In the spirit of Crawl, Walk, Run, after racing twice in the USGT class and doing nothing much but crashing and annoying lapping traffic, I decided it was time to slow down. I repurposed my HPI RS4 for US Vintage Trans-Am, commonly known as VTA.

Go Green with Envy

I wanted to drive a great looking muscle car, something I could see myself driving in real life. One image that was stuck in my mind was this Challenger: 1970-ta-challenger Continue reading

In the fall of 2014 I had the opportunity to assist city officials with bicycle and pedestrian counts. I honestly don’t know where the statistics I recorded go, or if they’re actually used. But some observations I made unrelated to the bike/ped count were intriguing…

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This is a rule we use in life. You have to learn to crawl (or scoot), then walk, then run. I’ve treated my (re)entry into R/C racing the same way.

Alternate Crawl – Tamiya Mini

There is an alternative way to enter on-road R/C racing than Vintage Trans-Am (which I’ll talk about below) which is slower, but still a ton of fun. It is the Tamiya Mini class. Tamiya Mini Cooper Continue reading

I have a single speed bike. I chose a single speed for it’s simplicity. I just get on it and pedal. It has suited me well for about 6 years. The only thing that has changed is kids.

These darn kids, they start at 6 or 7 pounds and eat and grow, and grow and eat and never seem to stop! I used to carry Jules on the back of my bike in a babyseat that attaches to the rear rack. Then Marlo came along and I had the opportunity to buy a Chariot trailer from my friend whose two kids were now riding on their own.

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Looking for an electronic speed controller (ESC) for your R/C car than can handle both 1-cell (1S) and 2-cell (2S) lithium polymer (lipo) batteries has proven to be a difficult landscape to navigate. Some of this has to do with what the market will bear. Typically if you’re running a 1/12 scale car, you’re only running 1S batteries. If you’re running a 1/10 scale car, it’s 2S.

The 1S need for me comes from the fact that here in Minnesota, the local track runs a variant of Vintage Trans-Am (VTA) that uses a 17.5 turn motor and single cell battery. It was a carry-over from 1/12 scale cars that ran on 4-cell NiCad or NiMH batteries. The idea was to keep the VTA cars relatively slow, and to keep the cost down.

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