UK Scaler Nationals 2021 - Event Review

[Mad Ax 9329]

Going to be a fairly low-calorie update from me as I didn't get a huge amount of photos this year (I was busy experimenting with videos, but don't have time to edit all the tiny clips together to make something worth watching).

The morning of Saturday, 16th October dawned dry, bright, and bracingly cool after a rather mild start to autumn.  We arrived at the venue just in time to miss out on hard parking, so I had a few failed attempts to get my van (RWD, live axle, automatic, low-profile road tyres and stiffened rear suspension) lined up nicely on the grass before I gave up and parked it lop-sided facing downhill towards the exit.  I'd made the 170 mile journey the previous evening, met some friends for a very civilised meal and slept overnight in a hotel, so we arrived well-fed and eager to get going.

After a quick driver's briefing, we were on the trails.  I decided to start with my CFX-W, Nick with his TRX-4 wearing the Carisma Ford body, and Hayden with his TRX-4 Defender.

We chose the Ace of Axe* course for our first challenge, as it started near the central hub and seemed to have a fairly easy intro into the technical stuff.  We headed off under the trees and followed an easy section until we reached the rocks, where things git a bit harder

Seeing as we've all done this before (and quite recently, at the Southern Scale Trail event last month) we opted to take a more technical approach this time, using winches and tow ropes instead of hands and feet to help our trucks over the harder sections.  Sometimes this led to a bit of a pile-up, as at this particularly tricky gate.

*no relation

[Mad Ax 9329]

Half-way into the Ace of Axe course, we had our first breakdown - Hayden's Traxxas ESC gave us the flashing light of indifference and stopped working.  Fortunately there were vendors on site, so he bought a replacement for £19 and Nick swapped over the Traxxas connectors so he could carry on using his Traxxas LiPos.  We skipped back to the same point and carried on through what was generally quite an easy course - it felt like it was geared towards the class 1 trucks.

The end of the Ace of Axe course took us onto the next (I forget the name of the other courses, sorry) which ran through a boggy area of the venue, although an unseasonal lack of rain in central England meant it was fairly dry (dryer than the car park field, in fact).  There we had a lot of fun traversing muddy ditches and climbing through tree trunks.  Sadly the big fallen tree across a ravine, which made an excellent bridge section two years ago, was no longer there, but it was a great course anyway.

[Mad Ax 9329]

By this time we'd come to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of each rig, and we were starting to gel as a team.  My CFX-W could get over anything that needed clearance or traction, sometimes handling stuff as if it was flat ground, but it was top-heavy and wouldn't do steep climbs or descents without flipping.  Hayden's Defender was hugely capable but rolled a lot on side-hills, and Nick's Ford could put loads of power into climbs and side-hills but lacked for overall clearance with its smaller wheels.  Knowing where each rig would excel - and where it would struggle - helped us choose who should tackle an obstacle first.  If we could get one rig over, it could tow the others, or hold them steady while they made their way across.  This kind of comp crawling was so much more fun than simply blasting at an obstacle as fast as we could, or assisting a struggling rig with a well-placed toe, or even using the Tow Strap of God (which we sometimes referred to as the Emergency Airlift Helicopter).

We stopped for burgers after the 3rd course, although I missed the last few gates because my servo horn (which was still the original plastic one from the MST kit box!) stripped its splines.  Fortunately I had a spare in the van, but I hadn't run the BOM yet, so I left the CFX-W in a non-running state and took the GMade out onto the last trail.

Afternoon session update to follow - watch this space!

[87lc2 2666]

Very cool!  Looks like some great terrain.  I have been eyeing up those Carisma Ford bodies for a while now, any idea what the width of it is?  I can't seem to find that anywhere. 

[Mad Ax 9329]

13 hours ago, 87lc2 said:

Very cool!  Looks like some great terrain.  I have been eyeing up those Carisma Ford bodies for a while now, any idea what the width of it is?  I can't seem to find that anywhere. 

I actually bought one while I was there and I stashed it up in my storage space last night - I'll go up there later and measure it for you

[Mad Ax 9329]

Wow - it's taken me a while to get back to this!  Things have been a bit crazy the last few weeks and I've been a bit short on admin time.  Well anyway, I'm going to see if I can remember the afternoon session well enough to write an update in the next 10 minutes, between setting Saturday's LiPos on discharge and grabbing a quick shower because I didn't have time for one after the school run this morning.

Anyway, the Saturday Afternoon session was much the same as the morning - the weather remained dry, plenty warm enough for the middle of October, and the courses were good and fun.  There's one area of the woodland area that tends to stay wetter than the rest (I think there's a natural spring nearby, and it's a runoff area for the hills), and there were some interesting climbs to tackle.  The BOM's standard tyres work well on both rock and mud, and although it still felt top-heavy and with a tendency to want to side-roll, it performed well on this course.

And that's all the photos I got, being too busy driving (and also taking videos, which I will probably never get around to posting because there's too much editing to do).

After that I said a fond farewell to Nick and Hayden as they set off on the long journey home, and I headed off to my hotel in Mansfield.  For pricing reasons I couldn't stay at the same hotel twice, and the second one was another 10 minutes on the road, but it was no big deal, easy to find and plenty of free parking, I arrived tired, hungry and covered in mud, checked in and set some batteries on charge and got myself cleaned up for a meal and some beers.

Sitting in a quiet restaurant with a laptop and a beer is one of my favourite ways to pass a lonely evening, and my battery held while I did a couple of hours editing on my novel.  The food was great, the bed was comfy and the other patrons were quiet.  Can't say better than that.

There's still a further write-up to follow for Sunday's session, which did get a little bit more interesting.  I'll try to get it done tonight.

BTW @87lc2 I haven't forgotten to measure that body - I just haven't got around to it yet.  Today is a "clear the backlog" day so I'll try to do it tonight.

[Mad Ax 9329]

Sunday started well, with me getting up early for an all-I-can-eat buffet breakfast (made with proper English things like sausages, black pudding, mushrooms, fried eggs and slices of bacon so think you could strangle a horse with them), then I was off in the October drizzle for another day's crawling.  The driver's briefing was over quickly, the only key update being that they'd put a new course together over the far side of the woods, so there was a whole new trail to try out.

I was planning to make some changes to the CFX-W, but I figured the SCX10 hadn't had a run yet, so it would be nice to take that out first.  I started on the Ace of Axe course because it was closest to the car park, and the heavy overcast and incessant drizzle made it pretty dark in under the trees, so I put the main lights on.

It rained on-and-off all morning, but not enough to dampen the trails.  After driving the CFX-W and the BOM, the OG SCX10 is frustrating with its utter lack of turning circle, meaning 9-point turns are the norm to get lined up for a gate, but despite having a heavy body, full interior and full-size alloy spare on the back, it's more stable than either of the newer rigs.  The articulation is reduced, which probably helps a lot, and I have a central battery mount that sits just behind the front wheels, hence why poor Kyle had to have his legs removed.

I had so much fun tackling the Ace of Axe course on my own that I went straight onto the RCCar.Zone course, and had a lot of fun there, too.  The rain overnight made some of the boggier sections a bit more fun, but the old SCX10 did everything the CFX-W had done the previous day without any complaints or breakages.  I wasn't keeping a score card, but it would have been interesting to see which fared better over an entire course length.  The SCX10 might be many, many years old but it can still hold its own against the modern hardware (as long as it's got enough space to turn around in).

[Mad Ax 9329]

Towards the end of the course I caught up with a logjam of other drivers struggling with a tricky part.  That's a good part of the fun of courses like this - if everybody gets stuck in the same place it becomes a bit of a challenge to see who can do it.  Once one person finds the right line and proves its possible, the rest are encouraged to try harder.  And if they can't get up, at least there's one truck up top to winch or two them up.

After that, I went back to the van to look at modifying the CFX-W.  I saw something online about reducing the ride height by moving the shock hoops towards the centre and mounting the shock bottoms on the lower link mounts.  It looked like a really simple job, so I sat back in the van and got started.

Hint: it wasn't a really simple job.  The transmission mounts up front and battery tray out back make it really hard to get at the nylock nuts that hold the shock hoops on, so it takes way longer than it should.  Then when I was done, I realised the body posts were mounted on the front shock hoops, so I couldn't put the body in without redrilling the holes.  This is a really expensive body, it's barely been used, and I only begrudgingly cut the post holes in it a few weeks ago when I'd finally got sick of the magnets ungluing themselves, so I wasn't going to cut another set of holes in it just yet.

Then I realised the lower position meant the top of the axle interfered with the winch servo and drum, so I'd have to move all that too, and the rear axle practically had no travel at all because the pumpkin hits the battery tray.  So, it looks like that mod isn't really any good unless the battery tray is relocated.  After all that I was pretty sick of it, so I thought I'd try something new, and put the Proline Hyrax tyres from the CFX-W onto the BOM and go out for another run to see how much better they are than the stock GMade tyres.

[Mad Ax 9329]

Hint: the GMade tyres are actually really really good!

Now the BOM isn't exactly a budget kit, but neither is the CFX-W, and that comes with tyres that are about as useful as a paperweight (in fairness I've used them as spare tyres, so they are getting some use, and they may well be pretty good on soft mud, but for the rocky stuff that I prefer they totally lack any kind of bite).  Considering the Hyraxes are around £27 per pair in the UK, plus delivery, the CFX-W costs as much as £60 over its delivered price to actually be any good on the course.  The BOM gets decent tyres in the box.  Not only that, but they look great, too.

In this shot it's wearing the Hyrax tyres from the CFX-W, and they just don't look nearly as good.

So, in other words, the BOM didn't really perform much better with the expensive comp tyres than it did with its kit ones.  Maybe slightly more traction over slippy rock, but it was hard to notice for sure.  Unfortunately nothing wanted to help the BOM's roll-happy tendencies and later parts of the all-new course were seriously tricky, with some very steep climbs over mossy rock (it was the kind of terrain where you could easily slip and break a wrist trying to retrieve a stuck truck - I've not managed this yet but give me time!)

Half way round the course I caught up with a Trail Buddy - and that's another cool thing about these events: everybody is your friend.  We were both being lone rangers for the day, so we teamed up together to tackle the tougher sections.  His TRX-4 was wearing some heavy brass knuckles and a set of those super-fat RC4WD wheels, and if it couldn't make an ascent the normal way then another attempt in 2nd gear and full throttle usually got it up like a rock bouncer.  That's not my preferred way of crawling, but if it works and you're having fun then it's all good  

The course ran on for what felt like miles, and I was definitely ready for my burger from the trailer when I got back to the hub.  Burgers always taste much better when they're seasoned with floor dirt from your fingers.  After pie-munching it down and wiping the grease stains on my trail jeans, I went back to my van to have another stab at fixing the CFX-W.

In the end I left the rear shock hoops in their forward, lowered position, and moved the front hoops back to stock but kept the shock bottoms on the lower mounts.  That meant the front shock was angled forward a bit but it worked.  I fired it up and went out for another trail run, but then the raffle was called and I ended up standing around for an hour to find out I hadn't won anything (but it was all good because Hayden and Nick left me their raffle tickets and they won a 3D-printed kinetic winch and an RC4WD wall banner, both of which are still looking seriously cool in their packaging on my workbench because I haven't sorted out getting them sent over yet.

After that it was pretty much time to leave - it was late, the grounds were closing up and I had a long drive back home.  I gave the CFX-W a quick run around the start of the Ace of Axe course and over some terrain near the car park - it's definitely more stable in lowered form, but the big tyres spend most of their time taking the paint off the bottom of the body, and the tilting body design means it isn't easy to lift it, so I figured it wouldn't stay like that.  I see there's a shorter shock option which might be a better bet, or I could just open the stock shocks and put in some rubber spacers.

Before I knew it, I was on my way home, making the long trek down from the Midlands to the South West, following some of my favourite country roads, knowing I probably won't travel them again until well into next year (unless I can financially justify another trip to Robin Hood Raceway for a Junkies meet - which I doubt).

So that's it - probably the end of my long-distance travels for a while!  But that's fine, because there's a heap of projects to finish off and some fuel money to be saved ready for 2022, and plenty of local woods that will keep my busy when I need to get out.

Roll on the G6!