VTA points week #4

Another week in and out! Not much has changed in VTA, but my longtime friend Matt has now joined the sport, and I believe we are the only two guys left in the class running the 4 cell 27T combo. Both Bob's have switched (one from a 1s 13.5, one from a 4 cell 27T), Mark's dad looks to have switched. Allan might be on 4cell, I haven't asked. I still managed to qualify 6th for the A main behind John, Mark, Jeff, Bob & Doug, but ahead of Allan and another John. The race went well, Mark and John were battling for the lead but Mark's car sounded god-awful and he was laughing about losing his spur gear, but was still battling with John for almost 3 minutes before the noise became a brain-numbing screeching and the car came to a stop. I was running in third behind John & Jeff (one lap down) up until about 30 seconds to go when Bob came up behind me and ran through the back of my car to get around instead of actually trying to pass and then just kept on driving. I closed back on him, but the half lap he took from me was too much to make up in the final half minute.

John with his Team Magic Camaro took the day followed by Jeff in his fat XXX-S Cuda and Bob in the Tamiya Mustang.

In the B-Main, Matt, on his first night out, with the coolest looking VTA car on the track (see my post from 2 days ago :D ) took home the win! He had to beat Bob driving a new car that looked pretty racy, and had to navigate around the Camaro-hating Tom in his bright green Cuda - The same Tom who seemed to always drive right into me when I was in the same qualifier as him. I actually got to watch Tom in the main and he seems to do a decent job driving his car when there are no other cars around, but as soon as there's another car in the vicinity, he went off line and steered right into the other car almost every time.

Airbrush Work

I finished my first "airbrushed" body tonight for Matt.

Lots of work and many coats of paint... Having done a complex paintjob now, it seems to me that masking is the biggest consideration when deciding the order in which colors get applied. For instance, the number circles on Matt's body were white, ringed in black. Typical RC body painting says you paint the darkest colors first, but the black rings were the second to last things I painted - the last being the white circle itself. In theory, I guess I could have cut a negative circle mask, put the smaller circle inside that and started there, but it felt a lot more convenient to just lay down a circle mask, and paint around it, and then let the paint be my mask... The same holds true for the stripe on the car - the stripe is actually the same blue used for the main body of the car, it's just backed in black instead to white. I would have had to lay down the blue over the entire car, then mask off the stripe, laying tape over fresh paint (which worries me), then do my backing in white, then back the stripe in black... My way took a little extra time due to the number of color changes I did (9 "layers").

I look forward to painting the next body and improving

Week #3 addendum...

I had mentioned my "wounded" 13.5 car in the last post... Well, tonight I figured out what was truly wrong with it... The comm had a better hourglass figure than any of my ex-girlfriends - check this out!


While it's not as easy to see in the picture as it is in person, that spot right in front is devoid of all copper whatsoever... Ya, I think that one is DONE!

Oh, and about that milling action...


She lasted long enough to get me home!

Oh, and picked up some colors to do some painting with... Red, Blue, White, Silver, Fluorescent Yellow, Fascent Blue... all I need is a sucker volunteer to let me do some painting on their body :)

VTA points week #3

Finally, we get a new layout! It's a long sweeping track with just two switchbacks before leading onto the entry to the straight. Mark has added a little obstacle coming off the last switchback though - so while you want to go out to the edge of the track, you can't, because there's a board there! Learned very early on that you want your drivers side mirror to get taken off by that board for the fastest way through there - thank goodness I left those off my car :)

During practice, Dave took my car for a few laps and turned an 11.2 or so - I was still working on the gearing though. James, ah James! His first week in VTA running 2s/21.5 in a TC5 turned 9.7's...

I improved to 10.9's by the second qualifier, but thought I was slightly over-geared at a 5.09, the next lowest ratio I had available to me was a 5.2, so that's what I ran in the main. It just involved dropping a tooth on the pinion - I swapped it out just before I went out for the main as I had been working on my wounded 13.5 car.

As a side note, Mark was teching the fastest qualifier in each VTA round, which was me in both my qualifiers as Bob came unglued in both qualifiers at about the 4:40 mark - the car with no weight added comes in at 1458g and no worries on final drive ratio - no problemo!

I ran okay in the main - I was touching boards where I shouldn't have been, and lost time to silly mistakes. I heard the scoring for one of my laps at a 10.7, which made me very happy until, shortly after that, it sounded like my front belt had started slipping a bit - I had corrected that before practice. I get to the last lap, and my car is slowing like it's dumping, which should be next to impossible, I manage to pull the car across the finish line and park it. I go to move it closer to me after coming off the stand and it won't move! I get to it, and can hear the motor spinning on throttle, but no movement. I peel open the body and it looked like someone had been milling my spur gear into something a little more round, but without teeth, and there is a perfect line of white plastic along the back of the chassis- DOH! I finished fifth in the A, and was the fastest guy running something other than 2s/21.5

I look forward to trying to improve my lap times on this fast, sweeping track layout - a type of layout which I've always felt suited my car best.

Pondering the airbrush...

I decided to drag out my airbrush this past week - I used to be pretty decent with my Aztek, but killed it painting an 8 foot tall penguin in epoxy on the bottom of a friends pool - believe it!

I bought a Paasche VL to replace it, but never felt real comfortable with it. I figured out why this past week.

When I used the Aztek, which was a side feed brush, I always used the gravity feed cups, and the Paasche VL is strictly a siphon feed brush. My compressor wouldn't put out enough pressure for the VL to work properly, maxing out at 22 psi! I decided to try my air tool compressor hooked into the water trap/regulator for the airbrush and dialed up the regulator to 35 PSI, and when the compressor stopped running I could actually hear my airbrush hose hissing unbelievably from both ends! It was the one that came with the brush, but it was a piece of junk that didn't seal at either end. A new hose and new Teflon tape later, and a tightening of the plug on the water trap, and I can hear nooooo air leaks! At a very steady 35 PSI, the brush works really well spraying the acrylics. I've done a bit of test painting, and so far so good. From fine lines, to large clouds of paint, I'm getting a good feel for how to control it. I sprayed a test piece on a cut up plastic bottle, and while it needs some work on the colors, the line work was pretty good.

More to come...

VTA points week #2

This class is growing, with eleven entries this week! I ran a couple good qualifiers, fairly clean and managed to make the A main in fifth. John was running his 21.5 and Mark had his car working as good as his main last week. Mike switched from a 4 cell 17.5 combo to a 2s 21.5 and was running obscenely fast on the straight and I think turned the fastest lap of the night, turning in a 12.9! My fast lap for the night was a paltry 13.8 :( The A-main was lined up like the TA races of old, every car was on an angle facing away from the outside wall along the straight. I thought we were still being lined up when the tone went off, being left behind by all five of the other cars on the track - doh! I had my revenge as there was a major tangle up in the second turn and I passed three of them right back. I ran in third for a couple laps until I tapped an inside board and the car went rolling down the track landing on its lid - I haven't figured out if it is the body or the bumper that seems to always cause the car to roll over upon tapping a board. From there, it was an uneventful race for me until about the last two laps. I saw Allan slow up and stop on the track ahead of me (even though he was running behind me), and then take off like a bat out of hell just as soon as I got near him, and aimed his car right at me for the next three turns until I was a fair distance away from him. I didn't think too much of it, but as the tone went off, ending the race about two laps later, I came up on him again going into the final sweeper where he ran me into the boards sideways. I'll keep an eye out to see if this remains a trend.

I finished in fifth, I thought I did well other than my rollover. I turned a bunch of 13.8's & 13.9's and just felt my car was slow. Dave wanted to show me otherwise as he had been watching me, so after all the races were done, he took the time to drive my car. My car, my battery, my radio, no changes at all, in someone elses hands - and on his 4th timed lap turned a 13.1

I am truly humbled.

I know what I need to do now.. Practice, practice, practice...