My hazy, distant memories take me back to my home town of Rugby when I was about ten, so around 1988. My Brother was 14 and had just been taken to hospital, unconscious, after dropping into his bicycles front wheel, half a Tamiya Hornet a teacher had given him to cannibalise for a technology project. Fortunately he recovered with just a chip on his shoulder, but the Hornet sat untouched for a few years.
By the time I was about 12, a mate had bought a couple of the 4wd Tamiya rally cars which shared the same chassis as the Manta Ray. Borrowing his spare we started meeting up with a few strangers who used to jump over the fence of a local school and mess around with RC cars in the playground (A bloke called Trevor and some lads a year or so older then me IIRC). Eventually we formally started up a small club and put an a notice in the local paper, having got permission to use the playground. A few others started showing up and we had all kinds of races featuring mostly Tamiyas such as Madcap, Grasshopper, Fire Dragon etc.
Around this time I bought an old Schumacher XLS with a Parma Fat Cat shell from a mate. Unbeknown to me this should have been far superior to the others, but I had no money so it was powered by whatever scrap I scrounge off people - 1300 nicads anyone?
The club moved to indoor racing when we negotiated an evening a week in the Rogers Hall, and helpful mums provided refreshments for sale etc. The club grew and the racing got better on the dusty wooden floor - where my CAT started to clean up.
Then came the decision to invest in carpet and an old fire hose and racing suddenly got a whole lot more competitive and expensive. Gone was the 4wd advantage, now we needed light weight and grip. An unfortunate sticking throttle caused a broken chassis for the CAT and funds didn't allow a replacement for some time, so I managed to acquire a few Hornet parts and after a few evenings of messing around, brought back to life that old scrap Hornet of my Brothers. Compared to the CAT it was rubbish, so I hatched a plan and installed a 14quad motor, removed all suspension, replacing with adjustable rods instead so I could lower the CofG as much as possible, then modify the wheels so I could glue on sponge tyres. Once I'd worked out how to mount a useful wheelie-bar, it was massively quick!
This served me well until we managed to acquire a patch of land off the A5 where we made a basic off-road circuit and used an old railway carriage as a clubhouse. The CAT was fixed up with a replacement ProCat chassis and racing continued for a while until a few people started to get into nitro.
I had a final dabble with a bargain Bosscat Works purchase, before hanging up my controller for real cars and women when I reached 17 and eventually moved down to the South East to do the whole growing up with wife and kids thing...
...until a mate and I went to Le Mans this summer and discovered that we both used to race 1:10 RC when we were teens. He had recently started getting back into it and was back racing at Eden Park with a modern 2WD Schumacher.
So a few weeks ago I dragged all my old RC stuff down from the loft. The Hornet has been rebuilt (minus shell at the moment) for my 3 year old Son to learn some racecraft with and my CAT XLS is all ready for restoring. The Bosscat will get stripped and rebuilt shortly and then raced at Eden Park just for fun. If I get back into it properly, then perhaps I'll invest in the latest Schumacher - although I have some serious mods in my head for that old Hornet...
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29-08-2012
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