Your RC Year..... In a Word...!

[Saito2]

Completion.

This year I realized I am reaching the end of my collection. I have about 8-10 models to nail down yet, but its close. I finished my early 4wd buggy set from Hot Shot to Super Sabre which makes me happy as well as all the early monster trucks. Not sure where I'll head next...maybe vintage Tamiya on-road.

 

 

[berman]

Overwhelmed.

Between working 60-70 hours and trying to spend time with my two young kids (missus works Sundays).

I don't get any time for this hobby or to spend time on my Chev. I am hoping to have some over the holidays, I pretty much run myself ragged.

Had some brilliant weather for barbies, just no time! 😁

[TurnipJF]

1 hour ago, StrokerBoy said:

Frustrating.

Love F100's, bought a Lowride Pumpkin with a very specific idea of how I wanted it to look, spent considerable time and money trying to achieve it, didn't quite get there.

It may not quite match your vision, but it still looks mighty fine!

[jeekelemental]

Two words: Dead Calm

[nowinaminute]

Educational. 

I had a Radio Shack Jumbo Van when I was a kid, that was the last RC I had until August 2016.

In August I bought a little Maisto Rock Crawler Jnr for £10. Just testing the waters lol. It's actually a really good little truck for what it is, had a lot of fun taking it up trails etc. Still take it out occasionallyto this day!

Once it was established that I still enjoyed it I dived straight into the deep end, not just hobby grade but also converting the toy grades that were around in my childhood to hobby grade parts. By the time 2017 came round I was hopelessly addicted and soaking up useless information like a sponge.

The learning curve has been very steep, I still have a lot to learn but the amount of stuff I can do now that I couldn't before is immense.

Soldering, wiring, bearings, motor specs, linkages, lipos etc etc this was all completely alien and intimidating to me just a short while ago. It's amazing how quickly you can pick things up when you're interested. I've been described as a pantomath which I guess is pretty apt.

I've had a great time! The only downside is that I've terribly neglected my first love photography to the extent of getting rusty. My new years resolution will be to combine the hobbies as best I can!

[TurnipJF]

Sounds like a great idea! We all love a good RC photo!

[ALEXKYRIAK]

What an amazing set of responses, lads. Am loving all the anecdotes that go along with them.

I have experienced almost all of them....! From going from pretty much a total noobo one year ago to actually being able to do things that I'd never have thought within my skillset, more educated (I recently read my first 20 posts here - how little I knew, you guys have been so brilliant in helping out and explaining), more confident, frustrated (on many an occasion), overwhelmed (also on many an occasion, perhaps even bewildered - getting my head round lipo and motor specs), expensive (eye-wateringly so), expansive (too many projects), neglecting my first love hobby (photography), successful (occasionally), fun (lots...!). 

[Baddon]

re-kindled

had a Boomerang as a teen, bought 2nd hand-got bitten then had a Thundershot & Midnight Pumpkin....stopped when I started driving real cars....

raced Mini Z when I was in my 30's and the kids have started to play with them so looked out my old kits. So deceided to do some refurb to them. Went on GumTree and picked up a Brushless Neo Scorcher. Then found here and bought my son a Christmas pressie from a member selling up, then another one for me so we can mess about together.....lol. Then started hunting Gumtree and Ebay. Picked up another Pumpkin as well.

I feel the onset of an expensive addiction coming over me......(all the above in little over a month) OUCH

[max69vk]

Expensive

Got sucked in re-living my younger years  & somehow now have 14 (yes 14) projects on the go. Probably not the best idea with 2 young kids, but part of the fun is seeing what I can get done in between changing nappies! 😁

[moffman]

Deflated!.............

I had a good RC year got some really good bargains the main one was a 99% built avante 2011 (just needed painting) new and unused box included had all the brilliant hop-ups included ball diff yeah racing bits etc etc for the little sum of £200! but on a personal level it has to have been the worst year of my life lost my parents and got a bit deflated when I sold my beautiful ford ranger I always pride myself in being totally honest if I decide to sell a car on eBay which I did on this occasion and as you can see for a 30+ year old car it doesn't look bad at all but the guy who bought it didn't think so (I knew he was trouble when he emailed me with the demands of "I expect it will be packed appropriately") 

[shenlonco]

CRAZY!  

[Mad Ax]

Unexpected.

After 9 months of keeping it NIB, my wife and I unboxed our Human Kit in February this year (with a little bit of help from a surgeon with a scalpel, as some of the packaging was a bit difficult to remove).  Getting to grips with how it operates has taken a lot of effort, it's a time-consuming thing, and it seems to need hop-ups and replacement parts on a weekly basis.

So I'd kind of anticipated 2017 would be a slow year for RCs, what with so little time and money, but actually we managed to budget really well in the first half of the year and that meant I managed to add to my collection instead of reducing it.  A second-hand E-Revo Brushless, a vintage hopped-up Top Force Evo, another used CC01, an NIB Mini Cooper (snapped up as soon as Tamiya lost their licence deal with BMW), and even an NIB Grand Hauler under the midwinter gifting festival tree this year.  I'm sure there were others as well but I forget them.

My plan was to do one event every month all through the year, and mostly I've stuck to that.  Iconic Revival, one round of the Iconic Cup, an open Iconic bash, a local lorry meet, a scale crawler meet, and the DT02 challenge.  Sometimes it feels like it's not enough, but that's the choices we make.

I promised myself I'd be more active on social media, take more photos at events and post them in various places, in fact I did pretty well at this until Photobucket pulled the rug from under me and now I'm struggling to find the time or motivation to sort out the mess they've made.  On the other hand, I have been re-cataloging all my RC photos at home and am working on an RC car database as a training project at work, which should make it much easier to find stuff once it's all finished and up-to-date.

Biggest loss this year has been in space - we had always planned to have a mancave in the house even after baby came along, but plans changed and I'm in the process of building a much smaller space in the garage.  I'd planned to have one wall of that space dedicated to RC display shelves, but even that plan got changed when the wife decided she could move some of her stuff in there.  So now I'll have a few small shelves above my screens and that's it - but we'll make it work.  I might have to decide between having a stack of nice shelves with a 1:10 scale garage diorama, or my vintage Korg MonoPoly keyboard mounted for playing, but if I'm careful with my design I should be able to swap between the two without too much hassle.

Roll on 2018!

[Grastens]

... Bad

Sold off a good portion of my collection, and remained inactive for about 11 of the 12 months. I simply did not have the means to continue.

I am thankful that my regular year was fine, though - despite losing my job rather quickly.

2018 will be different, though! I am quite determined to get back into it - and RC, too - with the re-release Lancia 037, and hope to resurrect my original Rally on the side.

[ThunderDragonCy]

Returned

Was pretty much brand new at this a year ago. Bought my first new car in 30 years which evolved into my Grasshopper (DT0)3. Enjoyed researching the old chassis that I missed in the 90s, bought (and then sold) the Lunchbox I had always wanted and tried (and didn't like) touring cars. I am a buggy man. Have loved being able to design parts and get them made at Shapeways. Massive props to pintopower for inspiring me there. Joined this place, which is a nice place to hang out. Cheers fellas!

[yogi-bear]

good

it took me ages to work out a single word to describe my year, but overall I had a pretty good year. While there are many things I didn't achieve ( I was hoping to get a lot further with my Ford and Cortina builds and start a proper build thread, I was hoping to have a better vac former by now and have the Volvo finished, and I wanted to build more, (I have lots of cars that just need assembling and painting), I still managed to work on things, I still managed to improve the vac former, I managed to get a decent lathe and probably most important to me, but not RC directly related, I use to own a printing and sign business, but I had to close it a couple of years ago with a fairly substantial debt, well that is all finally over. So next year I am hoping I can focus more on making and building. 

[JennyMo]

"Crawling"

Other than revamping my showroom at the beginning of the year, most of my RC time has been taken up building a couple of 'almost' scale crawlers - Lisa's Land Rover D90 Truck-cab, and my ongoing Truggy project: Desmond the 2.2.

photo. Lisa's D90 in action...

 

photo. My Toyota in-active...

 

Meanwhile with regard to Tamiya, progress on the SRB Cage Racer has continued to crawl along... although it is finally on four wheels at last!

photo. The Cage Racer is a combo of SRB suspension and a modified Twin Hammers cage, on a custom aluminium chassis.

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Jenny xx

[Percymon]

14 hours ago, Grastens said:

... Bad

Sold off a good portion of my collection, and remained inactive for about 11 of the 12 months. I simply did not have the means to continue.

I am thankful that my regular year was fine, though - despite losing my job rather quickly.

2018 will be different, though! I am quite determined to get back into it - and RC, too - with the re-release Lancia 037, and hope to resurrect my original Rally on the side.

 

I hope 2018 is kinder for you Grastens - be positive for the new year

[Percymon]

My year ... Quiet

 

not been much of a RC year,  no time and little interest if being brutally honest.   Reduced my collection by 25% and now looking at it thinking i could lose another 25% and still have too many - let's see if 2018 brings different feelings !

[Wooders28]

8 hours ago, Percymon said:

My year ... Quiet

 

not been much of a RC year,  no time and little interest if being brutally honest.   Reduced my collection by 25% and now looking at it thinking i could lose another 25% and still have too many - let's see if 2018 brings different feelings !

Sometimes you need to step away, shut the garage door and step back for a breath.

Interest will come back, just hope you've not sold everything by then!! 

[Juggular]

5 minutes ago, Wooders28 said:

Sometimes you need to step away, shut the garage door and step back for a breath.

Interest will come back, just hope you've not sold everything by then!! 

I second that.  Just don't let it be 10 years like me.  I am glad that I never sold anything.  

[Gruntfuggly]

Lost interest (sorry that's two).

Just been one of those periods where other things have been happening. Apart from taking the Blitzer to France for a couple of weeks for some beach running, I've done very little...

It'll come back though - it always does 

[taffer]

delays!

more than ever it feels like a new item is released and the wait to get it is seemingly delayed.....

konghead took months to get

black matte landfreeder has just arrived, over a month delayed

and now the dancing rider delayed until after the nee year!

(this is UK retail etc)

[Juls1]

Oops..

I started out going to fix my old ruined FF01 hks Opel vectra I had as a teenager 20 years ago into a runner with a basic restoration...

but it didn’t work out that way. After that I bought about 14 kits...

[novicelad]

Got back into the hobby found a real enjoyment in fixing and building.

My 7 year old son also followed suit!

[Klausen]

Predictable 😀

Bought a lot of cars, builded some and didn’t drive enough.