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!

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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.