Starting an M-class kids R/C club

[Effigy3]

Hey gang, I've been away for a bit because we moved from Texas to Maine!  I'm going to try and start up an M-class fun racing club at the two elementary schools where I teach computers.  I'm currently folding 430 tri-fold fliers to send home with the students.  It's going to be organized into parent/child teams.  We'll do a build day in December and start races (no timing loop) over the winter holiday break.  We'll continue to hold monthly races, one at each school.  I hope to get some remanent industrial type carpeting donated by a local carpet store so we can layout a track surface in the gyms.  I plan to tape out the track on the carpet. The parents will do double duty as turn marshals and lap counters based on the honor system.  The most laps counted over 2 or 3 races (time allowing) will take home 1st, 2nd, 3rd places.  This method will likely result in multiple children earning places but I'm thinking that will keep it more fun and less competitive.

I have a few months to put this together so if anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears!

[Kingfisher]

1 hour ago, Effigy3 said:

M-class fun racing club at the two elementary schools where I teach computers

 

I don't have any suggestions to help the topic of the thread, but that sentence is pretty amazing considering that when I was in elementary school, I barely knew what an RC car was and computers were something you saw in a science fiction movie. We didn't learn about computers until 6th or 7th grade, and that was a basic intro to how to use the keyboard on a now vintage IBM computer. 

 

Congrats on the move. That's quite the distance. Now you can forget about the triple digit Texas heat and learn how to drive in snow. How are you liking Maine so far?

[Effigy3]

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked that the school district is giving me so much support for this club.

My wife and I both grew up and lived most of our lives in Vermont, so Maine isn't really that much different.  Texas was a bit of a stretch for us!  It feels good to be "back home" or at least home adjacent.    I have to admit that do miss HEB!

[Mad Ax]

Good luck on getting the club together, sounds like an awesome project 

Presumably you've already covered the bases for insurance etc?

Here in the UK we have the BRCA which covers all manner of insurance and regulations.  I don't know if you have something similar stateside - they would be my first port of call as they'll have all sorts of info on the sorts of things you'll need to have in place.  I appreciate you don't want to make it prohibitively expensive (it costs around £15 per year to join the BRCA as a racer and you need membership to compete in any affiliated club).

I hope the honour system works out well.  My experience of Race Dad Syndrome at the clubs I've raced at suggests that an impartial electronic system is essential, but I guess time will tell.  FWIW my club once ran a manual timing system when our computer failed: they arranged a very slow technical section past the start-finish line and they had a team of people writing down the times as the cars passed.  They put out a warning to everyone to slow down before going through the tight section otherwise their car might get missed.

Saying that, we never had transponders in the early 90s when I raced motocross bikes.  Back then they had a scoring booth near the start/finish line and a team of people who wrote down the elapsed time against the bike's number every time it went past.  Laps were a bit longer there, though.

I can't recall what your racing experience is - M-chassis can be tricky beasts to get a good setup on.  Will you run kit tyres?  Lack of grip might make for tricky racing.  Spinning around on every corner is only fun for so long and then it just gets frustrating.  Getting everyone on a good, neutral, fixed setup would be a great idea, at least to start with, unless you want to teach them the tuning aspect of making small incremental changes before every round to see what works best.

All the best and let us know how it goes

[studioRS]

23 hours ago, Effigy3 said:

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked that the school district is giving me so much support for this club.

My wife and I both grew up and lived most of our lives in Vermont, so Maine isn't really that much different.  Texas was a bit of a stretch for us!  It feels good to be "back home" or at least home adjacent.    I have to admit that do miss HEB!

@Effigy3 I'll be watching your progress. After returning from racing at the Tamiya USA track finals, thinking of replicating the Tamiya USA track here locally in Vermont on our local park tarmac area for summer racing, possibly use for ice racing in the winter? Need to figure out an indoor track location though. I have drafted the Tamiya USA track if you're interested to scale it down to fit indoors. The M-Chassis class is super cool, good luck!

Thread on my Tamiya USA Finals race report.

Cheers, Thompson

 

[Effigy3]

On 9/12/2018 at 7:32 AM, Mad Ax said:

Good luck on getting the club together, sounds like an awesome project 

Presumably you've already covered the bases for insurance etc?

Here in the UK we have the BRCA which covers all manner of insurance and regulations.  I don't know if you have something similar stateside - they would be my first port of call as they'll have all sorts of info on the sorts of things you'll need to have in place.  I appreciate you don't want to make it prohibitively expensive (it costs around £15 per year to join the BRCA as a racer and you need membership to compete in any affiliated club).

I hope the honour system works out well.  My experience of Race Dad Syndrome at the clubs I've raced at suggests that an impartial electronic system is essential, but I guess time will tell.  FWIW my club once ran a manual timing system when our computer failed: they arranged a very slow technical section past the start-finish line and they had a team of people writing down the times as the cars passed.  They put out a warning to everyone to slow down before going through the tight section otherwise their car might get missed.

Saying that, we never had transponders in the early 90s when I raced motocross bikes.  Back then they had a scoring booth near the start/finish line and a team of people who wrote down the elapsed time against the bike's number every time it went past.  Laps were a bit longer there, though.

I can't recall what your racing experience is - M-chassis can be tricky beasts to get a good setup on.  Will you run kit tyres?  Lack of grip might make for tricky racing.  Spinning around on every corner is only fun for so long and then it just gets frustrating.  Getting everyone on a good, neutral, fixed setup would be a great idea, at least to start with, unless you want to teach them the tuning aspect of making small incremental changes before every round to see what works best.

All the best and let us know how it goes

Thanks Axe!

Since this is going to be an official school club, we should be covered by the school's insurance.  But I do appreciate the heads up.  I'll double check with the principals to make sure I'm right on this one.

I've been off-road racing for a few years now but never ran them.  I chose M-class because I thought it would be the easiest to get into with the least amount of completions.  I started thinking along the lines of TT-02 TC but I was afraid the 4WD chassis would be more complex than the 2WD M05 chassis. While getting an RTR something or other maybe ultimately cheaper, I *really* wanted to bring in the build aspect of the hobby.  Ownership of a thing is so much greater when you've built that thing.  Also, with a kit we get the parent/child bonding thing that I think is so valuable.

I plan to run them essentially full box stock spec.  The only mod I think I am going to allow are ball bearing kits.  Again, this is to keep things as simple as possible.

[TurnipJF]

2 hours ago, Effigy3 said:

I started thinking along the lines of TT-02 TC but I was afraid the 4WD chassis would be more complex than the 2WD M05 chassis.

If simplicity is the aim, you might actually want to go for the TT-02 rather than the M-05.

Although FWD, the M-05 is quite a complex build, with a relatively high parts count, many sizes and types of screws, multiple wheelbase options and different ways of configuring the rear end to achieve them, etc, and is quite tricky to work on due to everything being packed into such a small footprint.

The TT platform however is far simpler, with a lower parts count, fewer opportunities to go wrong with setup, easier access to the drivetrain, fewer types of screws, etc. It is also usually cheaper, takes a wider variety of bodyshells and is easier to drive consistently. 

[Mad Ax]

@TurnipJF may actually have a good point.  My first instinct was to disagree - my experience of TC racing is from back when the TT01 was an entry-level car and pretty soon you threw it away and bought a proper race car because the Losis and the Schumachers were far and away the better package.  But actually my local club has started running a lorry class for the TT02E MAN trucks (and probably the secret new rig that Tamiya is proposing).  The rules are bone-stock, bearings only.  Some people have argued that the racing would be better with oil shocks as opposed to stock TT02 pogo sticks, but people seem to do well enough without them when they're not trying to compete with carbon-and-alloy fully-adjustable race cars.  They run well enough on the kit tyres too, which M-chassis struggles with, being inherently less stable.

The rules for our local M-chassis class is similar - minimal hop-ups allowed, limited to bearings, TRF shocks and the Sweep control tyre, but people spend way longer tuning their M-chassis cars than they do their TT02 trucks.

Food for thought

[Effigy3]

9 hours ago, Mad Ax said:

@TurnipJF may actually have a good point.  My first instinct was to disagree - my experience of TC racing is from back when the TT01 was an entry-level car and pretty soon you threw it away and bought a proper race car because the Losis and the Schumachers were far and away the better package.  But actually my local club has started running a lorry class for the TT02E MAN trucks (and probably the secret new rig that Tamiya is proposing).  The rules are bone-stock, bearings only.  Some people have argued that the racing would be better with oil shocks as opposed to stock TT02 pogo sticks, but people seem to do well enough without them when they're not trying to compete with carbon-and-alloy fully-adjustable race cars.  They run well enough on the kit tyres too, which M-chassis struggles with, being inherently less stable.

The rules for our local M-chassis class is similar - minimal hop-ups allowed, limited to bearings, TRF shocks and the Sweep control tyre, but people spend way longer tuning their M-chassis cars than they do their TT02 trucks.

Food for thought

Since I haven't built my M-05 yet I didn't realize it was a more complex build than a TT-02.  Nothing has been ordered yet so it's certainly easy enough to change chassis.  I really like the idea of bone stock except for bearings as an option.  Thanks fellas.  If anyone else has thoughts please chime in.  I'll keep this thread updated as things progress toward the weekend build mid-Dec.

[studioRS]

@Effigy3  My very first experience building a Tamiya kit was in 1969, my dad and I built the 1/12 scale static Porsche 910 kit. This was the game changer for me. While this was a mostly dad build, I was simply amazed at it. The details that capture the essence of the real race cars always makes me want to build a Tamiya RC kit even today, some 45+ years later.

Tamiya recently launched a beginners kit, 57986 First Try R/C Kit (semi-assembled), based on the TT02 chassis. I've reviewed the instructions and it looks like it might be something to consider, easy to assemble for the kids. However, it doesn't include a body or stickers — the core essense of a replica real race car scale look. The chassis appears to be 257mm wheelbase, so lots of options to introduce the kids to rest of world (RoW) racing and racing history with different graphics and automotive marques and style of bodies. But, then you'd have to buy different body kits to choose from.

I agree, the TT02 kits build easy and are basic, run great and have a load of options for later tuning. They are race tested tough too.

Here's the manual for review below. (source http://www.tamiya.com/japan/customer/downloads/rc/index.html)
http://d7z22c0gz59ng.cloudfront.net/cms/japan/download/rcmanual/57986.pdf

I know at least for me, even at the level of which I detail, having to paint and detail a lexan body is a real grind. I spend most of my time making it "look scale". Might be different for others, but for me I try my darn best to not make a mistake, which unfortunately, is easy to do. With proper parental guidance, tools, breathing masks, the paining and stickers might not be such an issue. Choosing a kit that comes with a body and stickers/decals will be easier for you in the end and give the kids more options.

To keep it all fair and simple, the current offering of TT02 chassis kits offer a great selection of different racing liveries and marques —add a bearing upgrade only would be a starting point. Making sure the bodies are still available to replace is another thing to consider in case someone wrecks their body up and wants to redo it. Make sure they run the race car liveries, not street cars.

Cheers, Thompson
 

 

[Effigy3]

This was actually the first kit I considered for all the reasons you (and others) stated.  The thing is I am trying to keep this as close to $200 "all in" as possible.  Even the lowest cost TT-02 simply breaks the bank.  With the M-05 I was able to cobble together a combo at Tower Hobbies for $220 "all in" cost. 

By "all in" I mean:

• Car kit
• Radio and receiver
• Servo
• Battery and fast charger
• 1 can of paint

[TurnipJF]

That is very interesting. Around here, the TT is invariably the cheapest Tamiya onroad option, with M chassis cars usually costing at least £20 to £30 more than a base model TT. Perhaps another supplier might be better than Tower?

[studioRS]

11 hours ago, Effigy3 said:

This was actually the first kit I considered for all the reasons you (and others) stated.  The thing is I am trying to keep this as close to $200 "all in" as possible.  Even the lowest cost TT-02 simply breaks the bank.  With the M-05 I was able to cobble together a combo at Tower Hobbies for $220 "all in" cost. 

By "all in" I mean:

• Car kit
• Radio and receiver
• Servo
• Battery and fast charger
• 1 can of paint

@Effigy3  I'm wondering, because you are an educational school, if you should reach out directly to Tamiya USA and see if they can offer an educational discount, if anything. Certainly would be nice and what a concept to start them young.

You can use this as an example. 

https://tamiyablog.com/2018/09/toyota-rc-car-club-running-r-c-school-events-using-tamiya-kits/

I'll PM you the marketing manager's email.

[Effigy3]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that...
And now your message (which I read first) makes more sense! 

 

[Jonathon Gillham]

We have both the TT and M chassis class at the club I run, and one thing I've noticed with a standard TT02 on pogo sticks is that they bounce around and the driver either comes back next month with oil shocks, or never comes back as they don't have fun.  Is it possible to get the TT02 with bearings and oil shocks?  Kids may not care, especially since they are all in the same boat and its their first RC, or they may find it frustrating not being able to get around the track easily.

Great initiative though, that would have been amazing if someone had organised this when I was at school!