What "Grinds Your Gears" In RC?
 

One of the biggest pet peeves of mine is seeing every single one of Traxxas's 16 pages worth of ads in my RC Car Action magazine that my family got for me last Christmas. For God's sake, it feels like half the magazine is gone by the time I flip through them all. There are tons of other things that bug me while I'm at the track also, but I wont go on, because we would be here for a while.

What drives you crazy in RC? Bashing or racing, it doesn't matter. Lets hear it!

+1 Was it the last issue that you could actually remove the "catalog" from the magazine. It was like 20 pages of traxxas ads.

What burns me is that local hobby shops wont support the racers. 3 Shops within 30 minutes and 2 of them don't even carry any Losi or Associated parts and the one that does it is very limited, you need B4.1 or SC10 arms, they are out, you need slipper pads, nope. They always say anything you want we can order it and it will be here in 2 days. Yeah and I can do the same thing without driving to your shop and save some cash in the meantime. I am very much a support your local hobby shop, but when they do not support the tracks or racing forget 'em.

The 37 different racing classes we have now, each with their own "sportsman", "Expert", and "Pro" designations so everyone can go home with a trophy.:rolleyes:

+1 and,
Not calling the straight...
or, getting into someone by accident, giving them the spot back and saying sorry, only to pass them again and get railed and they keep going.

I'm lucky to have one hobbyshop in my area that supports local racers very well, while the other one is just like you described and only carries traxxas. I finally stopped going to the latter. I feel i am pretty blessed to have one good hobbyshop that is helpful, and reguarly comes to our local races. Their store is a little messy and small, but they are some good folks and they give me BIG discounts on items, and they usually match or lower than what amain has them listed for online. Got a brand new in the box futaba 4pl from them for only $210 instead of the normal $250. Probably going to pick up tekno e-buggy and shortcourse from them soon.

By all means support that one shop. I told one of the shop owners recently "You do realize there are 3-4 tracks within an hour of your store right? And lets face if little johnny get a traxxas slash, little johnny is gonna want to jump and race his slash, and then he is gonna want to race against other people so he starts going to the local track. Little johnny gets fast and now his car is holding him back so he wants something more racy. You don't sell it so little johnny goes to the internet and you just lost a good source of revenue." He just shrugged.

I really dislike most the 4x short course guys at my local track. A couple can drive and handle the power, but most of them are just extreme bashers out for a crash-em-up session. Huge motor/esc combos with massive battery punch is very popular with most those fools. I run faster lap times with a Worlds B4.1 in stock buggy than 99% of those guys. Unfortunately some others pay the price when those crappers crash the hell out of the guys there to finness race rather than bash during practice. The 2x short courser's seem to be more into finness racing than bashing there which is cool with me especially since most of them are respectful and watch out for crashed vehicles to dodge them instead of just ramming the hell out of them like a bull in a China shop.IMO, if you are totally pinned on the throttle and have consistent laps, then it is time to upgrade to a faster electrical system if you want to go faster. At my local track, the fastest mod guy is the same fastest stock guy and his lap times differ by less than a second between the two which even his stock times are way faster than the fastest 4x guy. I like finness and skill rather than brute.JMO

What grinds my gears is how easy B44.1 ARMS BREAK or shear off at the hint of a crash.

Have you tried boiling them?

My local track is kind of the same way, but not really. 2wd shorcourse is one of the worst classes to marshall at my track. The 4wd guys are basically divided into 2 kinds, the ones you described above, and some really good pro guys. The race director usually separates the well known faster guys into one heat, and the slower, no throttle control guys into another. The really good 4wd guys can set lap times about 1-2 seconds off pro e-buggy.
Oh, and never marshall for truggy at my track unless you are 30 or younger as you quickly be exausted from all the marshalling you have to do.

What Grinds my gears? Electric Guys who have no respect for Nitro Racers. They Dont realize the work needed to keep a Nitro car in Race Contention.

I just started racing 4x4 sc and I really try to race as clean as possible. I feel like half the field though, with the exception of a couple fast guys, are out there for a demo derby.
I also cannot stand some of the driving that goes on during open practice days. I can't tell you how ugly it gets sometimes lol. Everyone that pays has a right to use the track but if your driving skills are very poor, maybe it would be a good idea to wait until the track dies down a bit. That would be a much better option than jumping the pipes and smashing into another rc at full speed.

Cost.

1 of my main gripes is... While warming up and getting ready to qualify, the race director will close the straight and tell "everyone to get where they want to be" then he'll wait for 15 seconds or so and then say "marshalls ready, racers ready, loops live at the tone" then he says "spread yourselves out"

Well, first off we were spread out, while warming up. But instead of just turning the loop on, like a nitro qualifier, we're supposed to stop, then bunch up, then wait, then get ready to go, then spread out.

Needless to say, especially the 4x4 sc class, it's a cluster fork more often then not.

I don't see the need to stop, just say the loop is live in less than 5, and start it off. We ain't getting any more spread out than we are while warming up.

I've brought it up to the race director, but he just looks at me like I'm speaking greek and goes back to hatin' life.................

When the transponder stops working half way through your race. Or when you break on first lap.