Where has c0sie been hiding for the last 7 years?! FAO Nick :)

[c0sie]

Hey all (especially Nick!),

A few of you might remember me, back in the very early days of the forum, when the micro RC scene was growing with things like the Mini-T and the AE RC18T. 

I vanished for about 7 years and A LOT has happened since then, so by way of an introduction this is my story

I found this forum very early in 2005 - probably when it was in its infancy. Nick was one of the first people to ever welcome me here, I had no RC knowledge at all and a lot of questions, and MSUK became my spiritual first online home!

I bashed nitro 8th buggies and stadium trucks a lot, met a group of lads in Middlesborough (driving from Gloucester, long before the days of sat-navs and smartphones, with just some printed directions from the AA to get me to Gainsborough. Cant remember the name of the crew, but they were an awesome bunch of lads!)

I started racing 8th nitro rallycross at Swindon because of the help and support I got from this forum, I turned to 10th TC indoor racing with an AE TC3 with help and support from this forum - mainly MTH, remember him?

Then not too many months later Associated released the RC18T. Id never seen anything like it in my life, bought one and was hooked. It was small, fast, fun, cute(?!), but also there wasnt really anywhere online where I could talk about it and ask questions, so I decided to start my own forum dedicated to micro RC chat.

 

From there things just grew and grew. Local clubs to my region (Gloucestershire) became more welcoming of micro's on their carpet, I started travelling further afield to race club evenings (Leominster, Weston-Super-Mare, Caldicot) and from making contact with some of the distributors here in the UK I organised a 3 event series in Tamworth with the help of the Tamworth Club crew called UK Micro Challenge 1, 2 and 3. The 3rd event, UK Micro Challenge 3 was the biggest to that date - had some of the biggest names in 10th offroad, 10th onroad and over classes race alongside us. Dez Chand at RRCI organised all the promotion of the event, and even published a DVD of the race meeting afterwards! Dez was a HUGE influence and inspiration to me in the early days, and he will be forever missed - RIP Dez.

 

After the UK Micro Challenge events had finished we approached the BRCA and started the BRCA Micro National section. Myself as Chairman, alongside a team of a few dedicated micro racers including some of the Tamworth Club crew who offered tonnes of really valuable support and advice to me as I went along my journey as BRCA Micro Chairman.

 

The Micro Nationals started in 2007, and I managed to win the Modified Class championship! We learnt a lot about running a series, enforcing rules, petty racer egos (lol), how desperate some people will be to find loop holes, how people will absolutely try and cheat if they can - I also learnt a lot about the BRCA too. The BRCA at the time was run by Chris Hardisty - he was again one of those people, alongside Jim Spencer who offered me so much help and advice. Even though I was a bit of a pain in the arse at the time in terms of not always being able to attend the BRCA Executive Committee meetings when I was supposed to, they were faultless in their support of what I was trying to achieve with the Micro Section. I have a lot of love for the BRCA, they work very hard behinds the scenes for very little reward.

 

At some point around 2007 I organised an event called the "Hereford Open" at the now closed Leominster club. I'll forever remember this event as the biggest meeting to that date event I had ever organised (80 or so entries), but where the entry fee to everyone was free. I had always wanted to make racing micro RC here in the UK as accessible to everyone of any budget. At the time I was a forklift salesman earning just over £14k a year. I had no money, and micro racing offered me cheap fun and occasionally a trophy!

I managed to generate enough sponsorship funds from the distributors and manufacturers for the event that I covered all the club fees and could offer the event at no cost to everyone. Proud of that!

 

After a few years of running the Micro Nationals, with the forum still growing, the micro scene being more and more supported by manufacturers, I organised 3 more of my own personal events, this time called UKMicroX 1, 2 and the International. 

The UKMicroX International event was the first 2 day micro RC meeting I had organised, and probably ever in the UK. We had drivers come over to the venue (Caldicot, Wales) from America, Sweden, and Hong Kong and it will probably forever be the best thing I ever achieved in RC.

 

Things kinda went downhill after the event though, unfortunately. A year after starting the Micro Nationals I enrolled into university as a mature student and the pressure of my last year coincided around this time. I was in a terribly toxic relationship at the time, then I finished university, got my first job as a software developer and put most of my effort into building a successful career. 

 

A lot of stuff happened at work that was taking a toll on my mental health, the end of my toxic relationship around the same time, the UKMicro-RC forum was regularly getting attacked by Russian spammer/hackers so my hosting company threatened to stop hosting me unless I paid for a dedicated server at £ridiculous per month, and finally my mental health just crashed.

 

This was long before the current times where it was ok to talk about mental health. I had 2 breakdowns and ended up in therapy for 2 years, but I had burnt myself out of RC so badly that I vanished from the scene totally in about 2014. 

I tried coming back to racing in local club 10th offroad racing in 2017 but couldnt do it - my head wasn't in the right place, although I thought it was, and I tried again in 2019 with some 10th onroad indoor racing but my crazy working hours ruined any chance of that happening.

 

Luckily now things have settled down - I work remotely so time isnt an issue, my head is in a lot better place at the moment, and the lockdown has given me opportunity to fettle with my cars again and actually enjoy doing what I was doing!

Going back to MSUK though - like I said, this place will always be my spiritual first home. I learn all about racing here, learnt how to run in a nitro engine here, got into bashing through this site, and made lots of great online mates. Nick was always very kind enough to allow me to advertise all my micro RC events on the forum too which was very much appreciated!

Hopefully I will be able to get back to posting here more regularly now, giving something back to a forum that helped me so much when I first started

Sorry for the essay,

Cris.

 

[ed1]

i remember meeting you and jonesy at ardent,i was sponsoring bish at the time.is there anywhere still runnin micros[worm]?

 

[Nick]

Woohoo, what a roller coaster Chris! Glad you made it out the other side a stronger man. Well done.

 

The Micro scene really took off with you, wouldn't of been anything otherwise. Do BRCA still do micro events?

 

Good to have you back, the forum has been busier than usual due to lockdown, it's fun! Thank-you for the kind words.

 

[c0sie]

2 hours ago, Nick said:

Woohoo, what a roller coaster Chris! Glad you made it out the other side a stronger man. Well done.

 

The Micro scene really took off with you, wouldn't of been anything otherwise. Do BRCA still do micro events?

 

Good to have you back, the forum has been busier than usual due to lockdown, it's fun! Thank-you for the kind words.

 

 

No, the BRCA Micro events died off for various reasons, one main reason being the introduction of the BRCA hard cased lipo rule. I totally understand the rule, but it kinda priced micros out of the LiPo market then - paying £30+ for a LiPo, needing a few to handle a National meeting, on a car worth £150 or so just meant that Micros lost their cost effectiveness.

Sad times, but all good things come to a close.

Glad to see MSUK thriving through - RCRaceChat died, oOple is a lot lot quieter now, and FB Groups (which I hate) just sucked the life blood out of forums. Glad that MSUK has weathered the storm mate

[Nick]

MSUK-Forum has always done well, not particularly sure what I do right others don't.

 

FB groups have their place, I don't think they offer what a forum does, I don't really see them as competition.

 

I guess you heard about Jimmy at oOple? It got really quiet since he sadly passed away.

 

 

[c0sie]

6 minutes ago, Nick said:

MSUK-Forum has always done well, not particularly sure what I do right others don't.

 

FB groups have their place, I don't think they offer what a forum does, I don't really see them as competition.

 

I guess you heard about Jimmy at oOple? It got really quiet since he sadly passed away.

 

 

Re: MSUK - having such a wide catch net for a target audience (bashers, racers, across all scales) probably means that as one class/scene dies the others take up the slack. You'll be running this in your retirement!

Re: FB Groups - I am an old school forum lover - I cant easily navigate a FB group, cant easily find information, and to ensure I am aware of all goings on I have to follow like 30 different groups! *shudder* - long life forums.

Re: Jimmy. RIP - sad sad sad times. He was such a huge influence to me, across how to run a niche forum, how to promote events and publish race reports - will forever miss that guy

[Hell horn.]

Fantastic to here you have won your battle with mental health. It's a bloody hard one to win. So well done dude.  I see your in Cheltenham? I live in Gloucester and have a small group of people that live in the area who do rc.  Add me if you wnst to meet up and have a Bash. Always good to have more people involved 

[danh]

Welcome back c0sie

Glad to hear you made it out the other side. I remember hanging about on uk micro rc 

 

As it goes I've not long picked up the tools and started to get back into it all. Even found hidden away in the cupboard one of my old 18t shells with the uk micro decals on it. 

 

Is Tamiyacowboy still about ? 

[.AJ.]

TC has been about, but I’ve not seen him for a few years now 

[Nick]

7 hours ago, danh said:

Welcome back c0sie

Glad to hear you made it out the other side. I remember hanging about on uk micro rc 

 

As it goes I've not long picked up the tools and started to get back into it all. Even found hidden away in the cupboard one of my old 18t shells with the uk micro decals on it. 

 

Is Tamiyacowboy still about ? 

 

Did you know @danh you were the 3rd member registered on this site? That's in the new database, we had a forum before 2004 but we lost all the data and had to create accounts again.

 

Out of those from 2004, only myself, you and @Garry are active.

 

[53HRA]

Welcome back pal  

[c0sie]

Wow, I registered over 15 years ago 😲
That's quite a scary stat!

As far as I know TamiyaCowboy is a Twitch gamer. Not my thing, but I believe that is where he lives nowadays?

 

[danh]

8 hours ago, Nick said:

 

Did you know @danh you were the 3rd member registered on this site? That's in the new database, we had a forum before 2004 but we lost all the data and had to create accounts again.

 

Out of those from 2004, only myself, you and @Garry are active.

 

I couldn't even tell you when I signed up to the first one. Doom56 was about in those days if I remember right 

 

[Garry]

I remember saying Hey to you Cris at a Kemble outdoor BTCC meeting - I wore my UMRC shirt incase you were there lol. i remember I was having a nightmare day running a new car and brushless which was causing all sorts of thermal  issues so  didn't stop long for a chat.

 

Its like a family reunion on here lately!

[Nick]

5 hours ago, danh said:

I couldn't even tell you when I signed up to the first one. Doom56 was about in those days if I remember right 

 

That's right yep, he took over from TMX. 👍 Neither were around long.