[BAracer]

#88

...featuring the best use of a marker pen E V E R !


A New Year and a couple of new faces...Frank was a racing instructor turned slot car racer but more significantly a scenery builder extraordinaire! He showed how he found an image of some race buildings on a Corgi box and created the buildings by eye and with a very steady hand...e.g. forming the joints between the bricks in a wall by cutting away the foam around each brick! And JohnK reminded us of the quality of his builds with a reminder that he acquired one of Frank's buildings for his track. You know, the one with the puddle of water under the drain pipe, and the little rust marks on the render from the hanging sign bracket...that sort of detail.

How do you follow that? Well along came Christian from Copenhagen. He told the tale of how he had raced slot cars in his youth, had stopped for 25 years and then joined a local club...only to be reunited with all his slot car friends from his youth. He popped a 1:24 scale BRM onto his screen, but everyone got excited about the powered stand that it was sitting on. But Christian's claim to slot fame is that he developed and sells the LapMaster timing system for slot tracks. Dennis highlighted that it is the system used my most commercial tracks around the world, so it's probably no coincidence that Christian has recently retired from (hard) work. Someone else who would like to retire is Henri, who showed off his latest prototypes of his rolling road product...any colour you want now! He is sensing that there will be quite a demand for these, so remember Henri that we all knew you before you became rich and famous!

Graham gave us an update on the track build in his (massive) shed. The track surface has been been painted, and the lane colours applied. Lots of chat about how best to apply the braid and the detailing of the slot specifically. But the pictures of the overall track brought gasps to the Chat and plans for visits from around the world. And if ever a track could be called "life changing", this one has all the makings of one.

In contract, we were then given a presentation on the preparation and running of a slot car fun day involving a series of Revell tracks laid out to re-create classic vintage layouts from the original instructions. And who wouldn't enjoy running cars on all the tracks, as the photos of the day showed.

Club Corner focussed on the Clash of the Titans Christmas Challenge between Magnet Mike and Digital Greg featuring digital magnet racing. Mike had carefully prepared some race cars and with Greg being more of a non-mag racer, he limited the magnetic downforce to just half a bag of sugar (no digital scales required when you talk about that level of pull!). As someone noted, they could have raced upside down on the ceiling without deslotting...in fact they could have continued up the stairs if they had wanted. Greg seemed genuinely surprised that the SSD chips hadn't exploded due to the effort and amperage involved. Electric Dreams has published their race calendar for the year ahead together with the rule set for the ten classes. A bit of chat ensued about potential class winning cars.

And to finish off the Chat, Our Alan has a problem that I wish I had. His cars go so fast on certain tracks that small blips in the plastic track are causing them to deslot on the long straight. Alan has focussed in on the behaviour of the guide and braids and front wheels in causing the issue when other cars around him don't have the problem. So a lot of ideas were mulled over by everyone about what the guide does as it hits the imperfections, how the braids could act as shock absorbers, and how the front tyres could be used to mitigate the original problem, along with the invention in live time of a never seen before tuning tip that might just turn out to be as significant as truing and gluing of tyres! 

And if that deep dive into the front end characteristics of slot cars didn't whet your appetite for the World of Slot Car Chats over the coming year, nothing will!