Hello, new old guy from NoVA by way of upstate NY here
Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 5:06 pm
Hello, all. After lurking for a few months I've decided to sign up and join in!
Like many guys here it seems, I got into R/C when I was a kid in the early 80's. My first experience was seeing someone doing stunts with a Wild Willy in front of the hobby shop in the Bazaar Mall in Mt. Kisco NY, and I was hooked. Being into static models at the time, seeing a detailed model (well, the body at least) of a Wild Willy in action was the coolest thing ever. Then a kid our family went camping with brought his Frog and blazed around a dirt field way faster than I thought these things actually went. But what really did me in was visiting Herb's Hobby House, an awesome hobby store in Doylestown PA. Herb's was loaded with static models and it was a treat to go there when I was dragged to see my grandparents a few times a year. But the really cool thing about Herb's were the detailed radio controlled cars from Tamiya they had on display in the front window and the original boxes hung up like artwork on the walls. It was awesome! Problem was that I came from a family of somewhat limited means so an expensive 'toy' like a Grasshopper just wasn't in the cards. There were only so many lawns I could mow and driveways I could shovel to make enough money to buy a full R/C setup before I would lose interest between visits to my grandparents. But I still loved going to Herb's whenever I could because hey, a kid can dream, right? There was no local hobby store nearby home which was a tragedy for a kid into models and R/C cars. I felt like Ralphie forever chasing his beloved Red Rider BB gun.
Fast-forward a few years and my friends all started getting R/C cars. Grasshoppers (and some Rock Buster clones), a Hornet, a Subaru BRAT, a Big Bear, a Blackfoot, an FX10, a Fox... Some kids had all the luck, or at least parents that didn't mind throwing down a big chunk of cash for that one mother-of-all Christmas/birthday/whatever present for their kid. The only good thing about it is that I was the only one with any mechanical aptitude so I was the one either helping to build these fantastic machines or at least helping to fix them when they broke. Opening up those Tamiya kits was like opening up the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. It was magical. Everyone seemed to buy the same crappy Aristocraft twin-stick radio, so the rare Futaba setup was like seeing an exotic Japanese sports car. 15 minute timed chargers were the norm, and everyone sprung for the cool-looking grey plastic Tamiya hump pack batteries. It just seemed like those batteries were the epitome of quality and performance for some reason, and those cheap-looking shrink-wrapped batteries I saw in some places were just low-cost wannabe replacements. What little I knew.
Eventually I got my driver's license, and miracle of miracles, a small hobby store opened up nearby called A&D Fastracks in Carmel NY. It was a small store run by nice folks that had a mix of airplane and model kits and building materials, a few Tamiya kits (naturally), and other hobbyist odds and ends. But way up on the top shelf behind the counter was a small-ish box that said TEAM ASSOCIATED overlaying a cool-looking action shot of a buggy in the dirt. What the heck was an RC10...?
Back then, to a kid who thought the R/C world revolved around Tamiya products, the RC10 was a strange animal. First off, sure the box looked cool, but not in the somewhat artsy otherworldly way that Tamiya boxes looked. And it was a relatively small box to boot (a bad sign for some reason). White plastic? Tamiyas were generally all black and therefore cool. Lots of aluminum? The Super Champ had a lot of metal in it and it was a heavy pig. What's with that funky transmission, and how does a ball diff even work? A speed controller needs to be soldered together? Who the heck wants to deal with that? Non-metric Allen-head hardware? Flanged bearings? It didn't even have a front bumper! The RC10 looked more like it was hand made rather than a polished kit. The typewritten and xeroxed instruction manual was just more proof of that. It had none of the charm or personality or 'mystique' that Tamiya cars had. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first but I can't say I was too crazy about it. It really had nothing that attracted me to the hobby in the first place.
Of course, one of my friends eventually bought one, an original gold pan six gear. I helped him a little but generally the unfamiliar design was more frustrating rather than interesting to build. I could certainly see the performance potential, though. For example, the amount of suspension travel in the rear was amazing, and when fully assembled it was built like a tank. Not necessarily heavy, just sturdy and apparently designed to take abuse. It made the Tamiyas I coveted look like toys, and that bothered me a little.
In the meantime, I finally bought my first real R/C car, a very used and abused Fox from one of my friends for cheap. With a complete teardown and rebuild and a few new parts, it was up and running. Like the Millennium Falcon, it didn't look like much but had it where it counted since it was reassembled correctly and adjusted like it was supposed to be. Daring to be different, I bought a good Airtronics radio and some no-name NiCd batteries. I did not have much invested in it which made me worry less about it and enjoy it more, something that stuck with me later on.
A&D's sold Radio Control Car Action magazine and I bought every issue. The pages were filled with new cars and project car buildups, stuff I loved, but a lot of it was for the RC10. It was only then that I started getting interested in them and appreciated its design. I decided I would pull the pin and buy one. A&D Fastrack's had moved into a new place in Brewster NY by then and were in the process of building an indoor dirt oval track. They also expanded the stock they kept on hand so I had lots of choices! Not even seriously considering any Tamiya or Kyosho kits that were on the shelf, I could get a classic gold pan, an 'exotic' TQ10, or what seemed to be Associated's next-generation car and a better buy, an RC10 Graphite. I went with the RC10 Graphite and the rest, as they say, is history.
Being my main hobby (and being a financially irresponsible teenager to boot), R/C is where I dumped all of my money. I loved tinkering with these things. I loved all the aftermarket parts available for them. I loved modifying them, upgrading them, just changing them to make them different and 'better' than how they came out of the box. Different wheels and tires, different bodies, different suspension parts, different transmissions, etc. I LOVED it. But what I really didn't love was actually driving them. All that hard work and expensive parts just to get them dirty? I could barely bring myself to do it but most cars still had a few packs run through them. Cars multiplied like rabbits due to all the spare parts I ended up with. I was able to build RC10-based cars out of spares and a few bits and pieces from A&D's, and I LOVED doing that too. I also branched out to Team Losi cars during the JRX Pro through XX era, and still bought an odd Tamiya and Kyosho car when one struck my fancy.
Eventually, the hobby started to change and so did my priorities. Computers started taking over my life and that's where a lot of my money started going. The last new cars I built were probably a Losi XX and a car that I really should have enjoyed more but didn't: the then-new RC10B2. Those cars seemed to mark the end of an era, when aftermarket support was huge and you weren't afraid to drill holes in a chassis, modify suspension parts with a dremel, etc. to make them 'better'. The XX and B2 both seemed to be finely tuned race cars out of the box and not much needed to be done with them, and the lack of (or really, the need for) aftermarket parts was a sign that it was time for me to move on.
A&D Fastracks had previously moved again to Mahopac NY, downsizing by getting rid of the indoor dirt oval and moving back into a storefront-type shop. During this time I had bought and sold quite a few cars through A&D's, and it was very cool of Adam to sell customer's cars on consignment for a percentage. Eventually he closed up shop, but thankfully I was able to sell all of my cars and equipment before he closed his doors for good. It was nice to be able to offload all this stuff I had spend THOUSANDS of dollars on to new homes and get a few hundred back in the process. At the time it was certainly the best thing to do but how I wish I now had all of my cars and equipment back!
So if you bought a nice, clean 'used' RC10 or JRX-something from A&D Fastracks in the early 90's, it might have been one of mine!
Like many guys here it seems, I got into R/C when I was a kid in the early 80's. My first experience was seeing someone doing stunts with a Wild Willy in front of the hobby shop in the Bazaar Mall in Mt. Kisco NY, and I was hooked. Being into static models at the time, seeing a detailed model (well, the body at least) of a Wild Willy in action was the coolest thing ever. Then a kid our family went camping with brought his Frog and blazed around a dirt field way faster than I thought these things actually went. But what really did me in was visiting Herb's Hobby House, an awesome hobby store in Doylestown PA. Herb's was loaded with static models and it was a treat to go there when I was dragged to see my grandparents a few times a year. But the really cool thing about Herb's were the detailed radio controlled cars from Tamiya they had on display in the front window and the original boxes hung up like artwork on the walls. It was awesome! Problem was that I came from a family of somewhat limited means so an expensive 'toy' like a Grasshopper just wasn't in the cards. There were only so many lawns I could mow and driveways I could shovel to make enough money to buy a full R/C setup before I would lose interest between visits to my grandparents. But I still loved going to Herb's whenever I could because hey, a kid can dream, right? There was no local hobby store nearby home which was a tragedy for a kid into models and R/C cars. I felt like Ralphie forever chasing his beloved Red Rider BB gun.
Fast-forward a few years and my friends all started getting R/C cars. Grasshoppers (and some Rock Buster clones), a Hornet, a Subaru BRAT, a Big Bear, a Blackfoot, an FX10, a Fox... Some kids had all the luck, or at least parents that didn't mind throwing down a big chunk of cash for that one mother-of-all Christmas/birthday/whatever present for their kid. The only good thing about it is that I was the only one with any mechanical aptitude so I was the one either helping to build these fantastic machines or at least helping to fix them when they broke. Opening up those Tamiya kits was like opening up the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. It was magical. Everyone seemed to buy the same crappy Aristocraft twin-stick radio, so the rare Futaba setup was like seeing an exotic Japanese sports car. 15 minute timed chargers were the norm, and everyone sprung for the cool-looking grey plastic Tamiya hump pack batteries. It just seemed like those batteries were the epitome of quality and performance for some reason, and those cheap-looking shrink-wrapped batteries I saw in some places were just low-cost wannabe replacements. What little I knew.
Eventually I got my driver's license, and miracle of miracles, a small hobby store opened up nearby called A&D Fastracks in Carmel NY. It was a small store run by nice folks that had a mix of airplane and model kits and building materials, a few Tamiya kits (naturally), and other hobbyist odds and ends. But way up on the top shelf behind the counter was a small-ish box that said TEAM ASSOCIATED overlaying a cool-looking action shot of a buggy in the dirt. What the heck was an RC10...?
Back then, to a kid who thought the R/C world revolved around Tamiya products, the RC10 was a strange animal. First off, sure the box looked cool, but not in the somewhat artsy otherworldly way that Tamiya boxes looked. And it was a relatively small box to boot (a bad sign for some reason). White plastic? Tamiyas were generally all black and therefore cool. Lots of aluminum? The Super Champ had a lot of metal in it and it was a heavy pig. What's with that funky transmission, and how does a ball diff even work? A speed controller needs to be soldered together? Who the heck wants to deal with that? Non-metric Allen-head hardware? Flanged bearings? It didn't even have a front bumper! The RC10 looked more like it was hand made rather than a polished kit. The typewritten and xeroxed instruction manual was just more proof of that. It had none of the charm or personality or 'mystique' that Tamiya cars had. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first but I can't say I was too crazy about it. It really had nothing that attracted me to the hobby in the first place.
Of course, one of my friends eventually bought one, an original gold pan six gear. I helped him a little but generally the unfamiliar design was more frustrating rather than interesting to build. I could certainly see the performance potential, though. For example, the amount of suspension travel in the rear was amazing, and when fully assembled it was built like a tank. Not necessarily heavy, just sturdy and apparently designed to take abuse. It made the Tamiyas I coveted look like toys, and that bothered me a little.
In the meantime, I finally bought my first real R/C car, a very used and abused Fox from one of my friends for cheap. With a complete teardown and rebuild and a few new parts, it was up and running. Like the Millennium Falcon, it didn't look like much but had it where it counted since it was reassembled correctly and adjusted like it was supposed to be. Daring to be different, I bought a good Airtronics radio and some no-name NiCd batteries. I did not have much invested in it which made me worry less about it and enjoy it more, something that stuck with me later on.
A&D's sold Radio Control Car Action magazine and I bought every issue. The pages were filled with new cars and project car buildups, stuff I loved, but a lot of it was for the RC10. It was only then that I started getting interested in them and appreciated its design. I decided I would pull the pin and buy one. A&D Fastrack's had moved into a new place in Brewster NY by then and were in the process of building an indoor dirt oval track. They also expanded the stock they kept on hand so I had lots of choices! Not even seriously considering any Tamiya or Kyosho kits that were on the shelf, I could get a classic gold pan, an 'exotic' TQ10, or what seemed to be Associated's next-generation car and a better buy, an RC10 Graphite. I went with the RC10 Graphite and the rest, as they say, is history.
Being my main hobby (and being a financially irresponsible teenager to boot), R/C is where I dumped all of my money. I loved tinkering with these things. I loved all the aftermarket parts available for them. I loved modifying them, upgrading them, just changing them to make them different and 'better' than how they came out of the box. Different wheels and tires, different bodies, different suspension parts, different transmissions, etc. I LOVED it. But what I really didn't love was actually driving them. All that hard work and expensive parts just to get them dirty? I could barely bring myself to do it but most cars still had a few packs run through them. Cars multiplied like rabbits due to all the spare parts I ended up with. I was able to build RC10-based cars out of spares and a few bits and pieces from A&D's, and I LOVED doing that too. I also branched out to Team Losi cars during the JRX Pro through XX era, and still bought an odd Tamiya and Kyosho car when one struck my fancy.
Eventually, the hobby started to change and so did my priorities. Computers started taking over my life and that's where a lot of my money started going. The last new cars I built were probably a Losi XX and a car that I really should have enjoyed more but didn't: the then-new RC10B2. Those cars seemed to mark the end of an era, when aftermarket support was huge and you weren't afraid to drill holes in a chassis, modify suspension parts with a dremel, etc. to make them 'better'. The XX and B2 both seemed to be finely tuned race cars out of the box and not much needed to be done with them, and the lack of (or really, the need for) aftermarket parts was a sign that it was time for me to move on.
A&D Fastracks had previously moved again to Mahopac NY, downsizing by getting rid of the indoor dirt oval and moving back into a storefront-type shop. During this time I had bought and sold quite a few cars through A&D's, and it was very cool of Adam to sell customer's cars on consignment for a percentage. Eventually he closed up shop, but thankfully I was able to sell all of my cars and equipment before he closed his doors for good. It was nice to be able to offload all this stuff I had spend THOUSANDS of dollars on to new homes and get a few hundred back in the process. At the time it was certainly the best thing to do but how I wish I now had all of my cars and equipment back!
So if you bought a nice, clean 'used' RC10 or JRX-something from A&D Fastracks in the early 90's, it might have been one of mine!
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