[BAracer]

#89

"Buzzarama-lana-ding-dong"

The bar is being set higher for newbies. Tim and John said 'Hi' this week...one of them has over 500 cars, a YouTube channel and all the social media you can eat. But most importantly, we witnessed the first 'blind date' on a WWC. Finally, after years of having to race against ghost cars, Neil has a new nearby slot-neighbour in New Jersey. in John. However, the is no guarantee that this might blossom due to Neil letting slip a picture of his 'workbench'. I say 'workbench' because no-one else on the Chat recognised what it was due to the un-natural tidiness, clearly defined work zones, spray booth, labels on cans all facing forward, and for those scratch building emergencies, a dremel hanging on a stand like a saline drip. It not clear how Neil might react to a visitor moving something out of place. 

JohnK showed the latest progress on one of Frank's masterpiece buildings. We saw Frank cutting the mortar joints around each brick of the Control Tower last week. Since then he has painted all the bricks and pointed up all the joints and it looked stunning! On the other hand, John had made the first casting of the fabled Porsche 935 body. There was some leakage on one of the panels, so for reasons beyond my understanding, he is going to throw away the mold and start again! Hard, this hobby...

Petrucci made a brief return to our screens before disappearing behind a pile of the cars that he bought himself for Christmas. If you want to see the latest releases from MR Slotcar, Thunderslot, Scaleauto F1 (high nose...check; low nose...check), 911, Viper, and some old stuff from Spirit, watch this piece. 

NewJohn gave us a tour of his home track, from concept plan to actual layout. USP of his track is that it consists of corners and complexes from race circuits all around the world. It even featured the best home track accessory ever...a webcam in the Goodyear blimp floating above the circuit. Other point to note, the table and driver stations were all constructed using "small tools", so stuff that all of us could possible build. But that was as far as his and my skill sets coincided. His fascinating car collection consists of a number of different themes. The one featured this week were TV and film cars. So think Munsters, Batman (with pop up machine guns), famous hot rods, The Monkeemobile and to top it all off, Wacky Racers. Different class!

Club Corner features Greg's next potential tyre challenge, how to true a soft Thunderslot tyre. "Rub flour on them..." came the top tip from Mark Down Under, "keeps them cool and stops them balling up". Dennis is going to give it a try, watch for updates. MagnetMike showed us the subtle changes to his track, Dennis showed us some pictures of an old track and a young Dennis. Paul was after a supplier of magna-braid...looks like there might not be one anyone. Could be what MagMike is after as well. He has an NSR that doesn't go as fast as his Sideways. After a bit of analysis, it might be due to the higher magnetic downforce of the Sideways long can motors. 

Dewann asked about wiring for controllers, and in particularly what will happen if you connect it to the driver's station the wrong way round. Lots of good tips followed. On a similar vein, Bill has a car with sparks shooting out of the motor, not good...John has a Batmobile with flames coming out of the exhaust...cool!