[Gary Brantley]

Greetings everybody!  I got my first slot car set when I was around 8 or 9.  It was an Eldon set in 1/32 and it was followed a couple years later with a Strombecker 1/32 set.   At 13, my family moved to Geelong, Victoria Australia, and within a few months the commercial slotcar craze arrived down under and soon there were two tracks within a couple hundred yards of our house.  My "home" track was Avus Raceways, owned by an expatriate German couple.  We had a 250 foot, eight lane track along with an electronic lap-timer.  Our track lap record was 11.8 seconds, done with a 1/24 Russkit vac-form Porsche 906 equipped with a rewound and balanced Mabuchi 26D.  I made a 14 second lap with the same car, using the controller in one hand and and a push-button "brake" in the other.  We had weekly races for cash and car prizes and even hosted a 12 hour Enduro, complete with three hours in the dark requiring working lights!

Fast forward to 1978 and my first married Christmas.   My wife gave me an Aurora A/FX HO set.   It lasted for a few years and was eventually put away.   Fast forward even more and now I have four young grandchildren, ages 3,4 and 2 x 6.  The older two are boys and crazy about cars of course.  This weekend, we set up what was left of the old Aurora set and found that the track needed quite a bit of attention and while the cars (two Magna-traction replacements for the originals) would run, the ancient tires were done for.  Still, they loved running the cars around the circuit we made.

I'm going to invest in another set soon.  I predict a lot of racing fun before much longer!   I'm excited to be a member here, and look forward to "picking a lot of brains" for current info.

Best regards, Gary