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Here we are, over a fortnight since the Revival, and finally I'm getting around to doing my write-up.  Don't expect loads of detail on the racing or a blow-by-blow account of my tweaks and changes during the day, this is more an overview of the atmosphere and friendliness of the event than it is a race review.

I set off at 7:45am on Friday 30th July for the 150 mile journey along the Fosseway to Bingham, and arrived at 11:30 after a clear and easy run.  The weather was dry and pleasantly balmy, if not as warm as one might expect for midsummer.  I got my awning set up near an old friend who I first met at Revival 2018, and before I was finished another old friend arrived, so we parked our campers in a Circle of Love and made that corner of the campsite our own.

This is the view from beside my camper, looking towards my two Revival buddies.

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Despite being a Revival attendee since 2015, I've never actually made it in time for Friday practice before, so as soon as the van was ready I unboxed my Blitzer Beetle and went out for a play.  The track was slippy after the recent rain and I was lacking for turn-in, so I dialled out some of the camber I'd added at Robin Hood Raceway a month ago.  I had Schumacher Vee-2 yellows on the rear, which were too hard for the damp track, and I was spinning out on every corner.  Adie from Racecraft RC was testing his Sand Scorcher, mostly stock apart from a ball diff and modern tyres, and I must confess I had a real hard time keeping up with him with my inappropriate tyres, which was the cause for much mickey-taking for the rest of the weekend (he was still going on about it at the Iconic Cup two days ago :lol: )

Anyway, he was kind enough to sell me some Schumacher minispike silvers, foams and colour-coordinated Blitzer Beetle wheels - well, I say kind enough, he runs the pit shop (https://www.racecraftrc.co.uk/) so it's sort of his job to sell me tyres.

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A little while later the Blitzer slowed down and stopped.  I'd had the same happen at RHR last time out, and before that when I was running it at the beach last.  I knew I'd replaced the brushes so perhaps the Acto Pink was past its best after all.  Fortunately I'd brought a spare Etronix Sport Tuned 17T with me, so I threw that in ready for Saturday's race.

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I spent the rest of the day catching up with old friends and making new ones and enjoying the delights of conversation without mask.  I didn't have any cash in my pocket (essential for doing deals and buying raffle tickets!) so I popped off the site at 3pm to get some from the nearest petrol station.  Just as I left the site, the rain started.  I'd left all the awning bags and tools in the space between the awning and the van, but because I'd driven the van away, all that stuff was now exposed.  Oh, well, it was going to get wet anyway since I'd forgotten the plastic 8-bars that join the awning to the sealing strip, so the rain was running down the inside and pooling on the top.

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Still, it wouldn't be Revival if we didn't at least a little bit wet, so it was good to start the weekend as we meant to go on.  The track was too wet for racing at this point, so I lost my chance to test-run either the Top Force or the Manta Ray.  Instead I sheltered from the rain in the awning, did some body trimming and did some suspension adjustments so it was at least ready for practice on Sunday morning.

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In previous years I'd pitted from my awning, but I like to camp away from the main event (some of those racers get a bit noisy at night) and I can't hear the race announcements that far out.  BMR doesn't have online timing or a big timing screen, and I end up making a dozen trips to race control and back to find out when my next heat is.  This year I promised myself I'd take a pit awning, or get space with some friends near the track, but oldschool racer Rob Fox was kind enough to donate his marquee for the weekend. It was tall, bright and airy, with plenty of space to set up pit tables, and it was right up close to the track. I got myself a spot at the front so I could see what was going on, then went to buy my raffle tickets and hunt out some bargains.

Revival is a great place to do some deals, and the esteemed Mr Fox was selling a motor lathe.  He kindly agreed to include a lathe training session in the asking price.  We dismantled my poorly Acto Pink and found that I hadn't fitted new brushes after all.  We marked the comm, and started the slow but therapeutic process of skimming it back to the copper.

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It took some time to do this, and all we had for power were some ancient 1S packs that had a storage charge and an unhealthy bulge.  We got through 4 of them before the motor was done, and that was time enough for the air to properly chill right off and my bare legs and feet in soggy sandals to start feeling seriously cold.  With a gracious thank-you for the lesson and the deal, I set off with my newly-refurbed Acto Pink, vintage comm lathe and very chilly legs to get into some warm, dry clothes and cook up some warming grub.

Home-made chilli was on the menu.  Every time I cook something like that at home I freeze a portion for a race weekend – it stays fresh in the camper fridge and warms up really easy on the gas hob.  There was way too much for me, so it was shared around the Circle of Love and with a dab of crusty bread, made for a perfect meal to round off an awesome day.  Multiple beers were opened and consumed and music was played as the sun went down.

I took a wander around the site before turning in.  There was a charity Comedy Race taking place- make a donation and get a timed run with a Schumacher Wildcat with some very strange handling characteristics, and there was a live DJ spinning out the usual cheesy party earworms that we'd all be singing for the rest of the weekend.  I decide I wasn't drunk enough to take part in any more than one sing-along, so I went back to the van and kipped down for the night.

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Sunday started well with a damp track but clearing skies.  It wasn't particularly hot for the time of year, but at least it was dry.  The Blitzer Beetle was a diamond on track, far easier to drive than I expected and it put in some respectable laptimes, considering it was up against Dyna Blasters, RC10Ts, Schumacher Storms and Losi XX-Ts.  In fact there was only one other Blitzer Beetle present, driven by my pit buddy and the third side of the Circle of Love, Rich.

I didn't do much to the truck all day - mostly all I needed to do was swap the tyres as the track dried and got warmer, starting by going back to the yellow Vee-2s on the rear and then back to the stock fronts with the outside spikes cut off once it got really grippy.

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At some point in the afternoon my plastic-welding repairs to the front bumper started to crack up, and I didn't want the car to start digging in over jumps, so I swapped it out for the newer one on the Bear Hawk.

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Racecraft RC had a "bargain bin" of random stock, in which I managed to find a new cap for just £5.

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After a back-and-forth day keeping pace with the drying track, I qualified in 4th place in the B final.  4th is just about my favourite place to qualify - it means I'm clearly doing faster laps than the rest of the field, so I shouldn't come plumb last unless I have a breakdown or make a big mistake, but I'm only one spot away from a podium position, so if I keep it on track and hope for faster driver to have a bad race, I could come home with a trophy.  It's kind of a "nothing to lose but best-placed to gain" position.

The final was fantastic - very clean and great fun, with a really close battle with TC's very own @Jimbo - he was clearly the faster driver, but suffered a series of setbacks that put me in front every time he passed.  Then the end-of-race tone sounded, and I was in 3rd.  Jimbo's Dyna Blaster had suffered a failure, promoting me to the podium :o 

So, with my day's racing and my marshalling duties done, I went straight around to the food tent and ordered a chicken curry with garlic naan, ran back to the camper to grab an ice-cold beer from the fridge, then sat down in Fox Hall to bask in my moment of stolen glory.

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The rest of the afternoon involved watching the Race of Champions (the top two qualifiers from each class get a staggered start based on their quali times, so the slower cars get a head-start), which is always a thrill to watch, then packing everything away, charging the packs for Sunday, and of course, more beers.  The next group along from our Circle of Love had brought along a coal-fired barbecue and enough sausages to feed the whole of Oktoberfest, so we were invited along to help eat them all.  We listened to some dodgy amateur electronic music written by some weird guy who races a Blitzer Beetle in a class full of RC10Ts, talked nonsense about how we'd all be brilliant racers if only we raced more often, reminisced about the good old days when batteries lasted 3 minutes and took all night to charge, then went to bed before we all got too drunk to wake up in the morning.

Sunday morning started soggy.  It was warm in the camper, so I'd gone to sleep with the side door open, but sometime in the night we'd had a downpour, and that missing 8-bar had come to haunt me in the form of a water escape that ran into the cabin and directly onto my sleeping back and pillow.  Somehow I'd managed to sleep right through this (it had nothing to do with the post-race beers) but at least the day started reasonably dry and the track wasn't completely waterlogged.

I carried all my gear on the long trek to Fox Hall and got my stuff set up for a day full of racing.

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It sounds like you had a good race weekend, it's been a long time since I raced rc, I need to get back out on the track next year. I still have a cobra comm lathe that I used every weekend back In the day. 

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The first problem I spotted was the rear gear case wasn't sitting comfortably on the Top Force Evo, so I spent the time between morning registration and practice pulling it apart and cleaning it.  Some sand had managed to get in there which was stopping it from seating properly.

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I then went out for practice with the Manta Ray on wet tyres.  It went well enough for an old plastic tub on plastic CVA shocks, but there wasn't enough springing in the back and it was bouncing around a lot over the bumps.  BMR is a very bumpy track, so getting the springing right is paramount.  I added some more collars to increase the preload for the first race.

I had trouble with the step screw backing out of the steering arm, so I replaced it with a brass top hat and machine screw.  I find these grip tighter once the plastic won't hold the self-tappers any more.

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After that, it was pretty much a case of chasing the drying track.  Drizzle in the morning quickly turned to sunshine, and before long we were talking about dry tyres.  That made setup choices tricky, as I only like to change one thing at a time, and tyres are a big thing to change.  The back of the car was still bouncing around like crazy - adding preload had helped stop it bottoming out on the bumps, but there wasn't enough damping in the shocks to control the additional spring.  I started by tipping out the Tamiya soft oil and adding the thickest grade I had with me, but it wasn't much thicker than before, so it made little difference.  It would have made most sense to pull the shocks apart and fit a one-hole piston, but the track dried out and I decided to go to dry tyres instead.

For some reason, my dry fronts (Schumacher minispike yellows) had no foams in them, so they had a tendency to fold over on corners and flip the car around.  I figured this was no good at all, so instead of stiffening the shocks for the final, I opted to buy new front tyres instead.  Cactus were working really well for other people, so I bought a set of those.

The tyres were great, but unfortunately the bouncing rear didn't go away, and it didn't matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep up with the faster cars and finished 5th in the C final.  Not a great result, but that didn't matter at all, as it had been such a fun day, I didn't need a trophy to remember it by.

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3 minutes ago, Frog Jumper said:

Sounds like a music fest but without the stinky hippies!

and with better toilets

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The Revival is used to RC royalty in the form of oldskool champions, and this year Craig Drescher came along to say hello.  I must confess my knowledge of racers from the good old days isn't great, but I had a good chat with him about the state of the UK scale crawler scene.

Another highlight was winning a prize in the raffle.  The Revival Raffle is always a big event, although pandemic life has made the draw somewhat anticlimactic, I made up for it by winning an NIB Lunchbox.  Which was nice, as was cutting a deal with Adie for an NIB Element Enduro builder's kit.

Anyway, here's a bunch more random photos that I took throughout the weekend:

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Raffle prizes - Saturday:

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My pit buddy Rich in his best hoodie

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Fox Hall:

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Driver's briefing

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Just now, toyolien said:

What did Craig have to say about the state of the UK Scale Crawler Scene?

Mostly just a chat about what people are building and how popular it is.  He was talking to Adie of Racecraft about it while I was in the process of buying the Enduro (which was apropes as I think he's an Associated rep?) so I got chatting about the events I go to and how popular it is now, how there's a lot more RTR in the form of Traxxas but that hasn't really stopped creativity, etc, and how lots of new brands are getting involved and how the Element RC stuff fills a decent niche for the scale builder who doesn't want to spend Traxxas money but doesn't want to risk unknown import brands.  I think.

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And some more random photos from Sunday.  Guess who got the lunchie!

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Playing with artistic filters on the TG-3 :p 

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4 minutes ago, Mad Ax said:

Mostly just a chat about what people are building and how popular it is.  He was talking to Adie of Racecraft about it while I was in the process of buying the Enduro (which was apropes as I think he's an Associated rep?) so I got chatting about the events I go to and how popular it is now, how there's a lot more RTR in the form of Traxxas but that hasn't really stopped creativity, etc, and how lots of new brands are getting involved and how the Element RC stuff fills a decent niche for the scale builder who doesn't want to spend Traxxas money but doesn't want to risk unknown import brands.  I think.

Interesting thanks. Been into crawlers for 10+ years so always good to hear peoples' thoughts.

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Here's one of the coolest cars I saw all day - Full Option's demo Grasshopper, covered in custom parts - check them out here:

http://www.fulloption.co.uk/

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There was only one other Blitzer Beetle on the track on Saturday, but another racer brought this along.  A modded Blitzer with loads of custom parts.

Modified for a shorty pack to help balance the motor (the Blitzer never sits right on the scales), also centre-mounted steering servo

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Custom-made steering cranks

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Home-brew chassis plate

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Hi-rise shock tower

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There were a fleet of SRBs wearing Pukka Parts conversions.  These things are crazy.  Definitely not for the purist, these cars dominated the special "modified" class for the early years.

http://www.pukkarc.com/

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