Nitro RC Cars
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. 
Sounds cool
At Paddy’s Markets, they sell little RC helicopters. I’m not sure how much they cost, but I reckon they’d be fun to fly ’round the office… perhaps I’ll give in to temptation next time I’m wandering through.
My mate in Canberra was telling me about the small RC helicopters, they sound cool! RC helicopters are traditionally the most difficult ‘remote control’ thing to fly / drive, so I guess having a small one is good practice.
Would definitely be fun to try though
i have a 4-tec road car, a nitro rustler buggie and a revo monster truck all made by Traxxas
never got into the flying stuff i have a hard enough time with 2-D without adding the third
road cars are fun and fast but limited to a very smooth surface
buggies are also fun and fast and can take a little more jumping and bumping but tend to get hung up in tall grass and real bumpy stuff
truggies are about the same as buggies but not as fast due to more moving parts but can take a lot more of the rough stuff usually they also have more shock travel so they jump better(well thet land better anyway)
monster trucks are the big dogs, heavy and slower (45 mph average) and can take a lot of jumping and bashing
Losi HPI and Traxxas seem to be the best.
just a warning nitro cars and trucks are a lot of fun but very expensive and a lot of work, they need to be tuned almost every time you run them and they break a lot so you need to be able to fix them.
search nitro rc bashing on youtube and you’ll see what i mean
Good luck