[BAracer]

#70

"Round the World in 80 Clubs"

The Other Jeremy started off the Show + Tell with his latest car buying strategy...he buys cars in damaged cases to get the best deals. Mike has a completely different approach...he buys the wrong cars in order to then have to buy the right one. A sort of "buy one, get another one later" deal where he always has two matched car to race against each other, e.g. the Porsche 917 shown off in the chat. Nick has an even more contrived buying strategy...he buys the car he wants, then another one with the number he needs to go on the first one. All good methods where you basically end up buying loads of slot cars.

Dennis showed off a beautifully painted and decalled Aston Martin F1 which was a spitting image for the original, and Brian showed off his thingy, which are whatever shape and colour you want it to be. 

Big Den told us a story about a slot race meet he had just been to where he suffered two mechanical occurrences in one evening that any other slot car driver could only ever dream about happening to them once in a lifetime. Henri in the Netherlands has found some very rapid Imola F1 type cars to tempt beginners into the hobby. Not sure how long they let them play with the good stuff before snatching them away and bursting their 'fun' bubble and starting them off down the miserable road of tuning tips and tyre choices and body float, and stories from down under about a bloke who has the worst slot car luck in the world.

Greg then gave airing to a discussion around the oXigen controller design. It seems he might have triggered a thought process at Slot.it that has unlocked a method whereby other manufacturers can integrate one Slot.it SCP component into their controller and off they go with alternatives to SCP. Importantly Slot.it don't have to give away any trade secrets. You heard it here first...

And then Greg introduced 'Club Corner', this week, a little round robin chat about which slot car clubs all the people on the chat go; tips on how to set up a club, where is it based, what type of racing they do etc. so anyone watching who wants to give the hobby a try might have a possible place to start. We all did our little pieces, hopefully a useful regular items that will help ease that first step into the hobby.

And finally, one of those subjects that crops up on a regular basis was discussed in a bit more depth...silicone washers. Useful for lots of things, but particularly good to assist with body and pod float. Following numerous mentions on these World Wide Chats, there is a World Wide shortage of the little blighters. So a number of people showed off some alternative 'equivalent' products that can do the job just as well. If you are desperate, people have found small rubber O rings will do the same job. If you are really desperate, there is one on the floor of Nick's lounge, just in front of his computer desk somewhere.