Our long-awaited return to the Barn takes place next Wednesday - 6 April...

WHO Mod & WHO Tuners Race Night - Round 4 of the 2020-22 WHO club championship

Regulations can be found here: https://www.whoracing.org.uk/rules.html

Doors open at 6.30pm - please don’t arrive earlier... unless you’re part of the set-up crew, of course!

And we do ask that all racers aged 12 or younger bring a responsible adult with them.

Race fees: FREE! Both races in April are free. There will be a charity box for any donations.

Club Cars & Controllers: Our AFX Mega-G+ club cars remain available – each of them stays on its coloured lane. We also have a big box of DS, Parma and Ninco loaner controllers to borrow one for the whole evening. There is no extra charge for using either the club cars or the controllers.

Covid precautions: With Covid cases still high on the south coast, we're asking you to take a lateral flow test sometime on the day of the event and also not to attend if you have any symptoms that might be Covid. This is to keep vulnerable members of the extended WHO family safe. Inside the Barn, wearing a face mask, practising good hand-hygiene and giving each other space are non-negotiable requirements. We will ensure as good ventilation as possible - and will also have hand sanitiser and spare masks available if you forget your own. Any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Do let us know if you’re coming: This will make the job of our race control volunteers easier – especially if you need to borrow a controller or use the club cars. Please email, message, text, reply on Facebook or here on the forum etc.

Race Coordinator: We’ll be using a new race management system at our HO events. Doug Passell - founder of one of the original UK HO clubs - has been helping get Race Coordinator ready for next week and we'll using the Chesterfield HO Racing Club rotation. Doug will be helping us develop the system over the rest of the year - so any feedback about what’s good and what could be better will be most useful. A big thank you to Doug from all of us!

Send us your avatars! One feature of Race Coordinator is that you can all have your own avatar. That can be a picture of you, a favourite driver, cartoon character, your pet etc. It needs to be a square-ish shape, a jpg, gif or png file - and less than 1 MB in size. Just email your avatar to us before next Wednesday to be ready for the first race.

 Good Morning

So here we are again, time to think about another Proxy Raid Rally      

   


It was great fun last time and I am pleased to say we have 6 willing hosts ready to take on whatever the entrants throw at them 

However please read the rules attached carefully, as our expectations for the scratch builders have been raised and the vehicles must be capable of running on the hosts tracks without favour. If the vehicle is not able to run as others in the class it will not be run.

We are working out a schedule to run as from the beginning of August, so please register your interest (some of you have) by end of June, cars to be received by end of July . Event fee will be £15 for the two vehicles you enter.
 
The competition is meant to be a vehicle capability test, rather than a straight flat sprint race.

Good luck with those builds 
 

Sunday the 10th April will see the 34th London International Slotcar Show at the Crofton Halls Orpington in South East London.

Opening time is 10.30am and it will close at 2.30pm, admission is £2.00 with under 16's free,

There is plenty of parking in the station car park which is adjacent to the hall. (there's a short-cut back to the halls next to the Roman Villa, if you can find it!)

Tables have been restricted to thirty once again so as to maintain social distancing to some extent as covid case numbers are still very high,
so not as many traders as usual, but still nearly twenty in total.
Full details here https://www.philsmith.co.uk/slotcarevents.html

Here is a list of table holders already booked, If your name is not here and you were expecting it to be then please contact me.

roger barker
the slot outlet
paul blows
scaleslotcars.com
kevin bennet
viking slot car club
robert campling
scalemodels
darren mcHarg
john gavin
john couser
steve cannon, aka triplex
rino roucco
mike flight
nscc
martyn hey
adrian norman
tim james
stephen langford
joel thura

Hello everyone, 

Does anyone out there have any experience of racing either the Ninco 1 Mustang and Camaro models, or the newer Policar Subaru BRZ's??

I am looking at introducing a new Club Class, having decided to give up on the old Scalextric BTCC Super tourers we had been using. We race 4 lane analogue, with both a Routed track and a repainted Scalextric sport track. 
Routed is 30 feet, fast and flowing, Scalextric sport is 50 feet, much more technical and multi level.  

We have numerous, mainly Scalextric classes, so it would be good to have something different. I would like some form of Saloon based class, we have other classes already covered, but not Saloons. We race non magnet, and I would like the class to be box standard, or as close as possible. 4 cars, colour coded to each lane. Don't need to be really quick, just something we'll matched and robust! 

Thank you in advance, 

Pip

Bit late with the updates but:

January saw in a new calendar of racing at Viking SCC and opened with the familiar favourite of Slot It Group C. It's always a joy to see the variety of classic group c cars in iconic liveries.

Cars are run stock with Slot It silicone rear tyres which keeps it a very evenly matched class.

   

   

   

By the end of the month the standings were:

1st: Wayne H - Nissan R89C
2nd: Darren C - Porsche 962C
3rd: Ade C - Mazda 787B

Hi Guys,
I have for sale these two NSR Moslers, used but VGC.
Both have brand new pod/gears and motors as well as new stock guides/braid.
I ran them with different pods/motors and guides.

Wheels are NSR 17 Air hubs with glued/trued used NSR Ultra tyres, fronts are Sloting Plus 17 with varnished front tyres. Slot.It inserts all round.

Will be supplied in NSR boxes, but not the correct ones.

I am after £58 each including postage to the UK, other destinations will need to be calculated.

   

   

   

   

Please PM any queries, Thanks.

We recently had a model car flea market. Almost everyone there is selling/buying 1/25 scale kits. I'm looking for a few 1/32 gems within the haystack. I hope to turn these into slot cars... one day.

   
   
   

I've tried to buy the Airfix Aston Martin DB5 on three separate occasions. I've had to return all three kits for a warped roof line that doesn't match the windshield.

Several people have told me that the Triumph TR4A is either straight as an arrow. Or unbuildable. Ouch!

I was excited to see the re-release of the Jaguar 420. So I bought one. Oops. Big mistake. One rocker panel was warped inward. The other outward. This is on a new release.

   
   

Instead of going back to the store. I thought I would try a different approach. I contacted Airfix directly. They said they would send me a new part if I send more money (30% of the cost of the kit) for shipping. I said "you already got my money. I'm not paying more for this kit or your mistake in sending it out". They suggested I take it back to the store for a refund. Done. The store said they won't re-order more Airfix car kits for the lack of QC.

A friend approached me at the slot car show last Sunday with a box under his arm. He plops it in my hands and asks for mere coffee money. I laughed and told him the story.

I'm told this is the same mold. But handled very differently under the MPC brand.

   

Unlike the Airfix. This MPC kit came with a full compliment of chrome. Sweet!

   

The body is straight as an arrow. Flash is minimal.

   
   
   

So while this thread is under the "what grinds your gears" section. It has a happy ending.

Thanks for looking,
Ken

All hail the steering wheel, all hail the steering wheel... 

   

All hail the pace notes, all hail the pace notes... 

   

...and the heathens... 

   

   

Do you fancy a true navigational slot rally, one where the driver drives – and a co-driver navigates a complex route through dozens of junctions?

Thanks to a moment of genius from Jason, we have come up with a framework that might just do the job. Okay, it's a bit of a departure from traditional slot rally, but if you want to replicate your own classic Coupe des Alpes or Tulpenrallye, a modern-day 12-Car club event, Targa or a bonkers Welsh all-nighter, then this might be for you. There’s one core navigational element required – and then it’s in the hands of the route-planner and their imagination...

The slot car technology is off-the-shelf – indeed, you might have the kit already. By its nature, navigational slot rallying is most suited to a group of friends, a club or dedicated event – with the focus on navigation, puzzle-solving and a fun social occasion. Having said that, I’m sure a SlotNav event is possible via Zoom – and Autotest-style formats with signs rather than navigation would be a fabulous single-person offshoot. Please remember, this outline is just a start – I'd love to see what people can create with the building blocks described below...

What’s different about a navigational rally?

Until 60 years ago, the majority of rallies were navigational events on public roads, usually with some car-handling ‘tests’ thrown in – and perhaps a timed special stage on private land. For a crew to be successful, the navigator (or co-driver) was as important as the car and the driver. Today, most rallying is based on exciting flat-out special stages with pace notes. The co-driver prepares and reads those notes, but it’s more akin to a driver-aid than navigation. In 1:32 scale, slot rally is all about the special stage, the car and the driver – an exciting replica of modern rallying.

Traditional navigational rallies still happen and are very popular, especially at the grass-roots of motorsport. In the UK, these are usually referred to collectively as ‘road rallies’ – but that label covers a wide variety of events and formats. In a modern navigational road rally, the navigator is the most important member of the crew. Although toned-down in terms of horsepower and speed, road rallying today is a more complex navigational challenge than ever. Think of it as a mix of driving fast down country lanes and solving mind-bending cryptic puzzles on the move... then furiously plotting the course on an Ordinance Survey map with a 2B pencil, all while trying not to annoy the local residents too much.

   

Driving home from a 12-Car rally event in Hampshire earlier this month, I wondered how a modern road rally could be simulated on a 1:32 scale slot car track. The big problem is: to navigate, you need junctions... and traditional slot rally stages don’t have those. I happened to mention this to Jason and asked if he’d ever come across navigation used in slot rallying. He said he hadn’t… but a few days later came up with element I’d been missing: digital. And he created a track plan (of course!) which might help…

   

This design was a brilliant starting point for the navigational rally framework that I’ll develop below – a framework that means any type of event that uses navigation can be re-created in 1:32 scale.

This is what I’ll be looking at in this thread:

• Navigational basics – or how SlotNav works
  
• SlotNav technical requirements & track design basics
  
• A quick note on digital equipment
  
• Sample Navigation – from head-scratching to tulips in just 40 junctions
  
• A brief-ish note for the Rally Master about route planning
  
• Competitive Formats, Timing & Penalties – some common themes to consider
  

There is quite a lot to get through and explain, although the keystone of SlotNav is really quite simple...