Lots of initial questions from a beginner

[Whiffle]

Hi there.

 

My 9 year old son has shown a bit of an interest in RC cars and I was hoping that we could have some fun with doing a bit of racing in the garden.

 

He has all sorts of cars in his cupboard and I use to have lots when I was a child but I know things have moved on a bit and would be really grateful for some advice before I buy anything:

 

Just a number of initial questions:

 

1. What sorts of vehicles should I be looking at to have a go with?

 

I know that this is very much a "how long is a piece of string" scenario but I don't want to spend ridiculous amounts on something he might never get into but spend enough to avoid getting something so awful that it puts him off completely.

 

2.  I don't have a particularly big house so it may well be a case of setting up a track in the garden.  Would it better to  race directly on the grass with something like a 4x4 or can you build tracks, using wood, and use regular road cars?

 

3. What sort of frequencies do RC cars use these days?  I seem to remember that they used something like 29MhZ and 42MhZ and that was it (and you had to make sure that you bought one of each).  Ideally, we would like the opportunity to have more than two cars in a race in the future - is this possible?

 

4.  My brother has a pretty high end 3D-printer and is good with designing.  Is making something from scratch something that people tend to do?  I.e. can you pick up cheap motors, servos etc. and do it all yourself or is it simply not worth it?

 

Apologies for all the basic questions - hopefully, once I get a grip on some of the basics, I can take things from there.

 

TIA

[Stormbringer]

Hi and welcome to the forum 

Nowadays its 2.4 GHZ and no crystals required and you can run multiple controllers/cars at same time 

Depending on size of garden it might be worth looking at the Tamiya Lunchbox/Midnight Pumpkin these 2 share same chassis and 2 wheel drive not the fastest

but are really quite fun

They are kits that you need to build but that could be fun for you both

I guess it depends how much you want to spend

link to forum section on them

 

[Partydaz]

MJX RC make some good affordable RC cars ready to run and some come with lipo battery bundles with a USB charger to get you going also I hear good things about the FTX RC models.

 

MJX RC UK Main Dealer for MJX Hyper Go Models All Spares Stocked (seriousrc.co.uk) quick google it looks like you can get them in the UK now.

 

RC Cars, Remote Control Cars and Radio Controlled Cars from Modelsport UK FTX lineup

 

Maybe if your sticking to garden bashing / racing have a look at off-road types.

 

 

[Whiffle]

Thanks very much - I hadn't realised that 2.4 GHZ meant synching each car to its own controller, so shall make sure I stick to only those.

 

By way of background, my son had a go at Scalextric at an exhibition a few weeks ago and has been fascinated by it ever since.  Luckily I had all my old kit in the loft, from when I was a child, and we have been having fun with that.  However, as we were using it, I remembered that the lack of steering really seemed to steal something away from the experience - something I think my son might already be starting to realise.  

 

As a result, we got some old RC cars out and they were much more fun.

 

I guess I wanted to try and have a Scalextric-style track but running RC cars instead.

 

I have toyed with the idea of making a track out of wood and then running small RC cars around it but I am not sure that cars that small would be any good.

 

Perhaps I should just stick with making a grass track, using larger vehicles - not quite sure how best to make a track/perimeter for this, however.

 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2024 by Whiffle

[Stormbringer]

When you mow the grass you could maybe give it a lower cut in the shape of a track 

Or you could use rope and tent pegs and peg it in a track shape ?

Not knowing how much room you have in garden nobody will know what size rc car to recommend

[Lone-wolf]

there are some pretty small models about that could be raced in a house or garden setting, FTX Hooligan rally car is small but goes well but not on grass