RC Car Racing at SELEM 2022!
Chris and I are planning something new for SELEM this year: RC Car Racing!
The new venue is great, but there isn't a good place to fly quad-copters, so Chris came up with the idea of racing RC cars instead. The plan is to set up a small road course in the parking lot using a bunch of mini 4" tall traffic cones, and then race around the course just for fun. We will probably be racing using our FPV goggles, but we welcome anyone to race with us even if you prefer to use line-of-sight for control. And when I say "race", I'm using the term very loosely. We're not really trying to compete - it's just for fun!
I know that the last thing most of us need right now is ANOTHER hobby to spend money on, but we've found a very affordable RC car that still packs a lot of punch. That car is the Vortex A959B, from WL Toys. It's a tiny 1/18th scale, 4 wheel drive car, and the box includes EVERYTHING you need, including a nice 2.4 GHz trigger-grip style radio, a battery, and a charger. Total cost for the whole thing is just $89 on Amazon, with free shipping. The car comes fully assembled - just charge the battery and you're ready to go.
What's really cool is that even though the car is quite small (just 9 inches long), it is powered by a 540 brushed motor. This size motor is normally used on 1/10th scale cars that weigh 3-4 times as much. Thus, in such a small, lightweight car, this motor absolutely SCREAMS. Depending on the size pinion gear you use, the car is capable of speeds in excess of 40 mph even with the stock 2S battery. Some people have hit 65 mph with a 3S battery, although to be fair even at 40 mph the car is difficult to control due to the short wheelbase.
It is a ton of fun to drive, and it's also one of the cheapest RC cars I've ever owned. You can buy all sorts of upgrade parts for the A959B, but honestly you don't need them. About the only upgrade part that is worth considering is the metal tie-rods and control arms set for $13. The stock plastic arms do not have any adjustment built-in, so you can't adjust the toe or camber angle of the tires. (This is probably only an issue for people that have raced RC cars before and are used to having this adjustment ability; it's not required.)
Even if you are an experienced RC car enthusiast, I wouldn't buy anything until you run the car in the stock configuration first. Chris and I ended up buying a TON of upgrade parts for our cars, and in the end I think we would have been better off leaving them mostly stock. All the extra metal parts just add weight, meaning that when we crash there is more momentum and thus a better chance of bending or breaking something. The stock plastic chassis is remarkably tough, and in the stock configuration the car is so lightweight that even high-speed crashes aren't a problem. (Seriously - watch some of the Youtube videos where people are just bashing the hell out of these things, and they keep coming back for more!)
You can also find this car at other hobby dealers, but Amazon seems to be the best place to get it quickly. Some of the Chinese vendors have this car for sale for as little as $69, but you'll probably be waiting a month or more to get it from China. Also, no matter where you order it from, you want to be sure that you're ordering the A959B. The "B" model is the upgraded version of the standard A959, so it has the larger motor and a few other extras (like metal gears in the differentials) that were not included in the original.
If you look around on YouTube, you'll find lots of reviews of the car, and the overwhelming consensus is that it's a very fast and fun little car that offers tremendous value for the money. That's why we decided to go with the A959B. We're just going to take it one step further by adding a cheap $20 FPV camera and video transmitter so we can drive the car using our goggles. But if you don't have FPV goggles, you can still run the car line-of-sight like normal.
So if you'd like to join us for a little RC fun, pick up one of these babies! Alternately, if you already have other RC cars in your collection, please feel free to bring them and run those on the course! Like I said, the "race" isn't really a competition - we just want to have fun tearing around the parking lot for a bit. :)
Adam
PS: I'm not kidding when I suggest that you hold off on buying the upgrade parts: Both Chris and I ended up spending more than double the base cost of the car in upgrades, and while the cars look cool with all the metal parts, I've had a couple recent crashes that broke several things due to all the extra weight. When I was running the stock plastic kit I never broke anything no matter how hard I crashed. So save your money! At least run the stock kit a few times before you buy anything extra. Also, both Chris and I will be bringing plenty of spare parts with us to SELEM, so we should be able to perform emergency repairs if anyone has a breakdown.
