How did you get into RC?

[Monski]

Hi All.

 

I'm quite new to racing radio controlled cars and was just wondering if you would mind sharing the story of what made you choose RC as a hobby? What is it that was so appealing?

 

Cheers and looking forward to some great stories!

[Fuzzock]

I badly broke my arm as a child trying to somersault of a playground dragon.

 

My first RC was a surprise from my parents when I got out of hospital. Shame I needed two hands to drive it ><

 

However the seed was sown. 

 

Ian...

Edited November 26, 2020 by Fuzzock

[DAL3D]

My dad used to be into RC boats - mainly IC. My job as a kid would be to "drive" the electric tug boat me and him built to go and rescue the big IC boat when it conked out!

Got a Mardave mini as a reward one time and never looked back.

[Lone-wolf]

As a kid i could not afford RC so had to make do with free flight planes and control line planes, then in my mid twenties got first rc car a Tamiya Mudblaster and that was a lot of fun, soon after i got the best ever rc car a brand new Kyosho RS500 cosworth sierra, then kids came along and it all got put to one side to be a family man, fast forward many years and got into flying camera drones like Phantom. then with new laws coming i swapped to rc planes,  even setting up a popular FB flying group, and this is still my main hobby but i have the crawler trail trucks for when weather is no good for flying, enjoying it a lot and now set up a trail group on FB

[Yorkshireman]

I'm getting on a bit now (still young in heart & mind though)...always had an interest in things rc but, like Jack said, couldn't afford as a kid &, my parents didn't have money to throw about either. I constructed boats & aircraft from  kits but craved for that first rc ! Wasn't until my mid 20's l got my first rc  car....a Tamiya Boomerang  !  After that I got myself my first  nitro, a Kyosho USA 1 . Had a few years out of the hobby after that  due to other things but,  I'm back with it more than ever now! Mostly cars, a few boats & a drone. Had a few little helicopters too without much success!!!! So, it's been lifelong thing really 👍

[Monski]

Guys, this is brilliant! Thanks for relaying those stories.

 

As for me, I remember in the mid 70's, when I was about 7,  a lad round the corner got an RC car for his birthday - just a very simple toy one without any kind of progressive steering. At that time we had only ever had cars that operated on a sonic 'click' from the controller that made it go backwards and turn and then another click would make it go straight forwards again - remember those? But this lad's car would go forwards, backwards and turn left or right and I thought that was amazing! He never let me have a go though. My parents couldn't afford it so I never got one.

My friend and I bought a couple of toy helicopters about 6 years ago at Christmas just to mess around with and we got hooked on that. Now we have loads of helicopters including a T-Rex 450L Dominator and my friend flies an SAB Goblin 570 Sport which is a beast! But, with the weather in Portsmouth being mainly windy and rainy in the winter we bought a Scalextric set to muck about with in our lounge when the weather was bad - something I'd also wanted as a kid! I got carried away and now have about 100m of track and about 40 cars. We bought a couple of little HPI cars the next year at Christmas and the love of RC cars came back to the fore. We joined an RC club in Newbury that races 1:10th and 1:12th scale touring and pan cars. I got an XRay T4 second hand on Ebay but was frustrated that the club was only once a week for a few hours and ragging it round a car park was no fun without a properly laid out track and a bit of competition. So my friend got us a couple of Kyosho Mini-Zs which we could race in the lounge. Of course, they were not fast enough so we invested in GL Racing's GL-A's. If you're not familiar with them, they're All-Wheel-Drive and completely customisable with full, independent suspension, camber and toe adjustable, fully upgradable and very similar to the XRay I had bought with the bonus that, due to their size we could have proper races in the lounge. The problem is that the nearest club that races these things is about 120 miles away so we can't race with anyone else. Such a shame because these cars perform so well and it's a lot of fun racing properly whilst having a beer in your lounge!

 

I live in hope that at some point there will be more people around my area into racing 1:28th scale - it certainly makes sense in our cramp country!

 

Have fun guys. I hope to hear some more stories soon.

 

[Bajadre]

Had a few RC when young mostly nikkos and wired stuff then at 13 dad bought me a tamiya boomerang that we made up on the kitchen table over a few nights my friend next door had a hornet then a few kids in the street got in to it group racing charging on my mates dads lorry with a fast charger for 5mins of fun haha   got back into it again at 16 when i bought a second hand bigfoot out off tradeit when i started working and been into it ever since had most scales and types over the years flew fpv drones a couple of years back too 

[turok007]

i was born to own Rc cars   anything that had a clicker or wired controller i was all over it.  i also made my own wired controllers for normal battery operated cars.  In the early 90s i made it known if someone had any type of old RC i would buy it  so had many people turn up to sell.   I have had to quit a few times as it gets out of control.  In my last collection of over 40 cars  i had 3 traxxas full size summits and 2 of them had to be stored in the bath  because of the lack of room.

Edited November 27, 2020 by turok007

[Fred barlow]

Well I was born into the RC life, my dad was into planes from the late 50s and did control line then went on to gliders and power planes so my sister and 2 brothers were encapsulated in the RC life going to model shows from been weeks or months old he even designed and kitted his own planes, my older brother followed suit and had some nice 80s tamiyas and a mardave marauder, I first flew a plane at 7 and then got a mardave ministock at 10 then later a Kyosho Super10 VW golf vr6 (both of which I had for many years) and a few boats, at 18 I got more serious with planes so cars became a little windy day distraction (some now rare ones came and went), at 21 I started display flying for a couple of years, 2011 life took a dump until 2017 when my new partner saw the 3 classics that some how survived (a mardave cobra, ta03f with a pro chassis and a Schumacher sst99 pro) decided she wanted a tamiya Subaru Impreza, and over the last 2 years iv added a ta03f, tl01, Schumacher mission, Schumacher sst99 sport, 4 1-12 mardaves, a tamiya racing truck and an old/ new original mardave cobra

[Monski]

Great stories again, thanks guys.

 

You're lucky your lady is into RC too Fred!

[Jens]

As a kid I was a big fan of the BMW M1 Procar version with the M colors.

One day I saw it as a RC car in a department store. That was the trigger point for me.

I still have that picture in my mind with the car in the shelf and me standing in front of it for an endless long time.

Price was 99 DM (Deutschmark) at that time.

And I saved all my pocket money (1DM a week) to buy it.

Once I had the money my mom convinced me to buy a bicycle instead. 😠

But the seed was planted.

( In honor of the M1 I had a BMW 535d years ago in white and applied the M stripes )

 

For a while in my teens I had small 1/24 or so RC cars, but they were never satisfying.

At that time I wished having a nitro.

 

Years later as an adult I started with RC planes.

It had to be a sailplane, since I had a license to fly the real ones when I was about 18 (Could fly before I could drive).

But after a very bad crash and the wifes opposition I scrapped the RC thing again.

 

Recently my son developed the same desire for RC models.

So we bought the Mauler and the TRX-4. Followed by the Bugsta and Rustler for bashing.

 

 

[NOFX]

 I had a reasonable RC for Xmas when I was a kid. But the gearbox in that broke. I got into BMX for quite a while, but the council demolished the track we'd built on wasteland & we got grief when we rode in town. The cops kept stopping me for "having no back brake". It was a coaster brake & I showed the cops I had a back brake by doing back hops 🤣. I sold the BMX & bought a tamiya rough rider. After destroying that I took a long break from RC. When I was in my late 20s I bought a Tmaxx.  I've been hooked ever since 😊

[propaintballa]

This is a hard question to answer. For me I took an interest in cars from a very young age. Strange because neither of my parents or close family members were really "car people". I guess from my interest in cars came my interest in RC cars. I believe my first RC car was the Nikko Jumping Car in the mid to late 90s, I also had a couple of smaller random RC cars. From memory, I wanted to get into larger and better RC cars, but used to live in London it wasn't really feasible. I was also interested in models, particularly of aircraft, meccano, Scalextric and all that kind of thing. When I was about 13 we moved down to Dorset which peaked my interest in all the things I could do outside that I couldn't previously. Naturally, still not being able to drive a real car, I found the prospect of nitro RC fascinating. I got a HPI Rush Evo for Christmas I think the first year we were in Dorset. A couple of years later I got a Savage 25 that I put quite a lot of money into. I dabbled in a couple of electric cars at the time, did a bit of drifting etc, then a couple of years later sold all my RC stuff when I got a "real car". Since then, I hadn't touched RC until about a month ago, so a good 10+ years or so. Really been enjoying being back in the hobby, despite being more conscious of the anti-social nature of nitro RC that maybe I didn't pay much attention to when I was younger!

[Fred barlow]

On 30/11/2020 at 16:15, Monski said:

Great stories again, thanks guys.

 

You're lucky your lady is into RC too Fred!

Thanks I know, it makes the hobby easier having someone who shares the drive but prepping multiple cars can be a bit of a chore (she's got 7 of her own at the mo)

[Yorkshireman]

8 hours ago, propaintballa said:

This is a hard question to answer. For me I took an interest in cars from a very young age. Strange because neither of my parents or close family members were really "car people". I guess from my interest in cars came my interest in RC cars. I believe my first RC car was the Nikko Jumping Car in the mid to late 90s, I also had a couple of smaller random RC cars. From memory, I wanted to get into larger and better RC cars, but used to live in London it wasn't really feasible. I was also interested in models, particularly of aircraft, meccano, Scalextric and all that kind of thing. When I was about 13 we moved down to Dorset which peaked my interest in all the things I could do outside that I couldn't previously. Naturally, still not being able to drive a real car, I found the prospect of nitro RC fascinating. I got a HPI Rush Evo for Christmas I think the first year we were in Dorset. A couple of years later I got a Savage 25 that I put quite a lot of money into. I dabbled in a couple of electric cars at the time, did a bit of drifting etc, then a couple of years later sold all my RC stuff when I got a "real car". Since then, I hadn't touched RC until about a month ago, so a good 10+ years or so. Really been enjoying being back in the hobby, despite being more conscious of the anti-social nature of nitro RC that maybe I didn't pay much attention to when I was younger!

Haha.....know what you mean about the anti social nitro bit! But sometimes, you just have to  DO IT  !!!  🤣

[Lone-wolf]

As stated my first rc was a Tamiya mudblaster........going to revisit it with a brand new Blackfoot, same chassis but nicer body, lets see if nostalgia is all its cracked up to be 

[Monski]

Thanks to all for these excellent stories. Please keep them coming guys!

 

I share my house with my best friend and RC has definitely kept our spirits up during the restrictions of the pandemic. We've also got RC helicopters but, of course the weather is not on our side in the winter to be able to fly them. The cars have been a way to keep having fun indoors. I've go quite 'into' the racing and we'd really like to do something to promote the hobby more. I'm seeing a common theme running through your stories - the love of RC comes from childhood. I'm sure there are a lot more people out there who would be into RC but have lost that childhood wonder at a toy car that you can control yourself! It just needs a bit more promoting I think.

[Fef15t]

When I was 12 the one thing I desperately wanted, more than anything in all the world, was a Tamiya Lunchbox. But my dad had other ideas. He had decided he was going to get rich managing a band made up of my 3 brothers and me... He had decided I was going to play drums. I wasn’t going to let him get it all his own way and, being a huge Iron Maiden and Motörhead fan, told him I would play bass. He hadn’t thought about bass at all and was happy to go with it. I still play to this day, along with guitar, banjo, mandolin and the penny whistle. It was probably the best thing he ever did for me. Being a musician made a huge difference to my teenage years. None of my brothers kept up playing.

 

Anyway...

 

In 1995 a friend of mine, whose whole family were into racing RC cars, gave me a broken Schumacher Cougar 2000 to fix up, along with a transmitter. So my wife could join in we got her a Mardave Meteor (I think that’s what it was called. It was electric and ugly). We both really enjoyed it but a couple of years later we were rather financially fragile and we sold both our RC cars. We were gutted.

 

Fast forward to last year and I finally did it, I got my Tamiya Lunchbox!! I loved building it and modifying it. My wife really enjoyed driving it, too, so I bought her a Tamiya  Racing Fighter, which she absolutely adores. I got a Tamiya TT02b and she got an FTX Bugsta. Then I got a Carisma Coyote, which I didn’t think she’d really like, but it turns out that she does, so her next car will be a crawler. My next car will, hopefully, be a 4wd monster truck (I’m rather picky about how I think a monster truck should look, there’s a chap on here that has a Traxxas Stampede that looks ace, like an actual monster truck, but I can’t find one that looks the same (I think his might be 2wd). The trouble is that I can’t really afford to spend much more than that on one, so my choices are limited); after that I’d like to try an RC sailboat.

 

Sorry for the rambling.

[53HRA]

Back in the day as a teen I enjoyed tinkering with stuff and loved 1:1 cars  - Had a few Rc's out of places such as Argos, and they always let me down and did not really drive how I wanted...

 

Fast forward a couple of years my older brother mentioned there is hobby grade ones that you can upgrade and change bits on. After doing some research I then discovered there is such thing as hobby RC cars.

 

I've never looked back since!