Hello From NorCal

[JackOTrades]

Hello and thanks for the add.

I've been farting around with RC's since the early 90's with my first dive into the hobby with the Tamiya Bear Hawk. I later would graduate to a Losi Jr T, and eventually picked up an Ofna Nitro Truggy and Bolink Sport Pan car.

I have alway had RC's to play around with dabling with helicopter, planes, drones, and always a variety of wheeled vehicles including electric, nitros, gas, 1/24 through 1/5 scale.

I jumped into the 5th scale game with the HPI Baja and started designing and manufacturing aftermarket parts in the early days of the Baja. I briefly stepped out of the hobby when I started having kids and shifted my focus to other hobbies.

I have been getting back into it over the years. Lately I find my self on the nostalgic path trying to revisit my youth with some of the cars that originally piqued my interest and got me into the hobby.

I no longer have the cars that got me into the hobby but I am on the hunt and have a sort of wish list of vehicles I am looking for.

I missed the first wave or re-releases. So, unfortunately I have been reduced to shopping on e-bay.

As part of my hunt I have been trying to get reacquainted with the history of the industry which is interesting once you start digging into it. That's what has brought me to this forum multiple times.

Ironically, I have struggled with finding the cars I originally owned (Bear Hawk, Losi Jr T) but have been able to find and acquire the cars I drooled over through the pages of RC Car Action from my youth including

NIB RC10 CE (shelf queen)
NIB RC10 ReRe (Shelf queen)
Schumacher CAT ReRe (shelf queen/runner)
Couple of used RC10T's (runner)
Couple of used gold-pan RC10's (runner)
Used JRXT (shelf queen/runner)

I haven't started working on the above projects (still looking for parts) but I imagine once I do, I will share some of the builds on the pages of this forum.

I have also built up a collection of brushed motors for the vintage cars and started playing around with rebuilding the motors and getting tooling to work on them. I think one of my first projects will be to develop an inertial dyno for testing and characterizing the brushed motors. I know you can buy a dyno and for what I am doing with RC's I don't really need to dyno anything but I do like the idea of being able to tweak these motors and make relative changes/measuremets. And, it's an opportunity to play around with an Arduino for something somewhat practical.

Sorry for the long winded intro. Thanks for information provided in these pages and I look forward to being able to possibly contribute as I dig into more specific projects that I have on the horizon.

[JackOTrades]

People usually like photos more than words so here are some projects from my past.

In college, I attempted to make a 1/2 scale amphibious vehicle. This project never go finished but it did drive around for a bit.

Amphibious 1

Amphibious 3

These are some custom builds from my 1/5 scale days.

Super Twin 1

Sandrail Baja 3

Sandrail Baja 1

Sandrail Baja 2

Tank Baja 1

Tank Baja 4

Tank Baja 2

Tank Baja 3

[JackOTrades]

In my hiatus form RC, I got into adult soapbox racing. These our 1-2 winning cars. The wooden one is faster.

Rusty Rocket

Ticonderoga 1

Ticonderoga 2

Rusty Rocket and Ticonderoga Side by Side

[TRX-1-3]

Dig the Dixon tribute on the wooden soapbox. Is it made from incense cedar? Welcome.

[JackOTrades]

Thanks for the welcome.

The body for the wood soapbox was made from Douglas fir. Bought 2x4’s and ripped them into 3/16” strips then routed the edges with a “canoe joint” so the would interlock.

[GarySmith]

Another NorCal guy. welcome to the group. I'm pretty new and have found everyone here to be pretty welcoming.

[JackOTrades]

Another NorCal guy. welcome to the group. I'm pretty new and have found everyone here to be pretty welcoming.

As a NorCal Guy, do you know of any indoor/outdoor off-road tracks in the bay area? It seems like the tracks move around or get shut down every couple of years.

The only couple that I know of but have yet to go to are NorCal which moved from Union City to San Jose and then BMX park up in Pleasanton.

TIA

[RC10th]

Ahhh reminiscing the old days of bay area rc racing. We used to go racing just about every weekend from Gilroy to Antioch and everywhere inbetween..

[GarySmith]

Another NorCal guy. welcome to the group. I'm pretty new and have found everyone here to be pretty welcoming.

As a NorCal Guy, do you know of any indoor/outdoor off-road tracks in the bay area? It seems like the tracks move around or get shut down every couple of years.

The only couple that I know of but have yet to go to are NorCal which moved from Union City to San Jose and then BMX park up in Pleasanton.

TIA

I have never done any track racing. It just wasn't my thing originally and now I'm just racing with family members with the new cars we bought recently. Sorry I'm not of any help on this

[shaveradam]

That tracked vehicle is sweet!

[shaveradam]

That tracked vehicle is sweet!