Hi

I know its been a long time since I last wrote somthing here so I thought I give you an update what im been doing.

Last weekend I was at the 4th round of ETS in Warsawa Polen. I finished 2nd again behind Marc so I was not to happy.. ;) But the car worked great and without my radio and diff problem in a2 and a3 I think I could have been up there!

So I just have to be patiant until LRP Masters in two weeks to show my pace!

video and pics you can find on, http://ets.redrc.net/

some pics,





My Schedule is really busy at the moment with Neo10 and Lrp masters coming up very soon, so I will try to update more often when I have time!

So now next week I'm off to Austria for some time off and prepare for the Masters on 26-28March!

Until next time!

Viktor

Hey all, I'm back playing with toy cars again.  I just inshed rebuilding my 801xt and started building my 801x.  I plan on racing the Reedy Race in May and the Roar onroad nationals in Aug.  As ar as nitro goes, I just plan on racing local races.    

 

Heading in to the weekend I was very excited.  It was the 1^st really big race with my Tamiya801xT. Also we had at least three member of the TRF team attending this race also.  Ryan was heading in from California fresh off a trip to Texas and Alex and I where locals here in Ga.  “Camp Tamiya” didn’t work out the way I hoped.  The blistering wind and cold air had us all tucked away in a trailer or in a tent.  Either way we had a great time and represented The Team well. 

Practice – The track was more technical that the PNB tracks in the past.   Not a lot of huge jumps instead had a few jumps that where easy to over jump and under jump.  Timing was important.  Also had a large sweeper heading into a 200+ foot straight away into larger cork screw style sweeper (Straight jacket). This was by far my favorite part on the track ;-)… After a few laps with my 801xT…again I didn’t feel like much change was needed over my current  setup.  I did go a little lighter on my shock oil due try and calm the truggy down on some really tricky whoop section.  Other than that my 801xT felt good.  After battling the “Wall”  for several laps I finally felt good going into qualifying.

Qualifying – 1^st round was a little shaky.  It was a mixture of battling traffic and poor decision on my part.  But we where running on qual points so I knew I had 2 more rounds to make it up. 2^nd round – With the exception of 1 bobble that cost me a 12 lap run,  I knew I laid down a good time that could place me in the higher mains if I could repeat in the 3rd round.  3 round – I had a feeling that running at 3am in the morning might not produce the best of results from my driving.  And I was correct….Needless to say my timing was a little off. 

Main – With only 1 decent Qualifier on Sat., it placed me 4^th in the C-Main.  Even with a few heavy hitters in the C with me,  I was feeling good about the bump.   At the start I was able to make a move that put me directly into the second position.  After a few laps I caught the bad end of a mix up and rolled over in a turn marshal “dead zone”(spot on the track where turn marshal can’t get to that fast) …Went from 2^nd to last in 1 turn.  DOH!  After a struggle to make up ground…I finished 7^th roughly 18 seconds from the bump.  My Tamiya 801xT performed great all weekend.   Unfortunately my disappointment was in my driving performance.   Even with my poor results I received many compliments on how well my truggy looked on the track.  

This weekend was really tough.  A roller coaster of emotions for sure….I had a great time with my friends and Teammates.  Mourned the lost of a fellow racer, as well as welcome new ones to our home area.  Can’t wait til next year!

Tamiya 2010!

Well, I wish I could write what Ryan Lutz wrote about his results. It was an amazing event. The event never lets you down to test your stamina, will power and dedication to competing in RC. As one of the people that help the event in certain aspects, I always look forward to it. Unfortunately, for each PNB event that has passed, I have always struggled since the very first one in 2008 . It takes an immense amount of concentration to do a qualifier at 1Am in morning after being up since 6AM then do a main at 9AM, not to mention the sights and sounds of all the action going on. I arrived with my 801x buggy, 801xt truggy and Slash. I ended up not running truggy due to time constraints. My buggy was rock solid all weekend. After the first heat I made a few adjustments and felt like I was driving just ok though. Not sure why but I was just feeling off. I ended up qualifying 8th in the D-main. I wasn't too happy about that, but I am an optimist. I was calm and assertive coming into the early morning (9am ish) D-main on Sunday. I just felt very mentally clear about my mission...as I was walking onto the stand my pit guy was signaling to me...something had gone wrong on the buggy during warmup on the box. A CVD pin come out...sigh. Well we ran back to the trailer and tried to fix it. I ran up on the driver's stand with 3 mins to go in the main, I wanted to at least do something. Never give up I say. As I made the first lap, spin spin spin. The fix didn't work. Walked off the stand totally disappointed, but not beaten. As a consolation prize, I did end up in the A main in 2WD Stock SCT and finished 7th. I look forward to warmer weather ahead and good spring racing. Good news is, I have a new track being built 15 minutes from my house versus the 1 hour now. Needless to say, I will be there every chance I get during the week to continue to test, tune and hone my skills. See you at the next race guys.

P.S. Very enjoyable to watch Lutz take a commanding lead in Pro Truggy...it was as if he was saying get out of my way, I am taking this thing! Loved every minute of it. I did get some video of the beginning, I will post it soon.

-Alex Pilson

Sunday March, 7th.

    Wow what a crazy, psycho, long, sad, happy, tired, all over the place week. That is what the Psycho Nitro blast turned out to be in 2010!

    To start off with my 801X buggy and 801Xt truggy came to play this weekend! On a track that I have always shown well but never finished well it was my time to try to shine.

   Qualifying went decent for the first two rounds. I was able to put top 3 runs in both vehicles whilst setting the fastest lap times. In my round 3's at 3am my luck wasn't there and I bowed out of both. Overall I qualified 3rd in both classes. A good starting position for the Hour long A-mains.

   Truggy main was up first and after warmups I decided to do a tire change. My choice to run AKA S Gridirons paid off and on the first lap I powered my way past Truhe and Drake to take the lead and never look back! My 801Xt was dialed and just floating over all the bumps! My 801Xt consistently laid down the fastest lap times and I ended up taking the win by about 30 seconds over the Drake.

   Buggy main was up last and by this time everyone was whooped. I had a good start and moved up to battle with Drake for the first 8 minutes. I took the lead before my first pitstop but Drake was on a longer pit strategy. It ended up working out for him as he extended a bit of a lead. I would stay right with him for the first 30 minutes or so but eventually with a few mistakes he pulled away a bit and with less pitstops I just couldn't catch up to him. My 801X laid down the fastest laptimes but it was only good enough for 2nd. Overall though after my last 2 weekends it felt good to get some decent finishes and have my Tamiya Vehicles working good!

   Next up Silver State!

March 1, 2010

    Heading back today from racing at the Icebreaker event at Indy R/C World just outside Dallas Texas. I'd like to give huge thanks to Carlton with R/C Pro and Steve with Indy R/C World for helping me to attend this event.

    I had a great time, it was an indoor track in an old bowling alley. The track was consistent the entire week and grooved up at the end adding traction as we went along.

   In qualifying my Tamiya vehicles were on Fire! I TQ'd both classes by good margins and broke the track records for lap times throughout the weekend.

   Unfortunately the mains were not to be mine. It started with the truggy main. Warmup went fine but when the tone went off I went around the first couple corners and the wheel and hub fell off. I must have messed up and not tightened the pin enough. When I went to fix it I got a new set screw and put it in and tightened it down. Not thinking that the other set-screw was still in there! So needless to say I got put down and 2 corners later the wheel came off again! I realized my mistake. Fixed it up and proceeded to get back on the track to put on a show for the people. My 801Xt was absolutely dialed on the track and once I got out there I was throwing down track record lap after lap. Eventually driving balls to the wall my tires went bald and I just started having fun and doing my best to at least show the true durability of my 801Xt and the power of my Alpha Plus engine and how hard a car can be pushed on a track! I hope that people appreciated the show! :-)

    Buggy main was up next....Before the race I went outside to bench tune my engine. I started to lower the idle and it turned out to be a mistake. My Buggy was handling pretty good all week. At the start of the tone I got to the first corner and I got on the brakes and flamed. Got back out there 1 lap down and went to first corner and flamed again. I told them to raise the idle a couple of hours and then viola. I ran the remaining 43 minutes without issue. I started the main 2 laps down and finished 1 1/2 laps down in 3rd place. All in all not bad all things considered. Just wish I could have put up the results my 801X deserved.

   Anyways this upcoming week I get another chance at redemption. Heading out to Atlanta for the Psycho Nitro Blast on Wednesday. Also as part of this race I get to participate in a World Record Long jump competition! We are shooting for over 200 ft this year! I have a semi-purpose built buggy to do this attempt with. I have huge thanks to give to Dennis Branecky, TT Motorsports, and Tex for all of there help in making this a possibility! I hope it goes well and can't wait to pilot a Buggy going 90+ mph! :-D

I decided to take one week off from racing RCGT since I have been using one car for both classes.  I wanted to focus just on one class, 17.5 rubber tire, and try some setup changes.  Also, I wanted to pull out my 416 and copy Jilles Groskamp’s setup from Snowbirds since his car looked absolutely dialed!

Some days my driving is spot on and other days I just have a hard time focusing.  This past Sunday was one of those days where I kept losing my concentration.  My 415 was still having a slight problem from the previous week of diving in too hard on the nose.  I reset my droop to 2mm in the front and slightly less in the rear.  This seemed to help the car but there was still something I was missing.  I had been running Protoform’s new LTCR body since I was in Snowbirds.  This body worked fantastic, but I had a feeling it was some of the cause of my aggressive car.  I tried the 415 with the Mazda Speed 6 and that calmed the car down considerably.  The car was fast, but since I had a slightly less than perfect driving day, I was starting from the back of the pack.  Up front in the main, I had trouble working around a car for position.  I was parked in the board for about a lap since the corner marshal had left their post.  I regained my composure and tried to make up as much ground as I could on the leaders.  I was just too far behind to make it to the front of the pack.

My hopes for next week are to load up the 416 with electronics and hit the track! This will let me have a separate car for RCGT and rubber tire.

My onroad season officially came to a close last weekend as the final leg of the North East Grand Slam series made its way to Fastcats. I ended up just running 13.5 rubber since the turnout for the race was rather disappointing and I didn't feel like rushing to get my 12th scale ready to race with only a handful of guys in the 10.5 12th scale class. I got my 416x working really well at the race and was definately in contention for the win. While on a 2nd or 3rd place run in my 3rd qualifier I had a mishap with a lap car which saw me end up grabbing 4th on the grid for the start of the mains. I wasn't too disappointed because I knew I would be able to put up a fight since my car had been very fast all weekend. From the sound of the tone, my John Force-like reaction times which I have become known for allowed me to leap frog Paul Ciccarello and pull right up behind Martin Crisp. Keven Hebert turned the fastest laps all weekend in his first 5 laps of the race so he had checked out on the field pretty quickly, which put the race on for 2nd. With Joe Glover added to the mix we had a 3 way battle on our hands for 2nd place! After some of the most exciting racing all weekend, I tried a bonzai pass in the last minute of the race to try and improve my position but to no avail, I ended up 4th. However, like our Canadian Ski-Cross athlete who choked at the Olympics this year while running in second said, "who cares if I didn't end up on the podium, I wanted Gold or nothing!"

Speaking of the Olympics, the Gold Medal game is tomorrow between Canada and the USA in men's hockey. If you love hockey, chances are you have cleared your busy Sunday schedule like I have to watch the game. If you don't care about hockey, this would be a great time to start caring because there is a lot of pride on the line for both countries. In my lifetime there has been no bigger rivalry in hockey then the one between Canada and the USA. The Russians like to think they have this rivalry with us but its just been us spanking them as of late. The Americans however, have put up some great competition for us, and there is nothing more exciting to watch then a competitive, hard fought game of hockey.

The upcoming offroad season is looking to be packed with races and is going to contain some great competition. Its hard to explain how much I'm looking forward to this coming offroad season. Last year was my first year running offroad and I found success rather quickly and I really enjoyed it a lot more then I initially thought I was going to! This year is going to be a lot different because now I have some experience, and I am expecting a lot more of myself. I was happy to win the Ontario division of the RC Pro Series (same as winning your state), but this year, with the finals Canadian Finals in Ontario, I want more. The ultimate goal would be to win every race I attend but in reality its just not that easy. This year I want to find myself on every podium and contending for every win, and get more local offroad guys to buy Tamiya products. Hopefully the weather cooperates a little more this year and we don't have as many races shortened due to bad weather!

GO CANADA GO!
Steve