SpeedDesignz

iTrader: (1)

Xrc is the best .

best coverage.
articles.
reviews.
and lets not forget ..... HOT Girls !!!

my second would be R/C Driver.

hav'nt renewed my subscription to Rc Car action in years. .. sux, used to be a good mag too. now it's just poopie.
Someone please put R/C Tech in magazine form





on a side note..
enough with the Rock Crawler articles please.

Soviet

iTrader: (2)

Because my disdain for what racing has done to our hobby lately leaked through.

"A bunch of folks riding the gravy train until it derails." That about sums it up.

edseb

Onroad

Soviet

iTrader: (2)

Some of the girlies are 'hot.' While others more resemble chewed bubblegum and others still look like a T-Maxx was repeatedly jumped into their face.

mcmoney

lol......Only top notch from now on...

futureal

Yea, now that Mc$'s out here, we have a real recruiter... haha

Oasis

iTrader: (38)

They have faces.. ..never noticed..

DerekB

I addressed why this "Certain Magazine" did that very thing in the shootout. Because where do you stop with adding in parts to make it better? Should we have swapped out the chassis on other cars because somebody won a race?

I decided that what comes in the box, and some simple tuning options would be the best bet for that shoot out...and when a magazine does shootouts and shows the advantage of having something in the box, racers win. If I was a kit manufacturer and saw kits are tested with what's in the box...I'd include both. So our "bitching" that a kit doesn't include certain parts, or in some cases like a Tamiya didn't even offer parts to switch without buying 3 different kit parts, YOU win.

But what most racers tend to forget is that they work on 1 car, and tuning 5, let alone 13 is a nightmare and very difficult. To get things "equal" never really will happen.

But just to let you know about the shootout...the TC3 which was a diff car, one the shaft, and the XRAY won over all. And looking back to who won what and what was good for the average racer was our "Conclusion" incorrect?


Also, racers rarely read magazines for content. I've used this 123 times. Michael Schumacher wasn't reading F1 magazine for "driving" tips, but he was aware of the importance of publications and media exposure. So many of you won't learn in any magazine that on your track moving a camber link up .001" will be better, but it does help people see the hobby and get more people racing. I know that you guys aren't putting out 65,000 copies of stuff on newsstands and shelves or getting people to race.

5% is probably a good estimate, which most of you don't seem to math out to how many people are in the hobby. Competition Plus? I read that once when I was a racer...horrible magazine. Really nothing but a minute by minute playback of the race. What you see on the internet.

Our magazine offers other things that aren't found on the internet. Good bathroom reading. We're not trying to be the end all of magazines, but a place for you to read about new stuff, laugh and remember to flush when you're done.

The JDM magazines seem okay, but can you read them? I can't and from what I see I see that since they only really are into TCs, and after about 6 months have to figure out what content they can get. So taking apart one of the 4 new cars they got is something they do.

The US is much more diverse, and it's much harder to go really, really deep into a car because next month there's 3 new TC, 4 Monster Trucks, 4 minis, and a bunch of other "hot right now" stuff that needs to be covered. IT's not easy, and anybody who thinks you can walk into Kinkos and publish a magazine...good luck. It's taken XRC 7 years to get to a good point, and in the last 5 we've double in size. That's with a staff of 7 people.

But I can say that complaining about what content you'd like to see in a publication on a random forum won't do much.


Anyway, the internet is "shutting down" print anytime soon. I for one still enjoy a magazine while on the crapper, and don't really enjoy reading online. I like forums because you can talk and solve problems, but it doesn't replace the magazine I read at all.

And so it's out there, I read forums all the time looking for what people want to see, and lots of times those things pop back into the magazine.

DerekB

Take this as me poking fun....


Go out and try to get models, take a picture and post them on the internet. It's not really as easy, nor fun, to find models that look good, and photograph well.


But I can say that the chicks in the magazine are probably hotter than most RC'ers can get...and that makes them eligible for spank bank.

futureal

I dunno Derek, pretty soon we'll all be browsing digital magazines on our iPhones in the crapper. Maybe it will come with an air freshener.

To add to what Derek said about that shootout, I don't recall there being a point during it where any of us said, "this car would be perfect except it needs a one-way." As the text reflected, the cars that did not "win" ended up where they did for a reason. Short of a "perfect" chassis dyno, there's no way to make a shootout like that any more scientific than we did.

Plus, that was over two years ago, and there are a whole new crop of touring cars out now. And I still think we picked the right car at the time.

DerekB

My "can of worms" is open.

I'd like to add in where this 5% figure comes from. Unlike people here, who love what they do and really want to see that what they do is more popular there are lots of ways, which won't be directly given out from manufacturers to calculate how much of a group does what.

From a "magazine guy" stand point, being able to speak with companies and have them them tell you ratios of what sells is a pretty good indicator of that. Hearing that "1 out of 20 kits" sold is a "Race version" tells you what you are selling directly to the more racer crowd. And even then you can figure a certain percentage sold as "race versions" are never really at a track.

The same can be true for RTRs as some will make it to the track. But the bigger question is what defines "raced" or being raced? On this board it will be at the track every week and never "played" with. Others will say if you're with a group of buddies and "race" each other.


But the "percentage" is pretty accurate when give the sources of information. there's no need to get butt hurt about not being bigger than we are. But if you really care about racing, we'd all try to get more people into it...and I can say aside from "advertising RTRs" not many of "Racers" help in that category.

See everybody at the Snow Birds.

DerekB

I agree to some extent, but if given the opportunity to look at a magazine or read it on a little screen...I take the magazine. And it's not because I work at one. It's similar to the people who bitch about advertising, and have no problem with the web being whored out more, or even understand how the advertising in RC magazines is good.

futureal

Oh yea, don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I am on the #$@! computer all day long, the last thing I want to do is read books, magazines, whatever else on there.

I think there may come a time when print media is all but gone, but I don't think that time will occur in our lifetime. There's no substitute for holding something "real" in your hands (especially when you pay money for it).

Soviet

iTrader: (2)

No doubt Derek...no doubt.

Luckily I married a pretty hot chica.

fpart

iTrader: (41)

Im trying to be up there. We'll see. BTW that Matt Howard is the king of all hacks. Just ask Mike Ivy. He only laps people because he crashes them the first time....and breaks their car. lol!