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what brought you back to the rc hobby.

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I was just wondering what was it that brought you back to the rc hobby after years away.For me it was seeing the cars on ebay and getting the bug again,i bought a re re hotshot.Tamiya doing the re releases is great as it lets you build a kit that you wanted back in the 80s,the price for original kits is crazy.So what brought you members back to the hobby.

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1:1 cars were too expensive to mess about with.....

Back in the early 2000s kits were silly cheap to import from Hong Kong. I can remember seeing a frog or brat re-re for under £40 plus the postage..

 

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14 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

1:1 cars were too expensive to mess about with.....

Back in the early 2000s kits were silly cheap to import from Hong Kong. I can remember seeing a frog or brat re-re for under £40 plus the postage..

 

Under £40 😁

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For me, it was discovering eBay in 2006, and then being amazed to find an XR311 kit, a re-re of the original I had new in 1982. This started a dangerous spending habit! 

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Actually it was RC Crawlers! By about 1994, the RC Cars lost all sense of Scale. 😞 Buggies no longer looked like Dune Buggies - but MOON Buggies!! 😖  And then - Whats that all about then? was with those HIDEOUS "Truggies"!!?? 😧😡

I Raced 1:1 Truggies about 100 years ago! A Truggy was classified as a Truck, with a FULL Rear Cage integrated into the Chassis.  In RC... I saw FUGLY looking BLOB Bodies on Flat Pan Buggy Frames. Barely sorta looked like a Truck, but the Wheels stuck out of the Fenders by about 2 scale FEET! 

In the 70's and 80's, Tamiya did have a couple of whimsical Vehicles... But most of the lot was Scale looking, Scale Proportioned Models. Even the Clodbuster had a Scale Monster Truck look! 

So I took a long hiatus... 

In 2014, I was looking for Videos on my other Hobby, Model Railroading. I stumbled upon some Videos of RC Trucks, down to the N'th Degree, a Scale Model - that MOVED! 😁 I HAD to get back into THAT. 

So I went and bought what I thought was a Scaler like the other Guys... I got a CC-01 Landfreeder!! 😖  Sure, Scale looking and proportioned, but in that crowd, I bought the WRONG Rig!!! 

It was a learning experience. I learned how to deal with very limited Suspension travel. How to improve the SLOPPIEST Steering I'd ever seen! (THAT cost about $180.00 - and it's STILL not tight enough)😠😭  That little Guy grew on me. I still have it! 

The Axial SCX10 and Wraith got me into the party! Lights, Scale Camping equipment, opening Hood - with a model ENGINE covering the electric motor, full interiors WITH at least a Driver Figure in it. NO autonomous Vehicles here! 😁  Even weathered them, to the point of adding some Rust in places!! Scale, is my World! 💯👍👍

Sometimes though, I want to do something besides Rock Crawling... I wanted a Buggy. 

In a few clicks, I found the re-re Holiday Buggy! Certainly not the most Scale looking, but I liked the look, and knew that I could add lights and details! 

I rediscovered TAMIYA!! I got to looking around and saw the M03 Mini Cooper. HAD to have it! I was so excited to see that Tamiya made fantastic looking Vehicles, with REALLY sloppy Suspensions!! 😜  I really didn't care. They looked GOOD, and I had enough experience to try to deal with the slop... 

Got a M04 Beetle and a TT-02 Chassis. Then I just started reading, watching and learning! Learned that Tamiya Cars have an amazing amount of parts interchangeability between models!! 😁  Mixed up some TA-01 front end parts on my CC-01, and made an improvement on the Front End!! DT-03 parts on my Holiday Buggy..... I was having FUN! 

Until the bottom dropped out of us, financially. 💔 I had to sell most of my collection - including Buggies I kept from the 80's... Like my Avante, Bigwig, Terra Scorcher, King Cab and Madcap. 😭😭😭 

I'm just now starting to claw my way back, but with some invaluable help from Friends! 

Sorry if I went WAY past just an answer. It took many years for my story to unfold. 😉

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My dad used to build Tamiya RC cars in a room he built on the roof of our villa back in 1983-4 I think it was, and I used to love going up there with him to watch him build (and then drive) these little creations. If I recall, he had a Wild Willy and a Rough Rider at the time. He later moved on to RC aircraft, and I wasn't so interested in the build process for those, since it involved a lot of sawing/gluing boards of balsa wood lol.

In the early 90s I was deep into my 1/24 scale static Tamiya modelling, and decided to get a Hornet, which I promptly modified to all (heck?) and then promptly broke the chassis of with the whiplash of the motor. I then got a Manta Ray (which became a Top Force Evo clone) and a Mercedes C11 lemans car (which survived a surprising amount of cartwheels). When I went off to college I forgot about the RC hobby.

Fast forward to November 2019 when I was browsing through youtube and saw the Tamiya Legends channel with Glenn speaking about RC cars with such excitement, I went online and bought a Lunchbox. Then a Plasma Edge 2, then a Dark Impact, then a TT02S, then an M07, and an M08, and I've just gotten another kit from eBay a few days ago that I couldn't pass up. Coming soon in the "postman" thread when it arrives in a few weeks!

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1) Buying the kits – Having a child.

2) Building the kits – Covid.

I have throughly enjoyed the learning and the building, and having the time.

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COVID gave me more time to build a kit.

Some time ago I picked up a Traxxas Rally LaTraxx RTR and my son killed the motor using the wrong battery. I had never seen a LaTraxx Rally run so fast then it started to smoke haha. (I sold it for parts on Ebay) We put some hop ups in it. 

Pre-Covid I found a Kyosho Optima Mid at an estate sale and I was slowing rebuilding it. 

Last time I built a Kit it was the Tamiya Lotus Honda 99T I think I was in JR High. During shelter in place I picked up a TT02 Subaru Monte Carlo which led me to finding this forum. 

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3 hours ago, Carmine A said:

Actually it was RC Crawlers! By about 1994, the RC Cars lost all sense of Scale. 😞 Buggies no longer looked like Dune Buggies - but MOON Buggies!! 😖  And then - Whats that all about then? was with those HIDEOUS "Truggies"!!?? 😧😡

I Raced 1:1 Truggies about 100 years ago! A Truggy was classified as a Truck, with a FULL Rear Cage integrated into the Chassis.  In RC... I saw FUGLY looking BLOB Bodies on Flat Pan Buggy Frames. Barely sorta looked like a Truck, but the Wheels stuck out of the Fenders by about 2 scale FEET! 

In the 70's and 80's, Tamiya did have a couple of whimsical Vehicles... But most of the lot was Scale looking, Scale Proportioned Models. Even the Clodbuster had a Scale Monster Truck look! 

So I took a long hiatus... 

In 2014, I was looking for Videos on my other Hobby, Model Railroading. I stumbled upon some Videos of RC Trucks, down to the N'th Degree, a Scale Model - that MOVED! 😁 I HAD to get back into THAT. 

So I went and bought what I thought was a Scaler like the other Guys... I got a CC-01 Landfreeder!! 😖  Sure, Scale looking and proportioned, but in that crowd, I bought the WRONG Rig!!! 

It was a learning experience. I learned how to deal with very limited Suspension travel. How to improve the SLOPPIEST Steering I'd ever seen! (THAT cost about $180.00 - and it's STILL not tight enough)😠😭  That little Guy grew on me. I still have it! 

The Axial SCX10 and Wraith got me into the party! Lights, Scale Camping equipment, opening Hood - with a model ENGINE covering the electric motor, full interiors WITH at least a Driver Figure in it. NO autonomous Vehicles here! 😁  Even weathered them, to the point of adding some Rust in places!! Scale, is my World! 💯👍👍

Sometimes though, I want to do something besides Rock Crawling... I wanted a Buggy. 

In a few clicks, I found the re-re Holiday Buggy! Certainly not the most Scale looking, but I liked the look, and knew that I could add lights and details! 

I rediscovered TAMIYA!! I got to looking around and saw the M03 Mini Cooper. HAD to have it! I was so excited to see that Tamiya made fantastic looking Vehicles, with REALLY sloppy Suspensions!! 😜  I really didn't care. They looked GOOD, and I had enough experience to try to deal with the slop... 

Got a M04 Beetle and a TT-02 Chassis. Then I just started reading, watching and learning! Learned that Tamiya Cars have an amazing amount of parts interchangeability between models!! 😁  Mixed up some TA-01 front end parts on my CC-01, and made an improvement on the Front End!! DT-03 parts on my Holiday Buggy..... I was having FUN! 

Until the bottom dropped out of us, financially. 💔 I had to sell most of my collection - including Buggies I kept from the 80's... Like my Avante, Bigwig, Terra Scorcher, King Cab and Madcap. 😭😭😭 

I'm just now starting to claw my way back, but with some invaluable help from Friends! 

Sorry if I went WAY past just an answer. It took many years for my story to unfold. 😉

Thanks for your reply,very interesting and i get what you mean with the scale looks.The buggies in the 80s looked so much better.

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3 hours ago, DeadMeat666 said:

My dad used to build Tamiya RC cars in a room he built on the roof of our villa back in 1983-4 I think it was, and I used to love going up there with him to watch him build (and then drive) these little creations. If I recall, he had a Wild Willy and a Rough Rider at the time. He later moved on to RC aircraft, and I wasn't so interested in the build process for those, since it involved a lot of sawing/gluing boards of balsa wood lol.

In the early 90s I was deep into my 1/24 scale static Tamiya modelling, and decided to get a Hornet, which I promptly modified to all (heck?) and then promptly broke the chassis of with the whiplash of the motor. I then got a Manta Ray (which became a Top Force Evo clone) and a Mercedes C11 lemans car (which survived a surprising amount of cartwheels). When I went off to college I forgot about the RC hobby.

Fast forward to November 2019 when I was browsing through youtube and saw the Tamiya Legends channel with Glenn speaking about RC cars with such excitement, I went online and bought a Lunchbox. Then a Plasma Edge 2, then a Dark Impact, then a TT02S, then an M07, and an M08, and I've just gotten another kit from eBay a few days ago that I couldn't pass up. Coming soon in the "postman" thread when it arrives in a few weeks!

Tamiya legends is a great channel.

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I haven’t come back - unless you couldn’t the Tyco Mini Hopper when I was about 9.
I didn’t get anything more advanced though some of my contemporaries did.

Fast forward nearly 30 years and I had plans for a kit car. The plans got binned when my son arrived (I’m not sad - see next para)

Instead, I turned to RC. Considerably cheaper, probably safer and I can get my now 6yr old involved!

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For me it was my parents moving out of my childhood home. My midnight pumpkin and stadium blitzer had been in the basement untouched for nearly 25 years. It happens that I have nephews at the age where this sort of thing would be fun for them so I spent a little bit of money and got the RC’s looking good and running better than before. I may have had some fun myself as well. 

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I’ve told this one before but here goes :)

Always wanted a Tamiya RC in the 80’s, way too expensive for my family so closest I got was a catalogue to day dream over..

Skip forward 30 or so years..  and tamiya still too expensive to be sanctioned by the other half as a frivolous expense... then she lost two sets of car keys in a week requiring vehicle recovery and new key coding... £500 or so later.. I said I’m buying an Avante.. when the other half said that’s a lot of money for something you’ll lose interest in and sit on a shelf. I pointed out at which point, unlike her car keys it will still exist and still be worth something.. She conceded that one.. now three more cars have crept in the opening :)

Edit... I’ve not disclosed how much I’ve spent on paints, tools,  Ball Diff hop up.. Shapeways wheel arches.. radio gear.. lets keep that between us...

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I never left. It slowed when I got into girls and 1:1 cars in my teens but I kept tinkering with it. I had to kinda take a break while away at college but picked it right back up upon graduating. Even though I got heavily into 1:1 cars (essentially throwing my life away, restoring them as a profession until relatively recently reaching a moment of clarity), I still kept up with RC. From the start, I never really progressed past the first 100. I dabbled in some then-current stuff in the mid 2000s but eventually returned focus to the first 100. As such, I'm still behind on all this Lipo/brushless stuff, etc. but I don't care. MSCs are still cool to me. 

In the early 2000s I was going through a divorce and was noodling around on the internet one night when I stumbled across some vintage Tamiya websites like Roby's Old Tamiya Database, Theo's Tamiya Temple and Blazer Frazer's. After having nothing but old RC Car Action magazines and my little (at the time) collection it was refreshing to know I wasn't alone in my Tamiya obsession. Vintage RC means more to me now than ever. Then again, when I fixate on something and it becomes my "special interest", it tends to stick around in my life.

 

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A really good question. I had an SS in 79/80 followed by a brat and 2 different Cleicias. I was 21ish  when I bought the SS from Beatties in Bristol and I think the last Celicia was around 1993. Then kids RC planes, boats and static models, that I had made from about 8 until now. Move forwards to late 2018 I saw some kids playing with a toy grade rc car in a skate park. That would be fun with a Tamiya Mini Cooper I thought. Ill buy one, little did I know how difficult it would be and still is. I started googeling Tamiya  Rover Mini Cooper and came up with three things. Hens teeth, Tamiya Club and Land ROVER defender. The rest is history. Currently I have 13 Chassis with a few extra bodies and still a couple to build. I STILL dont have a Mini Cooper:(

 

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19 minutes ago, Saito2 said:

I never left. It slowed when I got into girls and 1:1 cars in my teens but I kept tinkering with it. I had to kinda take a break while away at college but picked it right back up upon graduating. Even though I got heavily into 1:1 cars (essentially throwing my life away, restoring them as a profession until relatively recently reaching a moment of clarity), I still kept up with RC. From the start, I never really progressed past the first 100. I dabbled in some then-current stuff in the mid 2000s but eventually returned focus to the first 100. As such, I'm still behind on all this Lipo/brushless stuff, etc. but I don't care. MSCs are still cool to me. 

In the early 2000s I was going through a divorce and was noodling around on the internet one night when I stumbled across some vintage Tamiya websites like Roby's Old Tamiya Database, Theo's Tamiya Temple and Blazer Frazer's. After having nothing but old RC Car Action magazines and my little (at the time) collection it was refreshing to know I wasn't alone in my Tamiya obsession. Vintage RC means more to me now than ever. Then again, when I fixate on something and it becomes my "special interest", it tends to stick around in my life.

 

Old school tamiya,i like your thinking.

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The cycling forum I'm on has a Tamiya thread, just looked in around crimble last year, you know, just to see what was going on. Five buggies later, you could say my passion has been rekindled.

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21 minutes ago, Busdriver said:

 Tamiya Mini Cooper I thought. Ill buy one, little did I know how difficult it would be and still is. I started googeling Tamiya  Rover Mini Cooper and came up with three things. Hens teeth, Tamiya Club and Land ROVER defender. The rest is history. Currently I have 13 Chassis with a few extra bodies and still a couple to build. I STILL dont have a Mini Cooper:(

I FEEL your pain!! 😖 

I HAD a M03 Mini Cooper!! Tragedy forced me to have to sell it with a bunch of others... My FIRST clue that selling it was a mistake - the Evilbay bid went to $375.00!! 3X what I paid for it! 😲 

Mini prices are coming down... a little. But just a Body is still over $100.00! I'm just hoping Tamiya will re-re the Rover Mini Cooper, so the static collectors will stop driving up the prices of basically a LOW SPEC Car!! 😞😡😠

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I've bought raced, sold, gone away, come back. 

Came back this time due to working from home since March, and ran out of 1:1 mods I could reasonably do in my garage :lol:

So I'm back now, been away for about 4 years. We always come back, don't we? 

 

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I got back into it because i realised the mrs had nowt to moan about, so i thought i best get buying and give her reason to complain. Seriously because like most i was stuck indoors during lockdown

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Since the 80's I thought this was a great photo.  

XyKFBuq.jpg

What I like about Tamiya is the scale-accuracy, and this was a fairly good representation of the real thing (in a slightly comical way).  

KoCGyzs.png

PupCIe0.jpg

I couldn't find it when I got into RC in 1987 or so.  (photo is from @KEV THE REV's page)

I still couldn't find one in good price in 2000 when I re-started the hobby.  

But in 2017, I got it finally, and that got me re-re-started.   

sLihIXN.jpg

 

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Gave up working silly amounts of hours and most weekends about 4 years ago. 

Needed something to do on a friday night that was socially acceptable.

Went racing in the euro truck class. Now have a mix of classic tamiya models from just about all genres. And now fly model aeroplanes to boot. 

4 years of good living. Model building, friendships, racing and flying. Should have done it 20 years ago.

Life is better with Tamiya.

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2 minutes ago, Bromley said:

Gave up working silly amounts of hours and most weekends about 4 years ago. 

Needed something to do on a friday night that was socially acceptable.

Went racing in the euro truck class. Now have a mix of classic tamiya models from just about all genres. And now fly model aeroplanes to boot. 

4 years of good living. Model building, friendships, racing and flying. Should have done it 20 years ago.

Life is better with Tamiya.

I flew model planes myself back in 80s and loved it.Expensive hobby.

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