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:
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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