SO............. What to Choose???

While looking for my new hobby I thought about when I was growing up and how I had always enjoyed building things, first with Lego (which still holds a place in my heart as I can’t help getting drawn to it when out shopping!) then modelling kits (involving paint ending up everywhere to my mother’s annoyance), then to RC cars (which combined the ability to make something that worked, that could be modified and the ability to personalise).

I had had a couple of RC cars, my first was a Tamiya Grasshopper II, but they were all bought for me and I had limited input in (normally putting on wheels and stickers). I had got into them and enjoyed the thrill of driving them because my best mate’s dad built and bashed RC Cars (electric, nitro, monster trucks, buggies) as a hobby when I was really young and he allowed me and my mate to drive them in the park too (if we were good, otherwise we had to sit in the van and watch).

(Not mine but one found in Google Images)

The last RC car that I bought and built was a Tamiya TA03F Calibra Cliff Touring car. It was IMMENSE!!! I remember the joy of removing all the parts from their bags, reading through the instruction manual, matching the bits up then putting it all together. I painted it as per the box art (very simple as it was just black, everything else was stickers) with one small modification as I had gone to a craft shop and got some letters in a matching font so my name could be where the pro driver’s one was. I still remember the joy of running around outside in the street, weaving around a made up track and trying to avoid scratching the body on a curb after under-steering wide of an imaginary apex.

(Not mine, one still in good condition found in Google Images)

It looked like a real racing car, more specifically, the type I wanted to race when I was a little kid dreaming of being a racing driver myself. It was black, it was low, it had wide wheel arches, it was mean looking and it had that presence that all cool racing cars had (at least in my mind). It was my first, and last, RC Car that I had saved up for, bought, built, sprayed, stickered, personalised and promptly crashed all by myself.

This was it then, I had decided on my new hobby! I was going to start racing RC cars again! But now I had to find out what clubs/tracks there were local to me, whether they were on-road or off-road and which class I wanted to do once I had chosen……………………….

(Also, I had to work out how much it was going to cost and find a good time to break the news to my girlfriend)