Extension 2 Finally Finished

Yes, I have finally finished my table. Seems like it took forever: nothing was lining up schedule-wise, and when it did, it seemed I was always missing a key ingredient to get going. Finally my wife came back with my saw she left at her girlfriend's house and gave me some time today to get the extension done.

BEFORE picture. Mostly storage for my drum bags and a few other odds and ends. Took about 5 minutes to clean up.

It didn't take very long once the pieces were measured and cut. I think the build itself took about an hour [including grass]. I was able to fix the things I didn't like about the other extension while I was at it, so now I'm happy.

AFTER picture. This extension [and the green grass on top of it] really tie the room together.

The extension is a 4'x4' piece of plywood, attached to a frame underneath and supported by 2"x3" legs. It sits at 80cm high. The extension is then attached to the butt end of the wing extension. This gives each table full corner support, and is double strong in the joints.
It's a light table, and could be torn down fairly quickly if I had to for whatever reason. The total dimensions of the table now are 20' across, 10' down the sides, and 4' to 6' deep. That six foot depth is resulting from my small corner additions, which make the reach from there to the far corners of the table quite far away. As a result, most of my track designs tend to cut those corners a little short so I don't have to do magic if a car deslots thereabouts. Otherwise I have total access to the layout very easily.

The bigger the track layout, the better the Porsche likes it. This thing snakes through the long courses.

So now I need enough track to make a large enough layout. I could come pretty close, but it would be using every piece I have. But there's a nice big birthday box from the online place I get my track from sitting in my wife's office. That should be 10x Straight Pieces. That should help me considerably. I'd like to be able to do it without having to have a bunch of 1/60 curves just to make the distance. I'd also like to have something else on the ends besides a 180° u-turn of tight curves. Something more flowing.

On the other hand, having a short wheelbase car doesn't mean last place. They may not have the straightaway speed of the
 longer cars, but they make it up by brutally punishing every curve. Drama!

__________

Some time later...

Well I did it. I built a layout using every possible track piece I could that would stretch to the extensions. I was left with four 1/60 curves and one 3/30 curve. At maximum stretch I can barely make it into the extension on one side while halfway in on the other. So yeah, I need track pieces. I could have used those last four 1/60s, but I'd rather have a shorter track than one that pointlessly adds 1/60s. Man, I'm really beginning to hate them.
But the layout itself is fun, even though it's basically just trying to make it all the way around at the farthest length it can do it. But it'll do for now.

Now that the new extension is built and I have a temporary course laid down, all the cars are going to get looked at. When we left off so long ago, the #8 GT40 was running very well and quite competitive. I expect more out of it to come.

I ran some laps after setting up the temporary course. I'm going to leave it up until my birthday at the end of the month. Things will change then, so I'm not looking into making anything permanent just yet. Besides, not enough track right now.
But I do have something laid out and am running cars on it.

Another problem I have: the lens on my Canon EOS camera has died on me, So I can't get anything wide angle enough to show off the track. I only have a 50mm prime lens, which is great for a cheesecake photo of a car, but it doesn't have the wide-angle capabilities to pick up the track action. So there might be less of an emphasis on pictures here until I can get some lenses.
I do, however, have my GoPro working again, and I had an idea; one of my first posts on here, which happens to be the most trafficked post on this blog, is about painting track. Since I'll be getting more track, I'll need to do another round of painting. I might just record this one and maybe put it on YouTube. I had thought about doing that before but never did.

Spring/Summer Update

...and it's a doozy....

Something's been bugging me for a few months now. Probably ever since I added the grass to the layout. And that is the question of just exactly how sure I am that I want to do a scenery job to my race track.

As you can see if you've been reading this blog, I'm not one to settle on a layout permanently, although I came close with one. But I still am in search of the perfect race track, or something damn great. I can feel it's there, and it just needs to come out.

But how am I supposed to add permanent scenery to a table if I don't have a permanent layout? I just don't see it. And while it's not on my priority list as far as it goes, it is something that my wife expressed a lot of interest in doing, to the point that I was a little nervous to tell her how I feel about it now. I don't think I'll ever have a satisfying layout, and that's okay, so I told my wife that and prepared for the worst. She told me that it wouldn't be smart to do before we insulated the attic, and she was right.

It's also coming around to birthday time, and it's slot car stuff on the menu this year. I have a rule that I don't make purchases of slot car stuff unless it's needed. Otherwise I upgrade my track and cars through gifts from my wife. She asks me for a list of stuff that I'd like, and then she picks the things out of it she likes. It works out well and helps keep her interested in the stuff going on in the attic.
I need straights [10 or so], and have offered up suggestions in the form of cars, a power supply and a controller. So we'll see what happens. She told me to plan on the straights and that there will be more. That's cool.

Also, this coming Saturday I'll be adding my other extension; the one I had planned on not adding right away due to not enough track. Well, that's going to change. I'll have enough with the 10 straights.
The extension will be a 4'x4' twin of the other one. So that'll make it a U-shaped 20'x10'x4'. It'll take me a couple of hours to do the work. I already have the supplies, and some things are already cut.

So I know I keep pushing back doing a racing season, and the Matra has only run one race so far. And there really isn't a clear favorite yet. But there's a strong chance that I'll be adding a car or two to the lineup. Whatever it might be, it would be in the same general classes I'm running now of Classics and Group C.

UPDATE:

It's now Saturday. My wife left for the day with my daughter so I could have time to work on the extension. I cleared out the space needed to do it, and gathered up the wood to start cutting. It was then I realized that I thought I had enough wood but didn't. I don't have the pieces needed for cross bracing, and I don't want to attempt to build it without any support. I skimped on one side as it is on the other extension, and there's a bit of a warp occurring.
I would go get the wood today, but my wife is gone with the van, so I'm stuck here. The wood shop is across town. Bummer. I really wanted to dive into this today. Oh well. We're still in lockdown, so we'll make arrangements to go to the wood shop and maybe I can tackle this again next weekend.

Tips for Solo Racing During Lockdown

Like most of us, you're probably locked down, wondering how you're going to have fun racing alone. The nice thing about slot cars is that there is still plenty to do, even if there's no one else to do it with.
Here's a list of things you can do or think about during the time you have to yourself. These are in no particular order of preference.

1. Tune your cars into their best, fastest shape. The first one's a no-brainer. Getting each car up to its fastest lap speed will help sort out a lot of things for you. It'll tell you if you need to buy more cars that are competitive, it'll tell you which cars are maybe too fast/slow to be competitive, and it can also tell you which cars need more love than a little oil and grease. If you have enough cars, it can also help you sort those into classes based on run times [and likenesses]. So getting down to the roots of each car, rebuilding from the ground up, making up custom settings for each individual car, and testing/timing those cars can give you multiple sessions of competitive racing, even if you're by yourself.
2. Consider changing your track layout. Nothing is worse than a boring track. And it could be a great design, one that you've worked years on, and be awesome. But it could still get dull and predictable. It's totally possible to get sucked into a zombie-like state when you've gotten too used to running laps on the layout you've had for years. Even if you think you have a limited space and you've used it to its fullest, try changing the design anyway. Consider stripping down some of the bells and whistles. Add difficulty where there wasn't before. And don't worry about losing your current awesome layout. Just take pictures of it before tearing it down and you can always look at the pics to get it back together. Make it a weekend layout. I've changed layouts hundreds of times and found loads of great challenging racing. It's how you discover new possibilities in track design you may not have seen before.
3. Consider your racing surface. You might be rug racing, considering making a table to put the track on. Or you might already have a table, but are looking at doing something a little more scenic and permanent. Think of your options. If you have the space to devote to making a table, you could design something that is up against the wall, or in a corner, or even in the middle of an open space. And you don't have to have a layout design you love to make a table. You could just make a table based on your available space, and then worry about designing a layout afterward. And that may be as far as you ever go. That's where I am right now. I've pretty much given in to the idea that I likely won't ever commit to a permanent layout, so I won't be adding scenery to my table. I've covered it in fake grass and will likely stop there. That gives me lots of options for track design. And if I ever change my mind and decide to go further, all I have to do is take the fake grass off and I have my table ready for scenery. 
4. Hardware satisfaction. Consider things like your power supply, controllers, if you have digital then all the digital stuff, lap timers, etc., and whether you're getting the most out of them. I know I didn't like the standard Carrera controllers, and am very happy with the Slot.it controller I have. Not everyone needs one or wants one, but if you're frustrated by the lack of control you have over your cars, something like a better controller might be the type of upgrade for you. And if you want a better distribution of power than the standard wall wart the track comes with, a decent one will cost about the price of a slot car.
5. Challenge yourself as a driver. It's easy to put your car on the track and try to get it to run a fast lap. If you don't go fast enough you can just go faster the next time around. Easy, right? No real challenge to the driver. Try running a multiple-lap race, the more laps the better. I do it all the time and find it to be a lot more challenging getting a car to maintain a fast consistent speed without going off the track. Making it so you have to do 50 laps makes the driver more important. The car can do 50 laps, no problem. But the driver has to work with the car. And since each car is different, it requires a different understanding of the intricacies of the car. And it may come down to you going "this is a shit car and it slides out in the corners all the time...it'll never be competitive", and that may be just the way you have to drive it to get the most out of it. It might be a totally different driving situation to some of your other cars. And while a car might get around a lap easier than another one, it doesn't mean it's going to be easier to drive all the time. It might be so easy to drive that you don't push it as much out of it's relative smoothness. Weirder things happen. I've had plenty of times when I've thought that a car would do great in a particular race, only to have it clearly not do as well as other cars. But that's what racing's all about, isn't it?

So there you go. Some of those suggestions could probably be expanded upon to be their own posts, but I wanted to get the ideas out there. It's super easy to get into a thing where you're buying cars, running them around the track and not getting the fun out of it. 

Slot cars are fun. Don't be afraid to explore possibilities.