was ok, but I had hit too many boards giving me a slow 25 lap run with TQ set at 27 laps by Jeff Cuffs.  The 2nd qualifier was much better but I still didn't drive as consistent as I would have liked.  I ran a quicker 25 laps but still far from the 27 laps I was striving for.  The 3rd qualifier was much more to my liking and I hit a 26 lap run.  I ended up qualifying 5th overall.  The start of the race was a mess.   I checked up off the start and ended up getting the short end of the stick there.  I fell to the back of the pack.  I was able to work my way up through the field with 3rd position in my sights but cut the corner too tight. I cost myself a chance at 3rd.  Finishing the main was was 5th.

Next on schedule is Snowbirds in Orlando, FL Jan. 26-31.

2009 was a fantastic year for Team Tamiya. With the 801X and 801XT coming out in full force this past year, the Team has taken many wins across the country.  I have been with Tamiya for the past few years now and I am very grateful to be with such a great company.  Every year seems to be getting better and better with all the new pro-level racing cars, trucks and touring cars.  I see there are many things on the horizon for Tamiya and I look forward to each and every one of them.

I had a great season with my 801X and 801XT.  I finished in the top 5 at most of the races I attended and TQ’d many local race weekends.  I look forward to getting out next off-road season for more R&D with changing setups and just practicing on being more consistent.  I’m happy to report that I now have my local carpet track back and will be doing a lot more touring car racing from this point forward.  So my hopes for 2010 are to get the Tamiya product out there more and show how successful you can be with a Tamiya product! (And hopefully some more wins!)

I finally made it out to one of my local indoor tracks in Waterbury, CT called RCHR.  The competition is pretty tough there since there are many fast local drivers there that race there multiple times per week.  The track was technical and tight, so if you made a mistake it was hard to make up time.  The Baldre handled the track pretty well with running BK bars in the rear and taper pins up front.  The track was well packed and I still chose to try out my Holeshots.  I felt the Baldre was more locked into the track with the Holeshots all the way around.  The made quite a few mistakes and qualified 8^th.  During the main, I was able to take advantage of the tight racing and worked my way up to the 5^th position.  Overall, I felt confident with my night of racing since it was my first time at this track.

Since my local track has finished the indoor carpet track, I have put away my off-road equipment in exchange for my touring cars and 1/12^th pan cars.  So, I will hopefully be getting in a lot of practice before heading to Snowbirds in Orlando, FL at the end of January.

While I'm waiting for my local carpet track to be finished with construction, I ventured out to R/C Excitement for their 5th annual Gobbler Indoor Offroad Championships.  It has been a long time since I ran my 1/10th 4wd electric competitively.  My 501x was had some rear diff issues and was not ready for a race.  I took my Baldre for the event since it was wired up and ready to go.

The track surface was smooth and had plenty of traction with a groove that formed towards the end of the day.  The tires to run were Losi pink compound front taper pins and rear BK-bars.  The Baldre hooked up well but I needed a lot of adjustment to my driving since I have been running 1/8 nitro all summer long.   I ran pretty much a stock out of the box setup on the Baldre. I felt the Baldre could have used slightly more rear traction.   I moved the rear arms forward to put more weight on the rear end for more rear traction.  I also changd the shock oil to 30 weight in the front shocks and 25 weight in the rear shocks with red springs in the rear and yellows in front.

There were 3 qualifyers and with each qualifyer I ran faster lap times.  My 3rd qualifyer was my fastest but with a few slip ups my time fell off an a-main run.  I ended up qualifying 3rd in the b-main.  I had a great holeshot off the starts with the inside line for 2nd place at the start of the b-main.  First place made a mistake and I was able to take the lead.  I made a mistake and 2nd and 3rd took over the top two spots.  The race was tight since the three of us were all close together.  With the top two battling for position, I was able to get by for the lead once again.  Lap traffic was tough and I was able to keep the lead for the final few minutes of the race.  At the finish I crossed the line for 1st place.

Overall, I felt the weekend was great.  I did well for dusting off the electric buggy and dragging it out of retirement.  I was glad to see that I was not the only Tamiya out there.  A local racer had a 501x that looked totally hooked up on the track.  I know for next time I will have both buggies ready for the next time I venture out to R/C Excitement.

Well even with my efforts of showing up to race at my home track each week, the northeast weather has defeated me! So I have started to wrap up the 801x and 801xt for the winter.  Pretty much I clean up each vehicle so they're like new.  I run my motors out of fuel to prevent any harmful nitro from sitting in there over the winter months.  I add a few drops of after run oil to my motors to help preserve them from rust.

My next race on my schedule will be an indoor offroad race at R/C Excitement in Fitchburg, MA.  I'm a little rusty with running 1/10th 4wd electric so I'm hoping just for a fun race day and also a day to work out the bugs of my Baldre nd 501x.  I'm hoping to be back tearing up the rug with my 416 soon once my local track is back up and running 100 percent after their move.

The weather has been quite off the wall here in New England. We have been getting everything from snow to sleet to warm sunshine on any given day of the week.  This is making it hard to find a good weekend of racing since my local indoor carpet track is not up and running yet (hopefully soon).  The weekend of the Fall Classic was beautiful.  It was sunny and warm.

I started off the day with what I thought on a good note.  My truggy was all cleaned up and ready to rip around the track from being dormant for a few weeks.  Well as the morning progressed I found that my motor was running funny and found a minor crack in the case.  I had a new case to replace the broken one with and started to work on tearing the motor down.  Now things started to go wrong.  I couldn't get my carb out of the old motor case.  Unfortunately I could not save it and had to install a new one.  I tried to get the settings close to what I had before so I only had minor tuning.  I missed the first of two rounds of qualifying.  I managed to get out for the second qualifier and the truggy was running good.  Again to my unfortunate luck, the servo I put in for steering as a temporary replacement until I got a new case for my old one stripped the plastic gear.  So I still had high hopes for the main once I put in a better replacement servo.  Well, I guess the third time was a charm because I had too short of screws in the rear bulkhead and ended up pulling out the screws.  This gave me a DNF for the main and the day.

It was definitely a rough race day which I had not anticipated.  Nothing or no one to blame but just coincidence that I had so many mishaps.  Hopefully the weather will brighten up and warm up so I can get in a few more weeks of racing.

I am brushing off the dust of the Baldre and may visit one of the indoor offroad tracks that I haven't been to yet while I wait anxiously to start to run touring cars again!

Well, in New England the seasons change quickly.  I'm coming down to the end of my off-road season.  This weekend will be one of the last trophy races of the season the Fall Classic.  I hope to dust off my Baldre and run a littl ite of electric buggy this weekend also.  I haven't been running electric so I could focus more on the 801x and 801xt. Hopefully I can get a few more weekend of outdoor racing since the new indoor carpet track isn't quite ready yet. But it's getting cold quick!

I'm already getting into carpet racing mode.  My main classes I run are stock touring rubber tire touring car and 1/12th stock pan car.  This season I'm starting up a new class I have been reading about, RCGT.  Since I have a backup touring car and many people I know have an old touring car lying around, I thought this would be a fun class and a great way to get new people interested in racing. Hopefully it all works out and the class is a success.