Veteran503rd

I have land on about a 30% grade when building the tracks jumps should they be lateral as not to alter the cars flight or would it make sense to practice on a track that alters the flight?

Backyard RC

Jumps need to be pretty flat. Can you post a picture of your land? We can give you ideas if we know what you're working with.

Veteran503rd

Yeah, ill take some tomorrow,


the question i have is do you build a practice track as similar as your home race track to learn how to get faster or build it more technical to grow as a driver? Would love to know the consensus among home practice track owners.

AHR43

Hello Vet. Welcome to the forum and to this thread. Reading you are considering a track partly or wholly on a hillside has my interest. Anxious to see pictures of what you have to work with. Lots of experience on this thread by guys back-yarding a variety of terrains. You've come to the right place.

Regarding your question. The only track I race is my back-yard track. It has helped me in all aspects of your question. Developing a back-yard race series and supporting rules package really helped in holding my interest. Now it occupies as much time as I want to give it.

My recommendation would be to build in those features that you are having difficulty with at your away track. Other than that, I'll leave it to the rest of the guys that jump and bump. Me, I'm roundy-round flat track. Cheers. 'AC'

Rayone

iTrader: (4)

If u have the tools to change the track all the time like a bobcat or tractor with bucket makes life alot easier to do the build. My track I built some what like the tracks I race at I think will help me.

Backyard RC

I like the flow of that track. Take note of the carpet on the jumps. That makes a big difference and is worth the money, IMO. You get great take off traction and the jump doesn't degrade as fast. I've got really fine silt type dirt and it doesn't pack at all but if I pile it up and throw a carpet over it it makes a dependable jump.

AHR43

Took the morning to patch an emerging hole inside turn 3. Been getting progressively worse. As I suspected, depression caused by a decaying root from a tree taken out to lay down the grass track. Two of my six ST's ride the inside of turn 3. This hazard put them at a disadvantage. Rope laydown shows how the hole was effecting the inside line of the track.

A back yard track even as small and simple as mine take constant vigilance and periodic repair to keep the in top shape. She's back now and race-ready for April's Special Test Event.

Cheers. 'AC'


Turn 3 patch. Decaying tree root.

Turn 3 patched. Rope shows the hazard it presented.

LowClassCC

iTrader: (9)

I'm not a youtuber so please forgive me for the low quality video.

AHR43

Excellent walk-thru vid, LC. Took lots of notes and added the 'Get-a-Grip' track into my back yard spreadsheet. 1/10 scale on a 100 x 60 track will be really big. Remember back when I was drag racing 1/10 scale, at 132ft out the car began getting small to see. But you will have advantage of an elevated driver stand. And younger eyes. Both will help immensely. Drag racing is ground level line-of-sight.

Hearing you say the build may extend into next year, perhaps there is room to put in an interim small track? Something to keep your interest until the 6000 is built? Cheers and lots of [virtual] support from here. Hang in there. It will be worth it in the end. Cheers. 'AC'

LowClassCC

iTrader: (9)

The build extending into next year is less about the track itself and more about the electric and buildings.

Electric... Should have been hooked up by now. I am looking at at least 2 to 3 more weeks. I have already paid the installation cost in full. I have jumped through all the hoops. They never flagged where the line was to be buried. They just finally came out and flagged it. Now before I paid I was told that this would be no problem at all to install and they could do it easily for the price they quoted me. Now they tell me IF they hit any rock (i live on a limestone slab that is full of solid limestone which they knew prior to their quote) that they would have to bring in a contractor to bust up the rock. And clearly informed me at this point that it could very well cost me thousands more. This is all new information that they did not think i needed to know and didn't mention when they gave me the original quote. This has made me a little salty over this for now because the funds I have invested has drained the the account at this point and this may cause the project to come to am abrupt stop.

Buildings. The last of the funds was spent to buy the lumber to build the floors of the structures. We are now buying screws and concrete to get these platforms built week by week to be ready to build them. I have been getting the trees cut but we have identified a few more very large ash trees that need to be dropped before any construction and be started. I don't mind dropping the smaller trees that are 16" diameter and smaller at the base but the ones above that size frankly scare me. One of the large ash trees I recently dropped went all kinds of wrong and we got lucky that nobody was seriously injured. But work is continuing and we will get as much done as we can as quickly as we can.

We were going to burn the brush pile seen in the video yesterday and as the fire was going we were going to rake out the track and burn off the leaves and debris while we were at it. I wanted to do it yesterday because we had rain come through overnight. I had to make a judgement call and cancel the bon fire due to the winds. better safe than sorry. Anyways now we have to wait for everything to dry back up and warm up before we can get back on it.

Family_Racing

depending on how much sweat equity you feel like investing there is an alternative to them bringing in a contractor. Rent a ditch witch that can handle the rock and dig the trench for those snakes. Find out the required depth for a buried transmission line and probe along the route to see where you could run into an issue. Nothing says you can't do the work yourself.

LowClassCC

iTrader: (9)

I would agree with that 20 years ago. My age and health says I can't do the trenching myself.

All the digging, axe swinging and carrying is being done by my son. All the rest of the work he is also helping me with. I do good it even walk back up the hill after I get down there.

AHR43

Yeah, buddy. I play that twenty year ago card all the time myself ('Like a Rock' - Bob Seger). Just patching that hole and moving dirt yesterday, I had to sit forty minutes under the pop-up to recover.

Good you have your son willing to help. He sounds like a worker. Looked like it in the video as well. Raised him right, you guys did.

Yeah, there's always a surprise these utility companies spring on you. Have an easement running through my back yard. I feel your pain. Hopefully, you get a good crew and they'll work through any minor issues without extra charge. Cheers. 'AC'

Backyard RC

That's some interesting property for running RC. I like the elevation changes and it looks like there'll be some rolling hills too. It looks like you can make a smaller track work temporarily if you can't finish your big project.

CodyCrawler

iTrader: (10)

New Layout at Hillside Rc Raceway in Georgetown, Ca