It's also the cost, pure and simple.

Back in the day, I could get a decent vehicle together for £2-300 and if you bought decently on the used market, you could be out there having fun for £100. Wages haven;t risen hugely, but the cost of the hobby sure has.

Now you are looking at more like £400 to get a decent 1/10 scale truck or 1/8 scale buggy. You can go brushed, go 2WD , cut various corners...but it's still too much for a lot of folks.

Want a Traxxas Slash VXL? Well...they are old models. Should be cheap right? Used to come with everything you needed to run it. Not now. Buy a new one, and the 'bundle' prices on MS are hitting £500. That kind of issue then bleeds into the used market, and the hobby is in trouble.

Add to that restricted places to run, and more and more green spaces being restricted

Somewhere like Tamiya Club would persist because thats a very different market. A place where folk don't want to even BUILD the kits let alone use them.

As is the case with a lot of Traxas products .... aside from a few issues... they are decent platforms, and with the right addons can be made very good indeed. The issue I have always had with this particular brand is their continued massive over-pricing of their old models, their predatory practices as a company, and the fact that they fail to address so many issues on their trucks which it falls to the aftermarket to rectify while they just carry on selling the same old junk at ever increasing prices.  £329 for a VXL 2WD Stampede anyone ..... nope. Thought not. Well the RRP is actualy £409!

And that, ladies and gentleman of the jury, is my case against Traxxas.

£719!

AMain have them at $549. At current exchange rates, thats £432. Add 20% for VAT, ( another £86) and that makes £518.

Now, unless shipping from the US is £200, I think we are being ripped off. Importing one with the tax paid is clearly a better bet than paying what the UK importers

seem to be expecting.

I've tried the RC bikes thing before, and whilst I can appreciate the potential....I haven;t found anything WITH the potential yet.
Or at least, nothing that wasn;t either fundamentally lacking or from a tiny minority maker that would vanish after you spent £500.

Now...at least with Losi branding on it...that covers one issue. Be interested to see how they are workign the gyro, and how it's going to deal with somnething other than a carefully scripted and controilled mini motocross track.

But it has got my attention

Nice.

Good to know there are still decent folk out there doing the right thing.  I hope the guy gets all the good fortune he deserves

Not sure. Can find out when I'm back at work. 

Legally, a certificate like this does not expire.

Yours covers reach, but not counterbalance....so it would limit what an employer would offer.

In practice, you should really do a refresher every 2-3 years to show your skills are up to speed. It would be a good idea to do a refresher, as an employer would want to see that.

Personally..I wouldn't hire someone with an old certificate and no recent experience. A refresher course would make it more likely for you to get a job. If you are going to the trouble of a refresher...look at getting counterbalance added too.

Yeah...the Clod is a funny truck.

I am nop Tamiya fan, and you can see this is an ancient design with so many things wrong with it .... but .... It's also so upgradeable, its not a truck..it's a rolling project.

You can probably keep upgrading it until the wheels fall off.

can take any measurements you need at the weekend if it helps

Pro-Line Volkswagen Baja Bug Clear Body (Slash) PL3238-62

It's intended for the 2WD Slash, but should still fit. I put one on a nitro Firestorm I did a brushless conversion on.

is that on PC or mobile?

On PC, adblocker does a good job of keepign things tidy. Not had so much luck weith the mobile though

Currently...I prefer to deal with companies that process the VAT directly. They are registered with the UK tax pirates, so the VAT is paid at source, and your goods go straight through without a need for customs delays. Also avoids the handling charge.

You can always just hope the item gets through without being picked up on, and pay no fees. HMRC don;t check every package. But....if the sender is marking goods down, or describing the contents falsely...that is actually an offence under UK law. HMRC can actually sieze and destroy the goods. They seldom take action dircetly against hte sender, as these are usually faceless Chinese companies operating outside any UK jurisdiction or trade agreements. You won;t get in trouble either, unless you asked them to do it...but they get to choose what happens next.

bill you for VAT and handling....or the shredder.

Orders from Germany would be subject to UK VAT being added, plus a potential handling fee.

If I am buying from overseas now, I look for places that are registered for UK VAT, so able to add it to the initial price. Then it is not subject to further charging and customs holdups.

Depends also on the value. and how annoying it would be to get hit with fees.

Not familiar with them, due to a life long hatred of the way the French have made cars since the 80's.

Hmm...I thought all Series 1 Landies had the headlights inboard on the front grill..NOT on the wings?

Same for the thick sill under the doors and the non-tapered doors.

Grille looks like a Series 3 ....

And yes...the wheels look like they are about to fall off. Just driving on a flat smooth surface they were all over the place!

This truck has 'shelfer' written all over it. Lots of folk will want one, nobody will have much use for one... but it would look great on ashelf in the garage

I'd give them extra marks for going for a Peugeot 504 shell. Not another Jeep, Bronco, etc. etc.

Sad indeed.

Sadder is how the poorly researched press articles all seem to list him as a 'Rally Driver'. I saw him compete in WRX for one season, and he was frankly average.

Rally wasn't his thing. He wasn't fast enough and lacked the range of skills a rally driver needs.

No...what he was good at was pure car control. Sliding in any and all directions under complete control...while basically being out of control in normal terms.

His thing was far less a sport, and far more just having fun doing things in a car that shouldn;t be possible while shredding tyres and generally having a bloody good time and getting paid for it.

The world needs more people who do crazy stuff..... and sadly....we got one fewer.

Thats an E-Savage ..... Brushless will chew that drivetrain up in no time.

I'm fortunate in that I have 2 nitro Savages, both heavily upgraded, and both actually quite capable trucks. But they do need to have money put into them to get them good.

By the time you have beefed up the gearbox, upgraded the diffs and driveshafts, deleted the rear uprights, improved the silly axle nuts and put in decent servos....fixed the low tank lean running and...er....yeah. On one of mine I ended up with a Twinzilla kit running a pair of .28 nitros....

That video pretty much summed up Black Friday for me.

But the general rant on the state of the RC world in the UK struck a chord too. In most commercial areas, if you have a market place where sales are not huge...you try and GROW the market. Here, they are just shutting it out. Blocking sales, restricting imports, and starving both the retailers and potential customers. If they are scared that people importing directly is undermining their distribution network, they should consider how its possible to buy from a US retailer, ship it across the Atlantic, pay import duty and VAT, and still get a good deal .... but not possible for them to do the importing without the price climbing sky high?

Then UK outlets could sell at competetive prices and there might be more than a handful 2 hours away.