My RC Hobby. A blog about my hobby, which includes On-Road, Off-Road, Slot Cars, Planes, Robotics and modeling. Also anything else Electronic that's fun to play with.
Its been awhile (Sept) since I have been down to Warehouse 3, and the track is now different from when I was here last. The layout looked great, and I looked forward to a great night of racing. There was a good sized crowd down there, including my friends from Wolfpak Racing (Dean and Dragi).
I entered into the Pro-Lite class with my HPI Blitz, after getting in a few practice sessions, I was getting used to the track.
Round 1:
18 Laps
Round 2:
18 Laps
B-Main:
17 Laps - 7th place
Here is the video my friend took of me racing in the B-Main, I am the Orange and Black Blitz starting in seventh spot. I had a complete meltdown on the first lap, and crashed three times. The remainder of the main did see some improvements, but I could not catch up after that, and the crashing continued, lol.
Round 4 of the KBRL series has come and gone, and this round like the three previous was a blast. Once again I was able to trek down to Tucson by hitching a ride with my friends from Wolfpak Racing, Dean and Dragi. It was a nice drive down, and we arrived just before 8am. Since this is an indoor facility, there was plenty of pit tables when we arrived, and we were setup in no time.
The pit table were nice.
Dragi on the the left and Dean from Wolfpak Racing setting up
Round 1: Qualifier (5 min. heat):
During the warm up laps, I miss calculated a jump and landed hard on some of the bricks that are on the sides of the tracks, and I ended up breaking the outdrive off my MIP Ball diff. This was kind up upsetting, this was a brand new diff and I only had run one race prior to this, so this part breaking this early was very disappointing.
Broken outdrive, sigh
Pro Lite - Round# 1
Driver Car# #Laps RaceTime Fast Lap
Frank Lilly #5 0 0.000 0.000
Round 2: Qualifier (5 min. heat):
Before round 2 I was able to replace the broken Ball Diff with my old Gear Diff, this was not in the best condition, but it seemed like it was holding. So after rebuilding my transmission I was set for round two. I did not do as great as I wanted to for this round, I ended up with 9 laps, which put me in the D-Main.
Pro Lite - Round# 2
Driver Car# #Laps RaceTime Fast Lap
Frank Lilly #5 9 5:11.614 31.600
Mains
D-Main (5 min. Race):
For the D-Main, I was expecting to do a little better then I did in round 2 of the heats. But I could not get the truck to hook-up, and after a major wreck in the first lap, I was starting from last place and playing catch up the entire race. I was able to go from 9th to 8th place, and was in 8th until the last lap, where I had one of the worst laps of the day, I think I crashed about 5 times, and unfortunately, the 9th place driver had one of the best laps of his day, and ended up passing me half-way through the last lap.
Overall I had a great time racing, and was able to hangout with some fun people.
Well, I missed the 3rd round of the KBRL Series, and from the looks of it I missed one record breaking day. There was 205 entries into this round, making it one of the biggest events of the year. For a holiday weekend, this was very surprising.
Our friends over at Wolfpak Racing made the trek for the series, and for a complete breakdown the days racing head on over to their blog. I will definitely be at round 4 of the series, which will be held at Competition Hobbies down in Tuscon.
For this event I shared a pit space with my friends Dean and Dragi from Wolfpak Racing and our friend Ernest. For this event, I decided to enter into the Novice SC class, I felt that I would have more fun with this class because of still being on the learning curve for rc racing. Dean with some inspiration from Ernest decide to run his buggy in two classes with Ernest by swapping motors between the 2wd Buggy Stock 17,5 and the 2wd Buggy Super Stock 13.5 classes. Both did a great job in running both classes with the motor swaps. Dragi entered his buggy into the Novice Open Wheel class. You can see a full write up and details on their racing over at the Wolfpak Racing blog.
Track layout was fantastic.
Saturday Nov 19th 2011
Day one started out with some interesting news when we were at the Drivers meeting. They announced that Scottsdale Speedway had been sold to the owners of Hobbytown USA in Tuscon. This should bring some interesting changes to the racetrack as well as the hobby shop. The first change to the hobby shop that they made, was that they moved the existing location of the shop to the building that now has the shop front faced to Scottsdale road. This space is much larger, and in my opinion a great layout with much needed room. Here is a link to the Hobbytown USA website for the Scottsdale store : http://www.hobbytown.com/Scottsdale-AZ/. I'm not sure if they are going to change the current SRS website.
Pit table, Day 1.
Saturdays schedule was three rounds of qualifiers.
Round 1 - 5 minute qualifier
This round started our great, and the track felt perfect, but on the third lap, after hitting very hard on the big jump on the front left part of the track, my dog bone decided to go find a dog to chew on it and flew farther then my truck did.
Novice Short Course
Frank - 3 Laps - 2:04 (37.23 fast lap) - broke just over 2 mins in.
Round 2 - 5 minute qualifier
This round was a lot smoother then the first round, although I was still trying to get a handle on the big jump on the front part of the track, I feel overall things went well (honestly, I meant to launch off the big jump and try to land behind the retaining wall; twice).
Novice Short Course
Frank - 9 Laps - 5:31 (32.4 fast lap)
Round 3 - 5 minute qualifier
After making some slight mods to the truck and coming up with a good tire selection, this was my best round of the day. Although I still only pulled 9 laps, the truck felt great, and my lap times improved by over a second.
Novice Short Course
Frank - 9 Laps - 5:27 (31.25 fast lap)
With the day coming to a close, I was in good spirits, I was getting a handle on the truck, and I felt my driving skills were improving. I was really looking forward to day 2. Below is a video I took of some of the racing from day 1 using my phone.
Sunday Nov 20th, 2011
Sundays schedule was the final round of qualifiers, and then the mains. For the 4th round of qualifiers, they changed up everyone, to place them with other drivers that were closer to their own times. They placed everyone into the qualifiers based on their current points placement.
Beginning of day 2, Dragi from Wolfpak Racing on the left and myself.
Round 4 - 5 minute qualifier
For round four, I was having some traction issues, and seemed to keep sliding out in the corners. Overall I felt I did good, but again I pulled 9 laps, and my laps times stayed about the same as round 3.
Novice Short Course
Frank - 9 Laps - 5:12 (31.37 fast lap) - Finished in 3rd place
Mains
I ended up qualifying for the B-Main for Novice Short Course. They decided that they would not do bump ups for the novice class, and although I was highly disappointed at this decision, it was what it was, so I made the best of it and decided to just go out and have fun for the B-Main.
Novice Short Course B-Main
Frank - 9 Laps - 5:03 (??:?? fast lap) - Finished in 2nd place.
On the drivers stand during the B-Main.
The rest of the A-Mains was some great racing, below in one of the A-Mains that I recorded with my phone, and it was some of the best racing of the day. You can also check out my UTube channel to see some of the other videos that I have posted :
This was a great weekend and a great event, and I am looking forward to next year. I am also looking forward to next weekend, which will be round 3 of the KBRL Series which will also be at this same track.
For this weekends racing, the initial plan was to get in club racing over at Scottsdale RC Speedway, but because of the amount of rain we recieved Friday night and Saturday early morning hours, SRS decided to not hold their normal Saturday night racing schedule. Since SRS was closed my friend Dean from Wolfpak Racing and myself decided to head down to Tuscon to check out Competition Hobbies and their indoor track. We left around 10am in the morning and arrived down in Tuscon just before noon, thanks for driving Dean.
My pit area.
I really liked the layout, they have both a dirt track and a carpet track, and for today's racing they were running on both tracks. I also like the fact that the had a large amount of pit areas, both single pit areas along the outside wall as well as pit tables on both sides of the tracks, great layout.
My first look of the layout, very nice.
Both Dean and myself entered the Pro-Lite 13.5 Short Course class, at first we were both going to run 13.5 buggy and Short Course but decided to only run the trucks instead. Below is the race results:
Round 1 (6 min heat):
Frank 10 Laps - 6:22
Dean 11 Laps - 6:07
Round 2 (6 min heat):
Results were not posted for some reason for round 2, but for myself I know I did bad, the truck kept shutting off when hitting the jumps, and I doubt I got in more then 5 laps. I changed the position of the power switch, and no more issues for the rest of the day.
A-Main (6 min main - 11 Drivers):
Frank 10 Laps - 6:23 Finished in 9th place.
Dean 12 Laps - 6:29 Finished in 7th place.
It was a great day of racing, and I feel that for our first time at this track we did okay. I look forward to coming back down to this track for the KBRL series on December 17th. Next week, if mother nature doesn't rain on my parade again, I will be at SRS for Friday night and possibly club racing on Saturday night as well.
