1/10 Off Road Club in Somerset.
 

Good evening ooplers!

I am putting in an application to the local council for a new outdoor 1/10 off road astro Rc track in Crewkerne, Somerset. I have a meeting with the amenities committee in 2 weeks to discuss a suitable area for the track.

The plan is to open the track for the start of the 2014 outdoor season. So, there is still a long way to go and a lot of work to be done before this can become a reality.

I would like to gage the interest in the local area (yeovil,taunton,chard,ilminster,crewkerne or areas near and surrounding crewkerne) so that I can give some initial feed back to the council in a couple of weeks.

Anyone looking for a club to race at in the area, please get in touch! Also.... Anyone that would like to volunteer to help with the running and maintenance of the track, it would be good to hear from you too. If I can present a strong enough case and show enough interest from local people, that are;
A, willing to race, and
B, willing to help run the club
There is a good chance that CRCC can become more than just a name on a website!

I know there are a few clubs in the south west that race the 1/10 electric off road classes, so any club owners, committee members that have anything to input, I would like to hear from you as well.

Good luck to you with that I am sure if you do get it up and running
You will get visitors from all over

Thanks mate,
It's looking fairly positive so far. Most of the gear needed to have the first race is sorted or in the process of being sorted :)
To be honest, it'll be nice to know we have the land that we need so that work can start.

We have now secured a patch of land for the club to call home!
We have permission to build the track, race control and rostrum but, need volunteers to help with the ground work!
If anyone in the area would like to get involved, please get in touch!
There is also a facebook page that will have a lot of information on it over the coming weeks "Crewkerne Radio Car Club" so please have a look there for dates of "work parties" etc.....

Hi Mat, have a read of this, it may give you some pointers :-
http://www.brca.org/sites/www.brca.o...lub_Manual.pdf

That's great, thank you! We have pretty much everything in place and ready to go..... The biggest problem was finding somewhere that would allow us to build a track and use the land as a permanent place to keep the track. It's taken the best part of a year to track down land owners, search the land registry for derilict/waste land that would be in a suitable place and a willing landlord. We have been working on getting all the equipment, track markers, timing system, astro turf...etc,etc... for some time, so we have had plenty of time to get things for free or for next to nothing. It's certainly not something we are just jumping in to on a whim.
The council, although very supportive of the club, were not so supportive of giving us any space to hold club events. Fortunately and at a point when we thought it was almost a lost cause, one of the local land owners got in contact and has offered us a permanent place for the club and track.
We have been given 12 months free rent and 2 years of guaranteed placement with the option to extend the contract if the club is doing well enough to support it after the three years is at an end.
The land is with out a doubt, waste land. It is covered in brambles and about 4 years worth of weeds and small trees have taken hold of it.
there is a massive (I'm not kidding...over 2000 tons) pile of topsoil, removed from a field next to our plot, that sits right in the middle...... the catch is....we have to level it.
We have the pile being moved by a local company that are coming to collect it after the weeds and trees have been cut down. They want it to fill a quarry so we were happy for them to take all they can. Plus it has saved us thousands in waste removal costs.
We have a few of us going to the site on Saturday (tomorrow) to clear the weeds and burn the brambles......... long day ahead :/
Once we have a level surface (or fairly close to level) we can start thinking about the next stage of the build and moving things to a point of holding our first race!
We know it's a lot of work, but the whole team is putting a lot of effort in to make the most of the opportunity that we have got.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&...00327&t=h&z=19

That link should take you directly to our plot. It's the green bit, in between the two factory's. We have use of the car park that is joining the site on the right (as you look from the top) on the weekends and evenings.

We do have the option to pull out, if it looks like it won't take off. I am hoping that it won't come to that. I have yet to speak to any of the other local (ish) clubs, but it would be good to hear from them or to speak at some point in the near future.

Any help, advice or general thoughts would be great! :thumbsup: I'm confident that we have a strong racing community in the South West, We just want to give them somewhere to call home :thumbsup:

Looks like we should have a 10 ton slew on site for Monday to start reshaping the mound of dirt! Fencing up by the end of the week and Rob from BBK coming after his holiday to get the timing system sorted!
There has been a huge amount of work done already, with the clearance of all the brambles.... some are scarily big beasts! but we are almost clear!!!!
Fingers crossed and all going to plan we should have a competitive track to race on in the next couple of months! :)

Any update?

It's been tough and to be honest, slow going.... We have got a mountain to climb to get the track running, but may have a temporary area available to get things rolling.....
We would love to start using the land we have, now it's clear, but there is no way it would work at the moment.
We aim to have the track ready asap, but we have to rely on help from anywhere we can get it.... not always the most reliable, but always very appreciated when people do turn up :)
Any significant updates will be posted, but it's just a waiting game at the moment..... A positive waiting game though :thumbsup:

Having gone through the process building WORM in Somerset already, I can fully appreciate your pain with getting things moving.

We started building WORM in early April 2012, had over 20 work parties, some with only 1 or 2 at but most with between 5 and 8 people attending, and it took us until 30th September 2012 to have the fully astroturf track ready to race on...and work continues even now developing and finishing the site. And we were lucky to have all the infrastructure (hard standing parking/cafe/race control building/toilets) already there with sharing MMMRC's site!

Every work party was as back breaking as anything I've ever attempted before, typically meaning I could hardly walk straight and upright for a few days afterwards! I do sit at a desk all day everyday though, so I'm not exactly in peak physical shape :woot:

If Astroturf is in your plan, then be prepared for a MASSIVE amount of effort. We did it mostly by hand as lifting equipment would have cost money we didn't have, and couldn't have driven across the landscaped area we created without digging it all up as it was so wet all last year.

It literally took a minimum of 7 people to move each roll of astro, 6 people simply couldn't move it...and there were over 20 rolls to move. :woot:

Hang on in there though...don't rush, get it right first time as you won't want to be doing it again once your finished. Carefully design and plan your track area, get the offroad shapes and features right...(test it before your astro is laid if you can!)...and the rewards will be there to see.

We've just hosted our first regional, with over 50 cars racing last Sunday (even with a number of regulars and known SW racers missing) at WORM...so the South West def has growing RC support. Our club days have over 40 people attending once a fortnight now, and it's really great to see RC racing in good shape in the area.

Once you get up and running our regions calenders will be over flowing...Tiverton, WORM, WCRCCC and yourselves all running means we'll all need to look to grow our local support more than ever to ensure to we don't spread the current racers too thinly and reduce numbers at each club. But clubs do grow numbers if promoted well...we've had all number of people come out of the wood work since we started!

Looking forward to seeing some pictures soon though...the site sounds like it has great potential...and the blood sweat and tears will be worth it in the end if you do it right! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Well said Andy! :thumbsup:

I really appreciate all the help we are being given..... None of us expected to get as much interest as we have and there isn't even a track there yet! lol

We would love to work with the other clubs in the area and hopefully get more people coming to each club... rather than thinning existing racers out :thumbsup:

I owe a lot to the guys at SRCC in Southport. They gave me a season of racing that I will never forget, If I can make our club half as good as theirs, I will be happy. I did get stuck in to work parties with them and experienced the astro being laid..... I have felt the pain of a 50m astro roll and I'm not relishing the idea of it again lol That being said, we will have to start the track as clay and move to grass, then astro... It will give us time to get the track right before anything permanent is put down on it...

We have a facebook page that we are updating regularly, but the pics are going to be put up once we can show just how much has actually been done.... at the moment, the pics are not showing much... other than lots of brambles being cut down and a big old mound of earth!

We are positive about what has been done so far... but may have set our sights a little higher than we originally thought was possible.... 1 let down can set you back weeks, we will get there though :thumbsup:

I will post any news as it happens, we are hoping to have a fair bit done, next weekend..... but we are at the mercy of the weather, money and reliability of the guy turning up with a digger lol :confused:

Hi, just a quick update......

We have a 10 ton slew arriving on site tomorrow afternoon for 3 days of earth moving ........ Or, chaos, as its otherwise known!!

All the pics will be posted on the Facebook page as the action happens and soon we will be announcing some dates for 'work parties' and hopefully the arrival of some lovely astro!!! :)

Hi everyone,

I run the CRCC club in Crewkerne. We have had some mega problems with planning permission and issues with land/space for the track. It's basically meant that we have had to start from scratch and are hoping to get something moving over the course of 2014.

The facebook page is still running and has regular updates on it, but if anyone can help out, that lives locally to Crewkerne (TA18) we would appreciate all the help, advice and support we can get.

The council have not been very helpful and despite having a write up in the local papers, we are still struggling to get this off the ground.

We are dedicated to getting the club/track open and running as soon as possible and just ask that anyone who is supporting us doesn't loose faith :)


We have been given a load of Astro, but are finding it virtually impossible to get enough help to move it to a secure location. It is sand and waterlogged so each roll weighs an absolute TON! I almost popped one out when trying to move it! If anyone has any ideas as to how we can shift it, we would welcome any ideas :)

Hi
As Andy mentioned above we needed 7 people at least to move each one
by using a post through the centre then a rope looped at each end you can
drag each roll into place then roll it out like a carpet....good luck :)

We moved the rolls using a jcb, we placed a scaffold pole through the centre of the roll, then used a lifting sling off the rear arm, we had a single pivot point so you could easily rotate the rolls and get them lined up.

There are some photos on our fb page. But we couldn't have resurfaced the track without it.

https://m.facebook.com/OswestryRadio...ryRadioCarClub

Awesome guys! Thank you.

I've liked the Oswestry page on FB..... I'll keep you up to date when we get any movement or progress.

Thank's again! :thumbsup:

FYI

Easiest way to cut astroturf neatly is an angle grinder with a inox slitting disk for cutting steal. Flies through it and leaves a nice neat cut.

Ash

Hey Gupz
You have any update photos?

Kinda wondering if its worth approaching any of the local business's for some sponsorship?
I know there are some timber business and builders merchants that might help out for the rostrum and what about tool hire for a budget hire for a mini digger.

I asked my mate about the going rate for a jcb and driver and he said about £28 per hour
I got 1 simple rule in life and it is...if you dont ask you dont get!

Good luck!

Hi mate,

Yeah, the sponsorship thing sounds like a good plan. I think the timber yard that is in Hinton might be a good start. I'll pop up there this weekend and try my luck :)

The biggest problem is a space to race in.... I'm looking at a piece of land towards Hazelbury Plucknett thats up for sale. It's about £15K for 1.5 Acres and would be perfect, but again...it'll come down to planning applications going through and is it even gets as far as me being able to put in an offer for it.

JCB, Mini diggers,

The original patch of land that the club was given was on the trading estate in Crewkerne. It was about as ideal of a location as I could have wished for... Unfortunately it came with a catch. We had to level the ground and remove 10,000+ tons of soil/rubble and then it would have been free rent for the first year.
I was quoted by a few companies for the work and got to £16,000 for removal and disposal...lots of issues surrounding soil movement and environmental issues.
I was a bit wary of the rental cost after the work had been carried out (if I had , had it done) being £5,400 for 12 months and since looking a bit further into land rental have found that it was about 4x more than the average... so that blew it out of the water.

It wouldn't have been a problem to have rented a mini digger or a JCB to do the work on the last piece of land (on the A356 going out of Crewkerne towards Merriott) but the highways agency have put a stop to us holding any events there because, regardless of road side marshal's directing traffic and any safety signs we could have put up, they consider the road to be too dangerous to have traffic turning in and out of a field....

All in all, it's been tough to find anywhere or anyone that will entertain us having a space and it's now come down to me looking into buying a piece of land.
It's the first and biggest hurdle for the club. I refuse to give up on it. We've got over 100 people on FB that have liked the page and clearly want to race in a local area... we just can't seem to get anyone to let us do it!
I even got to the point of begging my parents to let me use their garden (it's got ample room for a track lay out) sadly, my 77 year old step father isn't overly keen on it happening in his back garden :)
I have also approached the local Lions club and Round table, but again...neither are overly keen to help out......

If anyone has any ideas and would like to get involved in helping to get this off the ground, I would welcome the help. Give me a shout on here or add me as a friend on FB. There are 3 of us on the team at the moment, we could always do with a few more to help :) many hands make light work, and all that!