I’ve put my photos from the Chesterfield national up in the gallery here.

Here’s the video from the stock A final on Saturday, complete with the interesting last couple of laps!

You can watch it directly in YouTube and in HD at http://www.youtube.com/carsrcracing#p/a/u/0/lE9ebZam0rw.

I’ve put some photos of my visit to the 12th Euros at Hinckley up in the gallery. You can find them here.

There will be no club racing on Saturday 6th March as our carpet is being used for the 12th scale European championships in Hinckley.

There will be no club racing on Saturday 20th March as we are holding the final round of the 12th scale national championships that weekend.

There will be club racing on Saturday 13th March, and Saturday 27th March onwards.

Full results, a few photos from the event and A Final videos are now available here.

In the last article I showed the RS and HotWire and the installation of the RS in a car. Now it’s time to find out how to program the RS using the HotWire PC software.

Quite a few things have changed since I wrote the last article. I’m running a different 12th scale car using 1S LiPo and a booster (the RC Dynamics one), and am now using a Tekin Redline 10.5 motor. None of these affect the actual operation of the HotWire software, but they definitely alter the setups! Tekin themselves have also released HotWire version 4, otherwise known as Vegas 2. This includes firmware version 203 for the RS, which has new features and definite benefits for stock motors, in other words making them faster! The article is based on these versions.

I am going to concentrate on the use of the RS in stock 12th scale as that is what I usually run, though most of the article will also be useful to other classes and motors.

Do not plug the HotWire interface into the PC yet, wait until you have installed the software. The drivers are installed along with the software and these have to be present before connection the HotWire.

Read the rest of this entry »

We will be running a 12th scale meeting, the CARS Carpet Challenge on Sunday 28th February. This will be run on the same carpet as will be used at the Euros. Full details and online entry are here.

Apologies but we’re having to cancel the meeting on 9th January (tomorrow) due to the weather conditions.

Hopefully we’ll be back up and running next Saturday.

I’ve been trying 1S LiPo out at club meetings recently, and I was loaned a TQ voltage booster to try out. Initially this seemed OK, but I then realised that my steering servo had started hunting around centre and my transponder also started missing laps. After much swapping of components I decided that the TQ booster was the most likely culprit. From more investigation I have found that the JR servo I have been using draws more current than most others so this may be the reason the TQ can’t handle it.

Because of this I decided to try out the RC Dynamics voltage booster designed and built by Mark Jordan. After an email or two and a quick Paypal visit I had one in my hands, which was very good considering the Christmas post.

You don’t get much in the packet, not that you need any more! The booster is supplied along with an RC Dynamics sticker and that’s it. No instructions, though it is one of those things where if you need instructions you probably shouldn’t be buying it!

Onto the booster itself. There is a built in switch, which is a great idea and makes for a much tidier installation.

A piece of polycarbonate is also attached to the bottom of the booster to create a flat area for the double sided tape to adhere to, making it easy to fit onto the car.

The wires used are very stiff, which I thought may be a problem until I installed the booster. It is actually very easy to bend the wires into the required shape and position and they stay there! They are very good quality too.

There is no 1S LiPo cutoff device in this booster. This should never be a problem for me though as I’ve never come anywhere near dumping with a 10.5 motor, so it should be fine for 13.5 and 17.5 drivers too. If I want a 1S cutoff my Tekin ESC will do it for me anyway. It also means that it is specialising in the one job of boosting the voltage so in theory there can be fewer compromises in its design.

Onto installation now. All that is required is to double sided tape the booster to the chassis in a position where it is possible to reach the switch. Then the power wires need soldering to the battery connections on the ESC. Make sure the wire marked with red heatshrink is soldered to the positive connection, and the other on the negative connection. Then plug it into your receiver and that’s it! Here it is installed in the car.

A green LED should light up when booster is turned on. The first thing I noticed was that my servo was no longer hunting around centre, which was a very good sign. Out onto the track then, and no more missed laps on the transponder. Servo speed was good and no interference either. It just worked, which is exactly what it should do.

As a result I can thoroughly recommend one of these to anyone and Mark is working on making them more generally available. More news on this soon.

Technical Specifications

Contact Mark Jordan at mark@rcdynamics.co.uk for more information or look at the RC Dynamics web site at www.rcdynamics.co.uk.

We will be having a break of a couple of weeks over the Christmas holidays, so the will be no racing on the 26th December or 2nd January.

Our first meeting back will be on 9th January. We should have all of the carpet to be used for the 12th Euros by then so if you want to practice on it come and race!