June 9th, 2007

I’ve always had a small interest in radio controlled cars. Last one I had was a Tandy one that got broken one day and we could never find parts to fix it. I started reading up on them again recently and was quite amazed at how advanced they are now. You can get nitro fuel based cars, with small little fuel motors in them, 2wd or 4wd, disc brakes and more.
I went and checked out a local hobby shop here in Rocky ([Ultra Hobbies](http://ultrahobbies.com.au/store/)), and found that they actually sell them with quite a good range of ready to run (RTR) cars and numerous spare parts.

I asked the guy behind the counter when the local RC club meets and he gave me the dates for the next meeting. I remember going to watch both the off-road and on-road cars before but somewhere along the line I forgot about it. Anyway, I might go check it out the next time they meet.

There seems to be 3 main classes of cars. On-Road, which is pretty self explanatory, Off-Road “buggies” and Off-Road “Truggies”. The main difference between “buggies” and “truggies” seems to be the look of the car. “Buggies” tend to have smaller wheels at the front, and are lower to the ground. “Truggies” seem to be a mutation of the old style “Monster Trucks” + “Buggy”, being lower to the ground then a monster truck but higher then a buggy.

The “truggy” seems to be a lot more fun as it can pretty much go anywhere due to the extra height and it also has the speed of a traditional “buggy”.

Most of the guys run [Jammin' X1CRT trucks](http://www.jamminproducts.com/x1crt.htm) and I’ve done a bit of reading about them. A base ready to run system costs around $850 AUD, which seems to include everything you need to get up and racing. This model car seems to have a pretty big following so there are a wide selection of spare parts and also upgrade pieces.

A quick youtube search brings up some good [results](http://youtube.com/results?search_query=x1crt&search=Search) and shows how well the little cars run on all sorts of surfaces.

I’m not sure yet if I’ll end up getting one or not. I’ll probably go to a few race meetings and see if my interest remains. I think it might be something fun to do that is out of the house and away from the computer.