I've spent a good part of my spare time recently getting my friend Dave's RC tuned and ready for some friendly racing and running around. Should have spent a bit more time finding a better location to do that racing. Fast nitro RCs require a fair amount of space to run all out. Dave and I thought that this little section of street in front of the shop where he works would be a good place to try it out. We weren't racing side-by-side, just running both our RCs back and forth and seeing what they could do. Of course we made sure there was no traffic before we ventured out with his HPI nitro car and my Traxxas Nitro Rustler. What we failed to do was make sure we really had enough room to manuever two high-speed nitro vehicles, avoiding each other, avoiding each others vehicles, and avoiding the curbs.
Long story short: head-on collision. My tough-as-nails Rustler barely felt it. His car was not so fortunate. At first it just looked like his car body had taken a beating and that maybe we'd have to snap a few parts back together. We did so and set out again (having, obviously, not learned our lesson). When Dave gave his RC a little gas (throttle) it went nowhere.
More than just cosmetic damage done. This RC is heading to the shop.
© M. James
Seems the initial damage was more than skin deep. So I'm going to tear down his transmission to find out what internal damage there really is. But (hopefully) lesson learned. Next we'll find a good-sized parking lot or take our RCs to the track. It won't guarantee we won't hit something, but with more room to run we'll have more opportunity to avoid fatal collisions.
So, to my list of RC safety tips for cars and trucks I'll add Choose a Large Area for Operating Fast RCs
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