RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

coming back to RCCA/traxxas - keep in mind one of the most senior former editors actually took the Marketing VP job at traxxas a couple of years ago...

Paul

I still have a courtesy sub to RCCA since I was a vendor at the inauguaral RCX show (Huge waste of money & time from a biz standpoint.) Any more, I can't get through my 'morning ritual' ( ) with a single new issue of anything- I read all the stuff of interest, ads included, in about 14 minutes. As I don't give a hoot about nitro, truggies, short course, etc. the useful content is minimal. I went to the storage unit & have beem re-reading my mags from 1990-on: MAN, I remember why I got into this in the 1st place! As the one chap said, home-built Quarter-Scales, sprint cars, dragsters, amusing Reader's Rides (And the Ride of the Year actually took some custom skill to construct,) etc.

Actually, coming here has even re-invigorated my love for these old cars! Since Day 1 I decided to cater to the vintage & collector guys instead of making skidplates for T-Maxxes & shock towers for short course trucks. The market is smaller and it would be financially wiser to go a bit more mainstream, but I truly love what I do and it is so much more satisfying to make a nice part for the Sand Scorcher (Or RC10).....

The big bummer here in Pueblo, CO. is no hobby shops (Just a couple stores that have some R/C on the side,) no one to run with or hang out & talk about the old days, it's an R/C vaccuum here. So I rely on the mags & boards like this to decide what to make, and the mags are about useless any more. I read an article in the back of R/C Car before it went south in the 'vintage' section (how cool it was that they devoted a few pages to the subject!) written by a chap from Australia about a vintage race they held- It rained, the cars were awesome old beasties, and it was mostly for fun, and I thought Wow, if racing was still like that I'd be there every weekend! The hobby may be growing, but not in a direction I'm into. Chris REC

drbelleville wrote: Sadly the days of Steve Pond and Chris Chianelli are long over.

I will not waste my money on Car Action ever. Biased magazine

Yea, RIP Chris.

I talk to Steve on occasion and its fun to talk about the "old days" of RC. When he was the Editor at RCCA. Now he just acts as ROAR pres. AND works for Kyosho. Still a good guy. He's been around a long time.

kaiser wrote:they are all biased, they aren't allowed to give bad reviews because they are reviewing their advertisers products.

out of them all i find rc driver to be the best written.

Its funny, when I was in Chicago for Ihobby a few years ago, I remember talking to a couple of the Magazine guys. Being around as long as I have and meeting and knowing people in the industry you get a whole different feel.

The coolest guy was Aaron Waldron (of the now defunct RCCar) magazine. He told me that he would get calls from different mfg if a bad review of said car came out. The purpose of a magazine is to sell advertising and the big companies that pay for space, shell out a LOT of $$ and of course want their S#!t NOT to stink. He told me about the losi Strike when it came out, all the other mags gave it a glowing reviews and his was marginal. He got a call from Losi chewing him out. Then later they called him and apologized and after reading his review, re-tooled stuff and made it better, hence why their new SC is better (supposedly).

Its hard to look at a mag for a couple reasons 1: outdated info- thanks to RedRC and TheBigRC as well as places like RCTech etc. There is no "Surprises" anymore. The days of Secret product testing (except for maybe Xfactory) are over becasue stuff gets leaked all the time. 2: Its still fun to flip thru pages, but with smart phones etc, you can scroll thru web pages while sitting on the crapper rather than a magazine. 3: Most of the magazines (not just RC) are advertising anyway. In some respects you see the Traxxas ads and sadly it sticks. Traxxas has become the "iPod" of RC. Everyone who comes into my shop asks "Do you carry Traxxas" because THAT'S the name you hear.

As for a dedicated Traxxas magazine, wonder if AE, Losi, Durango, Kyosho, etc are allowed to advertise?

toyranosaur wrote: I read an article in the back of R/C Car before it went south in the 'vintage' section (how cool it was that they devoted a few pages to the subject!) written by a chap from Australia about a vintage race they held- It rained, the cars were awesome old beasties, and it was mostly for fun, and I thought Wow, if racing was still like that I'd be there every weekend!

Thats Darryn Johnson (Retro R/C) on here. I too loved RCCar for that because its important to remember your past. ( back when John Howell and Frank Masi left RCCA and started it, I bought the first issue. I think I still have it in a box in my folks attic.
Its true, in many ways, the "good ole' days" are gone.



MOmo

MOmo wrote: The coolest guy was Aaron Waldron (of the now defunct RCCar) magazine. He told me that he would get calls from different mfg if a bad review of said car came out.

no kidding

Don't worry guys it's the same on this side of the pond too. I've followed the French and UK press since I was a teen and the only mag that ever told the truth and ranked (how dare they!) cars when doing group reviews was Auto8. The editors were seasoned racers, editor in chief was Jose Rosas (multi-time worlds finalist in 12th, euro champ in 8th onroad, eurochamp in 10th offroad) and they would give you the straight dope. The guy in charge of anything electronic-related was Christophe Blandin, who has an engineering degree in electronicis iirc and is Denis Blandin's (former eurochamp too...) brother and mechanics... you get the idea. Auto8 was the first mag to die right about 2000.

The other "advertorial" mags have survived much longer

Paul