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……………………….
No comments:
Post a Comment