Yesterday was the Spring Fling race at 106 Race Park. The weather was great, and we had a decent turnout. I believe there were less racers than last year, but that is just what I heard, I was not at the race last year. This probably had to do with a trophy race down at RC Madness in Connecticut as well as out race though.
I entered both my E-Revo and my Slash 4×4 into the race. I think this race really showed me it’s time to get rid of the Slash 4×4 though. I ran the first two heats, and skipped the 3rd. I let Josh run the truck in the main. I am just not that into the truck. I don’t really like the way it drives around the track. This is not just a driver not controlling the car issue, I just don’t enjoy driving it as much as I do the E-Revo. So this week my plan is to clean it up, remove the receiver, and post it. Like I mentioned before, it’ll hit the 106 Race Park forums first. If nothing happens there in a week or two, it’ll go onto RC Tech. Don’t get me wrong the Slash 4×4 is a great truck, lots of people love theirs. It just is not for me apparently. I’m not sure if I will go with my plan to pick up a 1/8th Buggy or not. As much as I love racing, I just can’t justify another car. Buying one is not not cheap, and keeping it running is even worse. So for now I think it’ll be back to E-Revo only.
Now that I bring up the E-Revo I’ll go into my day in the electric monster class. The night before the race I made some changes to the ESC settings. I cannot express how great it is to be able to tune the truck with a computer through Castle Link. Everything can be done so easily, the program they provide explains everything, and in respects to the throttle and brake curves, they can be saved and reloaded. My changes were geared towards lowering my restrictions on speed. When I began racing last year I was a disaster. I could not control the truck, I was a nightmare to race with. After a few races I turned the settings down, WAY down. I set punch control to 90%, this stopped my truck from doing wheelies at any touch of the throttle. They do not lie when they say that with 4s LiPOs the E-Revo Brushless Edition will do standing back-flips. I also turned the brakes down. For some people this might sound backwards if I am trying to “reign the car in”. Think about this though. The default setting for brakes is 50%. With that setting, from full speed to full stop will result in your car flipping ass over end in about a half a second. Brakes on these electric cars are not a joke. It amounts to your car’s motor going from rotating at some insane RPMs to ZERO. With the E-Revo a large portion of the weight is more towards the back of the truck. Add into this equation that the front suspension came pretty soft, i.e the truck will nose dive while slowing down. Put that all together and you get the truck’s wheels stopping almost instantly, the tires lose lock (remember no ABS here) and lose traction, the nose dives as low as it can go, and the weight in the back still wants to move forward. The result is the back popping up over the front, and you wait for a marshal to flip the truck off it’s lid. I know this happens, because I was almost a pro at it. Anytime I needed to stop, I hit the brakes all the way, and then I watched the whole situation unfold. I did it multiple times every race. So last year I dropped the brakes to 25%. I also turned on the drag brake. I can’t remember the setting from last year, but I want to say it was 30%. The last thing I changed was the throttle curve. I did not take screenshots of my curve, and don’t feel like hooking the truck up right now to get one, so I’ll just try to explain it. The curve I used was a smooth progression. I kept the power low up until about 40%, then let it spike to the top. That means I had a smoother acceleration and could keep on the throttle on the track without having to constantly let go for fear or going to fast to soon.
Now back to this years changes. I cut the punch control down to 25%. My reasoning here was two fold. First I now have both a better concept of the throttle curve in the Castle Link settings, and my Spektrum DX3S also lets me tune the curve essentially. With the ability to do that, I can cut the punch control down, and instead control the wheelie situation through throttle curve settings. Second, I was not getting enough acceleration when I needed it. Te last two races of the Spring Series, I was doing great getting around, but I found I was falling behind because I could not gain speed after turns fast enough. I also turned the drag brake UP, to 20%. My last setting was 10%, I must have changed it sometime last year. I find I am not quick enough with the brakes, so the drag brake helps me a lot. I did not want to go to high because I know that might put me into the ass over end situation again, and it also becomes a paint when you get into the air. When your truck is flying over a jump, brakes will nose down your truck. So I have to remember not to just let go of the throttle after clearing the jump. Instead I stay on the throttle just enough to not nose down, and hopefully not over do it, and back flip. The last thing I changed was the throttle curve. The changes I made a something I completely made up on the spot the other night. It makes sense to me, and seemed to work on the track really well. Describing it would be tough, so I’ll just say, it is not just a smooth progression anymore. These changes seemed to work really well for me in practice runs the morning of the race. While playing around I did have some issues with spin outs. A BIG thanks to Jim for helping me figure that out, and letting me drive his Losi 8IGHT-E. Jim gave me some tips on the suspension. I loosened up the rear-end suspension and tightened up the front. This keeps the front end from dropping low and lifting the rear-end off the ground, which in the end means I lose traction and spin. Jim also helped me get the toe in and camber settings together. This is one thing I just don’t seem to understand well, and my lack of toe-in and camber gauges does not help. I plan on picking these up soon so I can stay on top of this. Those changes further helped me out and kept my truck on the track and under control. My changes to the ESC settings got me the speed I wanted and needed, and now I can even completely clear the triple or quad jump at the track. Not sure which it is since it was originally a quad, but we changed it to have one table top kind of jump in the middle now.
As far as the actual racing goes, I did pretty well. I started in second in the main, my qualifier was an 8 lap 5:02 run. In the main we had all four racers, Luke from Team Fastraxx, myself, Mat Sanborn, and Mike Fortuna, in that order. We took off at the buzzer, and Luke got ahead fast. Mike and I stayed pretty close together most of the race, I may have been ahead by a second or maybe two for part of it, but that is not much. Mat unfortunately did not finish the race, I am not sure what the issue was . I was too busy fending off Mike to pay attention. 
Somewhere along the line Mike caught up and passed me, I think this around 2 minutes left in the race, which was 6 minutes long overall. I stayed on him pretty well and we ended up getting tangled at the hairpin coming out of the back straight. I stuck with it though and stayed close, hoping to get around. It was just not going to happen until the absolute end when the final buzzer when off. Mike and I were coming down the straight towards the finish line, and Mike ended up rolling over right near the line. I snuck through the corner and crossed the line to take second just as Mike got flipped and took off. It was a close finish. You might have noticed I didn’t mention Luke in all this. That is simply because he took off, and I had no chance of catching him. Mike may have had the chance if he had not had to battle with me for second for so long. Overall the race was excellent. I did great, only got marshaled once or twice in the race, and managed to still take second by a hair and a simple mistake. In the end I got second place by less than a quarter of a second. So I got my second place trophy, it now sits next to my second place trophy from the 2009 Fall Series.
I took as many pics as I could, 761 in all. That is definitely a new high for me. I’m working on getting them uploaded to Flickr, it’s going slow though. I’ll also upload smaller ones to my site. Not sure why I keep putting them in two places, but I think I have found a better long term solution. I spent some time talking to the photographer for the go-kart races at 106 Race Park. He recommended a site that can host all the images, and they have a full shopping cart setup, so everyone can pay for real prints if they want, or digital downloads too. I’m not sure what I am going to do. I am not really in the photography stuff to make money off the friends I have made racing. However other folks might be think my shots are good enough to pay for their own use. The main reason I am interested in getting the pics to a place where everyone can pay for a print is for those folks that think a shot of their car is great enough to pay for a poster. No markup or anything from my end, I just don’t think handling the requests, printing, money etc… on my own is plausible. This is of course if anyone from the track even likes the pics that much, hehe. The feedback is good, so far so I’ll give it a shot. I also have a dream of someone like a magazine actually paying for shots I take or something, but that sounds like a pipe dream.
Hopefully the pics from the Spring Fling will finish soon, still around 200 to upload. You can see them all here, Spring Fling photoset on Flickr. If the number doesn’t say 761, they’re still uploading. Feel free to to look at the pics from the last two Spring Series races, or whatever else is up there.
In other news things are going great with the new job. Time seems to be flying by there, and it’s already been almost 2 months since I started. Like I said before the office and people are great. I have fun at work and enjoy going to the job every day now. A couple of weeks ago I joined the rest of the office in a Health Challenge. It’s aimed to get us to try and be a little healthier in the things we eat, drink, and do to make us feel better. The first week’s challenge was pretty simple, drink half your body weight (in ounces) in water each day. I haven’t weighed myself in a while, but going by the last time I did, that’s about 80 ounces a day. So I’ve been drinking a LOT more water. I cut down on Pepsi, I still “allow” myself one a day, sometimes I break down and have two though, hehe. What can I say, I really love drinking wild cherry Pepsi. This weeks challenge was a little more difficult. Eat something new each day for breakfast, something healthy too. We’re also supposed to do two 45 minute work outs a week. My plan is to walk at lunch once or twice a week. I also figure my running around at the RC track each Saturday should count. I’m not sure what will pop up this week for a challenge, but it should be interesting.
Not much else is going on, I’ve been reading as usual, coding a new idea for a new site, and whatever else I can think of to keep busy.
That’s it for today. Have fun and keep it between the ditches.
