how it all began for you?

[styleone]

I thought this a valuable and inspiring discussion to spark guys. I always love to hear the stories of how the racers I meet got into RC. They range from the classic "My Dad got me a Tamiya in the 80's" to the unusual "I wanted to race karts but was too tall"

I like the fact that we all share a common interest but our introduction to the world of model car racing can be so diverse. It goes without saying that most of the people who I speak to can easily remember their first contact with a hobby that nearly always becomes a life-long love affair. As far as my story, well if it hadn't been for a Father with a love for Tamiya models and an over enthusiastic scout leader, I would never have found the hobby so easily when I was 11 years old. I used to attend an outdoor flat grass track in a place called Hurst Green in the West Midlands and get battered every week lol...some things never change ey! ;)

Share the story of how you found your first experiences with our wonderful sport folks...and over to you all

[stegger]

My dad is a crown green bowls fanatic "never got it myself !!! Lol" each to there own. Anyway every Sunday he would drag me and my sister to a pub or park so he could play. On this particular day we arrived at this pub just outside of Liverpool i was sat there bored out of my skull ! When i heard a noise and somebody shouting "MARSHAL" That was it HOOKED, that was early 80s. Kyosho scorpions and Tamiya roughriders :wub It took me a good 18months of paper rounds etc to get myself enough money to get myself my first car. ( Kyosho Tomahawk )

[PaulUpton]

I blame Schumacher :lol:

They had a track set up at the Northampton balloon festival must be about 16/17 years ago. Think it was on the school gym mats, was just a oval too I think. After my dad spending about £20 with me having goes (£1 a go so I as there a lot) they got me a Schumacher nitro 10 for Xmas and that was it.

Think I then got a Schumacher cat was it SE? Before the 98? For my birthday.

[reg]

i was about 26 when i started,I asked a mate if he would let me know the next time he went racing,thought it would be interesting to go and watch,when we got there he got 2 cars out his bag,one was an HPI sprint,"thats yours" he said,
no clue what i was doing,i got booked in,as i was the first heat i got on the rostrum early so claim my space,i did a few dodgy laps and felt quite good,but the end of the old 27mg arial was showing how nervose i was,
then as i sat on the start line,looking at my race car,the "race 1 will start it 30 sec" shout came over the mic,to which i was suddenly surounded by a rostrum full of 8 year old :woot:

[dazzlerr6]

Hi guys I was 13/14 at school and a mate of mine bought his car to school and was playing with it at lunch time and I was hooked , so for Xmas that year I had nothing but a brand new hotshot 2 . Then I swapped it for a optima mid, and now in almost 40 and used my stepson as an excuse to buy to cat sx,s to racing again haha once it's in the blood it never goes away .

[snail speed]

I remember there was a thunder tiger nitro with a cossie sbell on it bussing up the road from where i lived. Just had to get one. Where we were on holiday road trip down to edinburgh we went in past the modelshops and i liked the look of the hpi rush. Got it runing in a layby near stirling. But brakes seized. Instead of going to fort william next day. We went back the next. Got it sorted and cant rember what happened after that. We heard there was a model shop in inverurie and when in there there was a poster for inverurie district model club.on a sunday. Poped along and was amazed at the racing. Got my self a hobbytech ht1 that i still have. Cant rember if it was gti models or a place on george street in aberdeen. Had a few cars since then.

[fidspeed]

as as small spotty (slightly overweight ) billy one mate kid i drooled over a early tamiya countach "pan type Car" with my one mate he wanted the stablemate but i cant remember what it was . thats as far as it got drooling and dreaming

i did get a cox pt19 trainer control line aircraft from same model shop (lasted 1/2 a circuit before gravity won :D

roll on a few years about 1990 i started work in a garage and one dinner a mechanic pulled out what i found out was a alloy chassied cat XLS 1400 red scr cells 15 turn tanaplan brushed motor and wassed it round the car park

"f***** cool* roll on 2012 still playing with toy cars although no 1 son is way better than me and mins ago bought a b44.1 off oople so still havent learnt my lesson

big big thanks to all the organisers that keep me out of B&Q and garden centers at the weekend :woot::woot:

dave fid (louth radio out of control car club original member since 1995)

[john333]

My mates older brother bought a second hand holiday buggy from a model shop and let us have a go with it. Got one myself the following Christmas, and after bashing around for a while saw in a local model shop an original mardave mini stock, brand new and cheap as chips.

A bit more bashing in the local school playground, then heard about Ilkeston model car club (now Broxtowe) what a revelation! Went there for the first time and was hooked, over the years have had loads of cars and many lay offs due to kids etc but have been back for 18 months and never going away again, it is definitely in the blood.

[Wynney]

When I was a baby / toddler my folks used to take me around the park in the buggy to go to sleep, my dad used to take his rc car, no idea what it was, Kyosho affectionately known in the family as "Timmy". Grew up with him always having one around so natural progression. Used to borrow his boomerang, and sometimes perusade him to let my drive his tamiya 959. Then for my 10th birthday I was given a Bearhawk.

[stoff]

Robot Wars!

I wanted a robot, Dad bought me a Mardave Cobra!

[Spencer Mulcahy]

I got into it from my best mate at school. Started of with a Mardave meteor which was quickly modified to be able to take a 27x1 motor instead of the mabushi and mechanical speed control and a futaba 211b speedo was put in and it was ball raced. A new titainium chassi was made by my uncle who could get it from work, my radio gear was from the same uncle but it was 35mghz and for boats so the throttle and steering was the wrong way round so I learnt how to drive backwards LOL (maybe that explains alot). After wearing out many sets of mardave tyres monted on split rims (always thought that was a good way of mounting tyres) on the local garden centre car park my mate asked if I wanted to go with him on a friday night to RACE.
I purchased some foam tyres for the beast and off I went to Albion mill in Blackburn I was 12 years old then and I was amazed at the speed of the cars there but I tell you my modified mardave was not bad at all compaired to all the exotic stuff on show cats dogs and optimas. I often think if some of the fast lads at the mill had a go now how quick they would be names like Andy Woods (he could win with one tyre off the rim) Ian Oddie he is still racing large scale but what would he be like with a 10th there was another but I cant remember his name he had a dogfighter and it was always Andy and him racing for the win.
After a few rest periods I am still racing and loving it even more than ever and I cant see me never doing it its ace.

[nites]

Hi guys I was 13/14 at school and a mate of mine bought his car to school and was playing with it at lunch time and I was hooked , so for Xmas that year I had nothing but a brand new hotshot 2 . Then I swapped it for a optima mid, and now in almost 40 and used my stepson as an excuse to buy to cat sx,s to racing again haha once it's in the blood it never goes away .

hi dazzler. ive got to ask..... which scool was this at and what yar because I had a very bad habit of taking my super sabre to school when I wasnt allowed to lol ooooh those were the days

[Lee24h]

I started at silverstone when it was still at silverstone racing touring cars on a friday night went a few times with my mate i had a nikko subaru impreza wrc toy thing it went alrite but then for christmas my mum and dad got me a tamiya TL01 LA (which i still own) it was great i hop it up inch up t27 tyres trinty p2k motor tamiya speedo clinging on for dear life bodged electrics it was a good car
That was fun as i used to race xray t1 r's and t1 m's and use to watch mardave briscars as the track was turned into a oval.
It was good :)

[danDanEFC]

About 5 years ago I was looking some thing to replace my 'World of Warcraft' addiction.

Something outdoors with a small amount of physical effort. I googled the local club that I remember watching when we were kids, found the website. I found out that a mate I went to school with and hadn't seen for 10 years had the same idea a few days before!

Haven't looked back since met some great people and my father in law is now even more addicted than me?

[benl]

Its true My dad did get me a tamiya in the 80's:)
Since then Rc went out of my life somewhat, but it had gotten me started on simple electronics and mechanics. This progressed into engineering and tinkering with Landrovers for me for many years.
With the costs of family life kids etc this kind of faded out but I still had the itch to do some kind of tinkering.
When my dad passed away I found a box full of our old Tamiya stuff and the original Grasshopper 2 we painted metalic green to match his opel:cry:
I rebuilt this for my 6 year old son and its kind of progressed from there.
My racing is very poor but I am now completly hooked, all these years I hadn't know all this awesome racing stuff was even going on.

[RobW]

Dad has always been into building model steam trains and used to drag us all to model exhibitions when we were kids. I always ended up watching the RC cars and got given a few cheap “toy” RC cars. When I was 11 I got him to buy me a set of futaba radio gear for my birthday in May and then he agreed he would pay half the cost of a kit. Tamiya released the Holiday Buggy which went for about £40 so I spent the next few months saving every penny to save up my £20 (think I used to get about a £1 a week pocket money) and got the kit in about Sept. Then had to wait until Christmas to get the battery and charger!! That Christmas day I trashed the flower borders in my mum’s garden and flatten my dad’s full size car battery. Then started looking for a club to run at. Found what was then called Porchester Rough Riders in Hampshire which is now the TORCH club.
That was about 32 years ago and apart from the traditional few years off for beer and women, have raced various classes over that time. In some ways I’ve been lucky – never been that fast so can never be called a has-been!!
Rob

[bigred5765]

got bought a tamiya kit (holiday buggy if i remember right long long time ago)
for Xmas i think it was,must have been around 14-15
4.8 volts, charging lead was a length of wire that clipped to car battery
wiper speed controller,lol omg they were rubbish
then found out a group of people raced at my local school, on gravel
that was it i was hooked

[kaylon]

Back in 1980 my brother who was 13 at the time got a Tamiya Sand Scorcher for his birthday, it was in August and the weather was fantastic. I was totally in awe of this thing so we took it outside and drove it around a huge amount. My bro's best friend at the time David had the Rough Rider so he joined us a lot and after school evenings were great fun...I ran around chasing the cars like a headless idiot...today they would say I had ADHD or something...bah...I was just 10!

Being 10 I was of course a little upset that I could not have my own, but my brother being who he was teased me mercilessly all the time but did let me drive his buggy from time to time, bless him.

That Christmas though it all changed... I got the Tamiya Lamborghini Cheetah. And what an epic thing it was...I still remember sitting at my dinning room table building it with the help of my bro...took us all day but wow.. A few days later and a trip to our local model shop for some paint it was ready, I had painted the body satin black with a gold stripe running along the sides and up the front...

I loved it so much. That next few months I drove that car to destruction...every evening I was out running at least a pack through it.

By early summer we had a small group of friends who all had cars, the two super buggies (sand scorcher and rough rider) and now there was also a ford in the mix...it was amazing. My Cheetah was so out classed by them all I had to upgrade.. Could not afford much, but got a brand new Holiday Buggy for my 11th birthday...

We all raced and bashed around for a few years...During the 80's I had a Hornet and a Wild Willy... my bro's last car back then was a Manta Ray...By 1985 there were at least 10 of us racing around...We had Brats, and frogs...and a couple of Wild Willy's...

The 80's really was the time of Tamiya...and some of the best days of my life.

J

[SimonW]

1985 ( i think) i used to walk past a model shop every Sat morning on my way to town. One day there was a promo video playing of the soon to be released 'Hotshot' in the window, I always used to stop and watch. Quite by accident I found out one Friday night that a club ran on the BMX track behind my local youth club. My Parents bought me a Hotshot that Christmas (after much begging) and my first race was @ a winter series with lots of good drivers and watching/racing there that day got me hooked the track was amazing, the old W-S-Mare club next to the Football ground. If i remember rightly a guy called Andy Butt was S-West regional champ that year.

[Welshy40]

Me, in the 80's i used to go with my family to a vintage car show at Tredegar House in Newport and there was an rc club racing and was rather intreagued so aproached the person in charge Sandra Harris (Craigs mum) and she advised me what i needed and hoped to see me soon. So i swopped my incredibly rare scateboard wheels for a boomerang with all the gear and went back to the park a year later in 88 and started racing, Sandra thought it was funny one year later but with her help, and Craigs i got better and better and cant really thank them enough for getting me into it and helping me get my first sponsered drive etc etc. Hard to believe it but four years later i almost won the Welsh championships, lost it by one point but shows with a good club and support anythings possible.

[rondoolaa]

My rc history started at secondary school in 1981, I used to watch a guy every weekend race his rc car in a field near my house and it made me want one of my own, to get the funds for my own rc car I used to wheel and deal in watches and game and watch games with my school friends, eventually I built up a nice collection of game and watch games and I got sidetracked and i swapped them for a Diana sp50 air gun, I accidentally shot a friend during a game of cowboys and he wasn't too happy with me to say the least so I decided to get rid of it and swapped my Diana for a dune buggy or frog, can remember which but they were my first 2 cars, I then moved from Manchester to devon and got to be friends with someone that raced rc cars so I went along to the club and was hooked, my next car was a kyosho lazer zx, then a zxr and although I gave up for 15 years as a family and responsibilities came along, I had a son and when he became an age where I could get him a car and he would understand its workings I did so and got myself another at the same time, I now have about 15 cars and enjoy it more than ever, we have great clubs down here in devon and racing is my highlight of the week :-)

[vrooom]

Mine was started by beattlies?? shop in bright, i used to stare a tamiya yellow lunchbox all time. my dad bought me few of tamiya mini 4wd. where i learnt about basic electronic... my first rc car when i was 18 with christmas money i got, was HPI savage SS, took me 2 weeks to build it. now im 33 and i still got hpi savage... and few other cars. I first raced at milton keynes club 2 years ago with tamiya m05 i had for while. i got hooked, then i venture into off road club when it first opened.

Recently i bought a tamiya lunchbox and it lived to my expection, after i modded it (double wishbone conversion, 3rd spring, center servo). it handled brillantly but bit slow compared to my buggy!! I took it around the off road track once..

[Dave Treacy]

Growing up in South Africa back in the early 70's I'd done some control line flying with simple planes with a baby-bee (Cox 0.49cc engine) and after a while got into gliders (mainly because they were cheaper than planes) and spent a year or so "soaring" but one day in a thunderstorm I had to ditch a glider I'd spent perhaps 60 hours building... at that point I deceided to find something less expensive on the heart.. :)

I tried sailboats, but they were too slow, and around '77 or '78 Associated produced one of their early versions, a 1/12th RWD pan car which we raced on car parks everywhere. It it's day it was only ever beaten by the Graupner FWD.

In those days, chargers were resistance wires and you timed the charge from your motor car battery with an egg timer...the "esc" was a ceramic resister wire...and pinions didn't have grub screws... you hammered them on and used a gear puller to remove...happy days :) Tyres were hard or harder and lasted months, even on tarmac...

[styleone]

These posts are amazing. I am gobsmacked by the brilliant stories and this thread has been really exciting to see develop today!

Keep sharing your tales guys, they are so positive and inspiring for new and old forum users alike. Thanks for all the efforts so far chaps, well done :)

[Howler]

I always had toy grade RC's as far back as i remember. My dad was a tinkerer and always tried to make them faster somehow, usually with the result of them going really fast for a couple of minutes and then going up in smoke.

Eventually he relented and bought me a Tamiya Falcon in '86. I ran the falcon so much it muyst've been completely knackered. A few friends had Grasshoppers and the more advanced Falcon made mincemeat of them.

In either 89 or 90 he must have realised the Falcon was on it's way out and floated the idea of getting me a new RC car for Christmas. He took me to the local model shop (long dead Bury Model Shop) and i saw a Bullhead "i want that one, the big one" obviously... anyway, the guy who ran the model shop and my dad talked me round into buying something called an "RC10 Team" as the shop originally ran what has now become Bury Metro Buggy Club (then Bury Model Shop Buggy Club), and i could go and race it.

So there i was, 89/90 racing my RC10 Team with an LRP Blue brushed motor in a small community centre on rolled out carpet with drainpipe dividers, no jumps, just flat all the way around. That thing felt so fast back then, i was hooked.

I've had breaks from the hobby over the years, but i always come back to it. I've never been very good at it though :p

[Marcus.]

I first started racing when my dad bought a team associated b3 because he loves building them, when he built it we gave the shell the dodgiest paint job you have ever seen, just white with orange stickers, looked proppa crap, but I loved it, I would take it out in the street with me 21t motor thinking I was the bomb, show off when girls walked past by flyin it past there feet, fort I was some sort of stud muffin. Used to stay out all day, smash into the kerb, brake legs, chassis, you name it, I broke it. Anyways, when we went down to formby models to get the parts that I broke, the guy told us about Southport radio car club, ever since I went to my first meeting, I have wanted to be Neil cragg, more like Neil crapp but yano, anyways right hooked now, oople addict aswell

[jo90]

When I was a very young kid my dad had a couple of RC cars. One of the metal flat chassis Tamiya Porsche's and a Tamiya Holiday buggy. I saw them and was hooked by how fun they where. I bought some magazines on RC racing and began asking for my own cars. One year though I got my first proper RC car - A Tamiya Grasshopper 2 'Super G' with the yellow illuminous wheels. Built it and used to take it over the local school play ground to run it.

Move on a few years and I wanted to see about racing. I contacted the BRCA and found the local rep who pointed me towards 'Harwood Hall Buggy Club'. I ended up going there for years, helping to run the club nights. Started with a second hand Pro-Cat, moving on to a Kyosho Lazer ZXR. Ended up with the ZXR totally modified with aftermarket parts, a second one built for Touring (small shocks etc), a Cougar 2000 with all the works stuff, Another converted into a truck, A Tamiya F1, an RC10, RC12LW and an RC12L, plus finally a Lazerlite Pro10 converted to do Oval Racing.

I left racing at 18, sold the lot off. At about 24 I decided to get back into it all. Came back running a Mission going on to an Mi2EC, then an Mi4LP to my now HP TCX. I also recently bought a DEX210 and have found the love for off-road once more. I have had a brief spell running an RC12L4, but sold it due to lack of interest in he southeast.

Looking forward to next year a DEX410 is firmly on my cards as might well be a 12th again too.