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.