I have a few videos I will post on YouTube soon. *Edit* video links below:
Brandon's Clod (Heavy Metal A-Main):
http://youtu.be/aooq08vz7mA
4wd Buggy A-Main:
http://youtu.be/w9jBQuxy9xQ
Stadium Truck A-Main:
http://youtu.be/zD81ndGLXm8
2wd Buggy A-Main:
http://youtu.be/swDTUMwNxFE
I had an AWESOME time at the VONATS this year. Saw some old friends and made some new ones. It was a long weekend with the program that we had, but I always enjoy spending time with other racers who love vintage r/c. Here are my thoughts on the three classes I raced in...
2wd buggy: First round of qualifying, I plugged my battery in backwards and blew out my ESC. D'oh! Luckily, my spare '94 YZ10 also had a GTB2, so I threw that in, but I had to miss the first round. The DNS put me in the C-qualifier for round 2. I was initially concerned about dealing with slow traffic in the C-qualifier, but luckily it was a light field and I was able to put in some clean laps to get into the A. Third round went pretty late, and the track was cool and damp compared to earlier in the day. I didn't make any mistakes, but by the evening, the surface was slower than earlier in the day and so I put in a 19/6:08, missing TQ by one or two seconds. We had a 4th round on Sunday, before the mains. It was nice and warm, and I managed a 19/6:02 to take TQ. That was only two seconds off of Erich's 4wd qualifying time, btw
I had a clean run for most of the A-main, but made two errors that put me down to 2nd toward the end of the race. I managed to catch back up to the leader by driving my butt off, and was right on his bumper across the start/finish line. Another lap and I might have had it, but then again I shouldn't have screwed up in the first place. Oh well...you can't win them all, and losses like this keep you grounded and give you something to shoot for next time. Overall, I'm quite happy with my 2wd buggy performance.
Stadium Truck: Relatively drama free. I got my RC10T off of Caine here on RC10talk, with lots of nice RPM parts on it. I had to make a few changes (30deg castor blocks, #3 pistons in the rear and thicker oil), but that truck was otherwise very solid and I liked every second of running it. I started off with 26/72 gearing for the first two rounds, which was a little on the slow side, but I was able to push it really hard. The motor wasn't running too hot, so I decided to push it a bit more and went to 30/72 gearing. That's more like it! It was much quicker on the straights and I was able to clear a triple that only 4wd buggies could clear, and this was without using any boost. After all four rounds, I qualified 2nd behind Brandon, who was super hard to catch the whole weekend. At the start of the A-main, there was a pile-up on the first corner that I managed to get around (Brandon was not so lucky, unfortunately - I was looking forward to a tight main with him). Rob (I forgot his last name?) was also very quick and was right on me for most of the race, but I managed to hold on for the win. He definitely had me sweating, though, as we were only a few car lengths apart for most of the race, and at a few points he was right on my bumper.
4wd buggy: This was my "comeback" story. I showed up on Friday to get some practice in with everything. I brought two YZ10s so that I could decide on which to run - the 870c and the '94 with delrin arms. I was leaning toward the 870c beforehand, since I had run it a few more times and I felt that I could push it harder over rougher surfaces (the surface at Bethel was on the bumpy side, and my '94 wasn't quite set up for that). I started with the 870c, and it felt so good that I didn't even bother running the '94 (side note: I do plan on running the '94 at RCHR's Vintage Revival next month). So then I show up on Saturday and start practicing before the qualifiers. After a few laps, I landed a jump with the 870c and all of a sudden the motor power drops out, but I still had steering. I thought it had something to do with the sensor wire, but it did not, and to put a long story short, this gremlin had me missing two of the qualifiers on Saturday. Then I remembered I had seen this problem before on my 4wd short course, which I had fixed by running an extra capacitor on the receiver (I suspect the BEC was going bad). So I put a capacitor on there and ran the third round without this problem showing up at all. I wanted to get a good run in so bad, having missed the first two rounds, that I overdrove it and ended up qualifying last (but I knew I could be way faster, and suffice it to say that I went to bed on Saturday night with nothing but my YZ10 on my mind). On Saturday night, I worked some "Voodoo magic" on the car, as Brandon later described it, to make it handle better (the rear was sliding out too much). I also swapped out the ESC for one of the ESCs I use every weekend and I know works reliably. Sunday morning came, an I showed up early just to be the first on the track to get practice in with the YZ10. I was comfortable with the 2wd chassis, so I was focusing purely on the 4wd during Sunday practice. Back and forth between the pits and the track...a little of this here...some spacers there...play with the endpoints...eventually it felt fine. There is a triple in the middle of the track that I was clearing with this, but not always clean all the time. Then I realized the 2wd times were comparable to the 4wd times (19 laps in the low 6's), and in 2wd I was taking it as a double-single. So I figured if I can do that clean in 4wd and leverage the higher power on the straights, I could surely put in a 20 lap run. In the 4th round of qualifying, I did exactly that. Toward the end of the qualifier, I was on a 19/low-6's pace. A few people dropped out and I had less traffic ahead, so I started tripling it again (clean this time) and managed a 20/6:15 (or 6:16...thereabouts). Fastest qualifying time of the event
During the A-main, around the middle of the race, something (maybe a rock) got caught up in my drivetrain and the car spun out. It cost me a fair amount of time to get that sorted out, but I was still in the lead when I got going again. Kept it clean and took it down...with an 870c!!! Probably the biggest race that buggy will ever win, so I expect to shelve it for now and run either my Lazer ZX or CAT 2000/EC for next year's VONATS.
Big ups to Erich and the Bethel R/C crew for running this event. If only they could pronounce my name right during the race
Rolando...Yolanda...Waldo...
