Floor Notes: Getting Settled In

 It took me almost two weeks before I was finally able to set up a layout on the floor. I had lots of boxes to deal with and needed enough space to make it worthwhile. Since my intention has been to use the living room floor for layouts, the room is designed with a nice open area. The only thing taking up space is my desk, but I could even use most of that space in a layout if I needed to. The couch is small, so I leave it where it is. 

Setup and shakedown of a recent layout first thing in the morning. I elevated the straight after taking this pic. This is about half of the room, with the other half having about as much space. Once I get rid of those boxes back there, I'll get almost another meter to work with, which will open up that area very nicely.

Is the floor as awesome as a table? No, but it's still awesome. I'll get used to it, since it was the way I raced up until a handful of years ago. So the table didn't spoil me, thankfully. 

I've been looking at picking up more track pieces, notably more 3/30 curves and a bunch of 4/15 curves, of which I have none. My plan is to take advantage of every layout, so I'll be replacing straight sections with varying curve sections, and the 4/15 curves will help a lot with that. Not planning on getting any banking, but I am strongly considering getting started on adding borders to the track. I think it might be time. Being in a tighter environment means tighter racing and slower speeds than on a more open track. You end up driving on the edge taking advantage of those curves, and it would be nice to have that extra space. I have a few for 1/60 curves that work well enough for me to want more. I'll probably get some 2/30 borders as well, but likely that'll be all. I haven't had a car come off a 3/30 yet, so I'm not worried about needing borders for that. 

Porsche 917K climbing the hill in the morning.

Getting shots of the track action is going to be kind of tough, but I'm going to figure out the best way to do it. I think a GoPro might be in my future. I'm going to need something flexible and compact to get good footage. I'm also going to build a lightbox so I can do photography. That won't be on the floor, but probably in my bedroom. It'll be probably 3'x3' so it'll handle more than just cars. That'll be my ongoing winter project.

I think the racing will be good, but it's going to be on more technical tracks than what I was racing before. There will be more work for the controller on each of the cars to get just the right settings. I think the action will be tight across all brands. 

I'm still going to do time trial racing, but it'll definitely be split up in groups. Since I'm splitting them up, I'll likely run longer races, which will allow for more competitive racing. Doing 20 laps on a 5 second track is a pretty short race. I'll have to do some tests to see what works best. I have a lot of cars now, and I'm not planning on benching any of them [well, except possibly for one, although not quite yet]. 

Two cars that are itching to get in their first race: Sunoco M6A and Lola T70 III. Definite challengers.

I'm also thinking of getting another overpass. I like it a lot better than putting 8 pieces in the air to get over another part of the track. The overpass is just so much more convenient and is still a challenge. But with tight tracks, where you can fold them over themselves, more overpasses will definitely come in handy. 

I'll be working on some car reviews for YouTube. I have enough cars to do a decent series, so I'm going to work on that for awhile. I want to review every car I have, so they'll be new and used car reviews, kinda like the one I did for the Lola T70. I'll probably go a little more in-depth than I did before, but not too much. I don't want to just put redundant information up just to do it. I want to do interesting videos of cars that have been used, and how that experience has been. 

Alright, my daughter has been here for the weekend, and we got some good racing in on a small kidney oval I put together. She's getting really good at it and enjoys it very much. She even requested that I set it up so we could play when she came over. That's my kid. 

New Car - Thunderslot Lola T70 MKIII

 So my birthday was just the other day, and in all the craziness going on lately with me moving and starting my new job and everything, I had neglected getting myself my birthday present. So off to my favorite shop, Overdrive Slotservice to pick up a new car. I've bought about a half dozen or so cars from them and they're great.

So, the car came the day after my birthday, which also happened to be the day I was getting my Covid shot. Well, wouldn't you know it I got a shot that took me out for a couple of days, so I didn't get a chance to do much other than take the car out of the box. 

Another great one from Thunderslot. They are a very good slot car company.

This is my fourth Thunderslot car. I decided not long ago to get one of each body style available, and I think I have one more to get. Not sure about that, though. 

The impressive thing, aside from how great these cars are in general, is just how closely they run against each other. Granted, they share the identical setup/parts/etc. Small differences in chassis. But what that means is that you're going to have a much more competitive field all the way across it. One car won't have a clear advantage, although I think different cars would respond a little differently to things. 

Here's the T70. There's hardly anything to it in this configuration, making it low and fast.

The Lola T70 MKIII drives a bit like the Chaparral does. It's a little boxy in back, but that boxiness remains planted with the right accelerator application. 

The paint job is great on this car, as are the details. You'd think a light blue and yellow car wouldn't be an attractive pick, but it makes a damn fine looking race car.

I did a tune up and tire job to the car today, and I'm going to run it against a couple other cars on a new track I'm laying down. It's kinda fun and is taking up a nice footprint in the apartment. Pics when coverage starts.

"Howdy"

In real life this car ran about 47 laps in the 1968 Le Mans race before being disqualified when the driver went too far away from the car. Turns out I had another car from this race:

This car, driven by Willy Mairesse, crashed on the first lap of the race in 1968, giving him career-ending injuries. He committed suicide not long after.

At first I thought I had an obsession with a particular car, like the GT40 above, but the more I look, the more I like many of the cars from the era, and find beauty in many of them. I find the cars to look much better in person than they ever could on picture, at least that I've seen. 

It's looking better and better to getting started back into time trials again. I think I'll be able to do them on weekends, likely starting next weekend. I set up a track yesterday and will see if I can leave it out for the entire week. If not I'll just build a new one this weekend. I definitely have enough space to make cool layouts, and I haven't even tried one moving things around in the living room. So I even have more space than what I'm messing with now.

I can see lighting being an issue. I was so used to having permanent lights over my track and not thinking about it. Now I need to install some floor-level lighting that'll make things easier. 

Meanwhile I'm going to work in the MKIII and the M6A for awhile. 

Moved in

 So that took forever. No, it really didn't, and I probably could have pushed the issue and done it a week or so ago, but there was just too much going on for me to do it all at once. But now that I'm moved in and have a little time to unpack and get internet set up, I can get to doing some racing. This weekend will be my first big layout plan. 

I've got a nice big living room to set up in, which is probably somewhere around 18'x10'. That's absolutely serviceable. I'm going to pick up some more track pieces, but not just yet. I think I need a celebratory car first. We'll see. I still need to put laps on that sweet new McLaren I got before moving.

Once I've laid some track I'll take pictures. I'm also going to be working on some more videos, since I can do those with impunity now. Nobody to tell me my stuff's in the way or not important or whatever. 

So there it is. Back on /r/slotcars and back to racing. Finally!

End of an Era - Moving Out [table notes]

 I move in less than two weeks. My stuff is all packed up. I was surprised that it took two moving boxes to fit all my track. The cars are going to travel as-is, since I'm only going across town. I'm taking the car boxes as well, but packed away in a larger box. 

It's been 5 years since I first moved in to the house and started building a track table. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't get any further in development than I did, as it would have been heartbreaking to lose what I had put so much effort into making. Sure, the table required some effort, but it really wasn't all that difficult. I'm not a woodworker or anything, and I was able to do it. 

It's a pretty basic job, really, when you look at it. Two long sides connected to two ends with a piece in the middle. Then slap a piece of plywood on top. Not much to it.

So now that I've done it and experimented for a few years with it, you probably want to know how I feel about it. Well, first I wish I would have had a chance to weather-proof the attic. It made it very difficult to be in most of the year, and left me with really only two short seasons. 

The only other thing would be the limitation the table brings to track design. When you're on the floor, if you need more space you move the couch. You go down the hall. You double back under the entertainment center. But when you're on a table and hit the edge, that's it. No more room. So I'm not going to miss that aspect of it. I have enough track now to do some pretty cool stuff, and I'll be picking up more soon. Now I'll be able to expand on my layout designs. That'll be fun. 

I'll have more room than this by quite a bit. This was a long time ago in an apartment packed with way too much stuff.

I like that the table made everything quieter, especially when I added the green grass. I was able to race late into the night and nobody ever heard. The green grass did shed a little bit, though, even though I would still use it again if given the opportunity. 

As far as the U-shape table goes, I never had a problem with it. You'd think, and I was told, that there would be visibility issues, but there never were when I was racing with friends. It wasn't easy to reach deep into the corners, but I fixed that by designing my layouts with shallower ones.

So I'd say that my experience with a table was a positive one, and I would recommend it to anyone who has the space to do it. 

Shutdown Showdown - Last Heat Race

 I have finally found an apartment and will be moving soon. Since I've had my track set up, the time has finally come to start packing. So this will be the last race on the table at the house. After this I go back to the floor. Nice thing is my new apartment will have a nice big living room for stretching out in. I'm also going to be dismantling part of the table and making a workbench out of it. Nothing special, just something to get me by. I won't have space to do any building, so I might as well do other stuff with the wood.

I've been messing around with a curve lately. It's a small change, but it really makes a difference in how much speed you can carry through the corners:

By replacing one 1/60 curve [brown] with two 2/30 curves, you can make a very nice, very fast turn. It may not look like much of a difference, but it is.

I wanted one of these on each side, and filled in the rest with a few things to make it interesting. I ran it for a bit as an oval and it was fun, but it was an oval. Once I peppered it up it started to take shape. 

I still use way too many 1/60s on my layouts. I need to get more large radius curves.

As you would expect, the cars rip through the section on the right. Cars can take the short front stretch into the elongated curve, decelerating all the way. Then you're back on the throttle before you know it. The left side of the layout has enough tight curves to give the longer cars fits, but it still has that fast turn at the end. The cars love it and don't seem to be bothered too much with the rest of the layout. 

Shutdown Showdown Results:

20 lap heat race

Car              Time                    

908tergal    1:24.43                 

Lola T70     1:24.79                 

Elva            1:24.92                 

917roth       1:24.95                    

M6B           1:25.18                 

917gulf       1:25.45                 

908sunoco  1:25.81                  

917lucky     1:29.32

Matra          1:28.20                 

Alfa             1:29.65                 

Chap66        1:29.68                  

962C            1:30.13                       

Chap65        1:30.50                       

The Top-7 cars are about a second and a half apart over the race. Close enough to be a tossup every time. The Tergal 908 coming in first is a bit of a shock, as I thought it would be the Lola. But, the 908 was planted and ran a hell of a race. Didn't get slippy once. 

Short body race cars are where it's at. Porsche 908

The layout was fast, and it did allow for fast pace, even in the corners. Most of the longer cars struggled with it: 917, Matra, 962C...all spent more time in the technical section than the other, shorter bodied cars. 

Another impressive runner today. Porsche 917K

Well, that's going to about do it. 

I can't believe that it has come to this, but you gotta take what comes. Sometimes things are out of your control. But I have signed the lease and will be moving within the next month. I'm going to assess my situation once I'm there, but I'm expecting that I'll probably need to buy some more track, especially curves. I need more high radius curves. I don't even own any 4/15 curves, and I'm dying to try those. I'll also want to get one of those chicanes.

I think I'm good on cars for the time being, but I have a birthday coming up, so we'll see what happens. There are a few cars I want still. 

I'm also going to be doing more videos. I'll have the time and will be able to do the setups and leave them up, so I can actually do them right. Plans are being made to continue those. 

This blog is about my adventures in slot cars. Sometimes life dictates what happens in other adventures. It doesn't change the desire to do them, and I'm going to keep doing this. And in case you're wondering, do I think my wife understood my hobby and what it meant to me? I think so, yes. I think she underestimated my interest in it, and was pleasantly surprised at how much mileage I got out of it. She didn't understand the need for multiple cars, though. The whole collector aspect of it. She thought the cars were cool, she just didn't see the point in having so many. 

The car she claimed for herself, the Gulf Ford GT40, she didn't recognize a few weeks ago when she came up and my daughter and I were racing. She thought this whole time that it was a Mustang, which I don't have. Right then I gave that car to my daughter and she loves it. She's looking forward to racing at the apartment.

I'm probably going to do a post or two about how these past few years of slot cars have affected me. 

New Car - Thunderslot McLaren M6A

 Once I got my new job I knew I needed to celebrate with a new car. I had packed up my track too early, and once I had it back out I ordered the car. 

Thunderslot McLaren M6A Sunoco Special

I've been so happy with my other Thunderslot cars that I had to get another one. Thunderslot isn't a huge company, and have less than a dozen or so cars available. So I have an Elva, a Lola, and now an M6A. 

I did a standard lube/oil and tire sanding [love the tires], and took it upstairs with the other two cars. I didn't run any official laps as I didn't really have much of a track setup going. But I did run the M6A with the other cars and it was right up there with them. I'm going to dial it in a little more and then run some timed laps and compare the three cars. 

I set the track back up

 I have no will power when it comes to slot cars. The minute I broke my set down and packed it up I wanted to get it back out again. It's been bugging me not having that 15 minutes or so during the day to get a few laps in. But I jumped the gun on packing it. 

See, I just got a job. I've been waiting for that. Now I can actually move out. With exception of the track, I've been packed for months. No more trying things that don't work. I'm employed and that gets me in. So I'm looking. But it takes awhile, and I need to race, so here we are. 

There's another reason I set the track up tonight: I bought another car. I'm not going to say what it is yet, as usual. I absolutely LOVE being able to buy slot cars when I want to. 

Next post will be about the car.