Team Lotus

DerekB, while I do sincerely thank you for responding on behalf of Xtreme magazine to this topic and issue, I am saddened that you are not willing to admit that you and the other magazines and manufacturers have not done enough in the past year or two to promote on-road racing. You seem to prefer to try to pick apart what we are trying to accomplish and you offer no solutions or help. Instead you prefer to tell us how in your "professional" opinion how we the buying public who support this hobby and YOUR magazine are all wrong in our opinions.
You just can't check your pride and admit that maybe you guys could have done more and give us some sort of outline of what you plan to do to improve on-road coverage and influence the manufacturers as well.

Your counterpart over at RC Car Action responded to the email I sent him and while like you he did'nt agree with our opinion he did say that they are planning on increasing their on-road coverage. They were at least willing to admit they could do more. While it's not all that I would have liked, I do appreciate the effort; and I offered him some ideas on articles that could be written as well as other ideas.

So, my question back to you is: what is Xtreme willing to do?; constructive ideas or just more putting us down?

Keith Billanti

iTrader: (15)

offroad out sells onroad 8:1

I think the main point-- was that if there was less of an offroad bias, perhaps it wouldnt be like that. You just said they dont even advertise the onroad- that couldnt possibly be part of the reason it is selling 1 to every 8...

DerekB

I'll answer this out of order. First we don't dictate what is popular. 4 years ago the balance was more in line, we cover tons of on-road and the market shrank. So we "covered" more of it than now and it still went south. Saying we should just cover on-road when there is less of a market is business suicide.

veecee

iTrader: (34)

This is absurd... It's like saying lawn bowls would be more popular is lawn bowls magazines did more to promote the sport!!!

At the end of the day, it is up to the manufacturers and ruling bodies to understand why onroad is in decline and what they can do to improve. Magazines can help a little but they are busy enough trying to survive in a tiny yet competitive market. If you don't like what you see, don't buy it.

DerekB

What saddens me is that you will believe a BS politically correct answer and not the truth. Seems like when people discuss reality nobody really wants to listen or understand how it works. I can feed every email I get with "sure, haha, that's a great idea we'll get on that" and never do anything, but I'd rather discuss the facts of life.

I see more of the market from both sides than 99% of the people. I deal with racers, hobbyists, and manufactures. MOst racers only see what they race and discount any other factual information.

For example, a similar topic came up with Oval. When RC Driver came out they started this big "we are going to cover oval" and they put it on covers talked to NASCAR and generally went against what was popular. I'm sure as an on-road guy you say oval is dead and discount it. Well we got all these emails how Driver was going to show us and blah blah blah....look at it now. No oval and we have more oval coverage and continual than they did.

And of course everybody reads this as me being some smug prick, but I AM A PROFESSIONAL and I do this for a living I see the market and have deal with it. I get asked my opinion from all sides of the industry. So I think your smug remarks about what I feel not being valid is dumb. Yes it's my opinion like any advice or consulting, but it's based on more than just "I like on road."

and what are we willing to do? We spend thousands of dollar promoting RC and attending races and providing information to RC people. It's not the media's job to fix broken things. In fact, usually when I offer suggestions/solutions I get this BS internet banter about how I know nothing and it's just my opinion. I find it comical really. We also sponsor and promote races in our magazine. Snowbirds, IIC, Reedy, Tamiya TCS...those race ads are usually in our magazine to help promote.

Lets take another example that's brought up...rock crawling. Some people don't think it's big. "I've never seen one" and so on...but you don't do it, why the hell would you see a crawler at an on-road track. They "compete" in the woods. But lets put that aside and look at the amount of products and aftermarket support. It's huge. It's also seen in our 'Racers Rides' where we get readers sending lots of pics of crawlers. If it really was so small would all these pics come in, would all these companies make bodies, tires, speedos, kits? Would one of the few companies, Axial, have grown so much selling basically crawlers?

If you were just at an on-road track you'd never see this. I do.

Everybody seems to skip the fact that I race on-road and actually I'm pretty good. For somebody who doesn't race all the time like I did I can work it. I'm pretty proud to have made the B-Main in the Nitro Sedan Nationals...bumping up 3 times. So don't try and tell me I'm putting anybody down. I'm just looking at facts and trends.

You want "fix it" but even the companies that live on this can't fix it. I can list some of the problems.

1. 1 run tires...the are still useable but pace is off .5-1 second a lap
2. Too expensive
3. Too complex
4. Probably the biggest factor is that...you can't "play" with an onroad car. It's a track car. 85% of the market never goes to the track...even less buy onroad. So you'll never get a kid with a 416 playing in the street and then saying "I want to go race'. Back in the day parkinglot racing brought new people in, it was in front of people. Now we race in some random place in front of nobody. The influx of new people died.
5. The break way too much. I don't want to see anybody argue this. When you crash with a TC you pray it doesn't break...when you crash at 40mph 10 feet in the air with an 1/8-scale you hold full throttle and wait for it to flip over on the wheels.
6. No realism...although it's trying to come back
7. It's out of style (everything is trend an cyclical).


So I have to laugh when people as ME what I'm doing...what the hell are you doing? Are you setting up tracks at the mall? Are you doing anything but race? Or is it somebody elses job to make what you like more popular.

Considering many don't seem to agree with my opinion...why do you think the media or my magazine will help?

So don't read this and get upset, if we want to talk why things are down, we can. Seems like most people would rather be hugged and told "we'll do it' than discuss facts and ways that things can be changed....but mostly we'll just call me a moron, prick who doesn't know anything and continue with "why isn't it bigger?"

I'll see everybody in vegas. I'll be running a bright green WGT and 1/12-scale.

MonkeyFist

iTrader: (7)

I'd like to see more on road coverage too, but I think Derek brings up many good points. I think we as racers need to be more "open". By that I mean having parking lot races to gain exposure. My local track is in a place where most non RC people would never venture if they lived to be 100. While that is great because we don't get hassled by neighbors, is also sucks as nobody come to see races, except the people that already knew the track was there. I has seen guys complain that they don't want to run on anything but a preped surface because they don't want to scratch their chassis. WTF is that??? Attitudes like that have killed the parking lot scene almost entirely.

On a side note this thread seems to have gotten WAY off topic.

Any word on any new on road hard ware we should keep our eyes peeled for?

Donny Lia

Can't wait to hack the crap out of you! Ive been practicing in my backyard with my T-Maxx, made a slalom with cones, sharpening my skills.

Owen RaCing

iTrader: (17)

Derek,

You the man. You get the award for being straight up and honest and not giving a flaming crp about who cares. Keep writing a magazine I like to read.

Maybe im wrong here, but I would think that a RC Magazine is a business. And like the most prominent business in RC, everybody's local hobby shop, they cant stock (or in a magazines case, feature a article on) something that wont sell. Its sitting on money. Its something that in these times cant be done. They would be taking pages of there magazine that could be turned into a great article that would be a hit with whats popular. Anything that will have a high chance to not be one of the unread pages of that months issue for 80% of people.

It would be like one of those tabloid magazines you see on the checkout counter of your local super market having a article on something that was "news" 3 months ago.

pakk

iTrader: (80)

is there crawler competitions? I wanna watch one.

Johnny Wishbone

iTrader: (6)

I think this is where you're missing the ball. Why wouldn't you do a review of whichever car wins/won the next big RCGT race or for that matter each of the class winners of a big race?
Look at it this way, first it not only shows others that the old cars compete in those classes, which could bring out even more racers. Doing a in depth profile of the winners car could also show what "new" products that where used to make the win possible, and that could possibly create more market for the other manufacturers that never get their due recognition.
Do that for each of the bigger races, the winners get some press, the products get some press, you get enough articles to cover you for the next 6 months, old cars in those classess get pulled off of the shelf and raced, you stimulate the class and the economy, everyone wins.
All you have to do is look how popular a thread like the "Show your best wiring", or the "Pics of RCGT" or the multitute of others in this forum, now get the mags to take it to the next level.

bkspeedo

iTrader: (5)

Good job Derek. I love on-road racing and it's my favorite by far. But it's not a magazines job to decide what type of racing should be popular. They can help when something starts to show a trend but not be the instigators.

A great example is the Slash or now Short Course truck. This type of vehicle has probably brought in more new people to RC than any other type of RC land vehicle in a very long time. Why? Because there cheap, easy to drive, durable, cheap to repair, and can be played with anywhere.

I think the downfall of on-road is the cost and limited places to use the cars. Your right, very few people that buy a $500 car are going to play with it in the street especially since they break so easy. Companies like Xray, Tamiya, Schumacher, Corrally etc need a gut check and adjust there prices back to where they should be.

Here's a good example; you can buy a good 1/8 4wd buggy in the $350-$500 range which has more plastic, aluminum shocks, machined aluminum parts and chassis, and over more material. A good TC car cost $500, Why?????

Sorry for being off topic but this is also a sore spot for me as I've seen on-road in my area go from 70-100 entries every Sunday during the summer to 20 in the last two years. I guess us on-roaders will need wait for the next cycle to come around.

niznai

Get onto youtube. There's plenty from all over the world. One must be living under a rock (ahem) to not notice the crawler world spinning up. The place crawls with them (hmmm, bad pun). There's one even in my house in the TC workshop room.

Depending on where you live you might have some right under your nose (if you're in California that's for sure judging by the number of vids on 'tube).

You need to get out in the field though. Rocks don't usually come into the city (or they get removed if found).

niznai

It is surprising to me how few people understand the nature of the hobby they say they love so much. As you understand it is not a magazine's job (and if you read my posts you will see I was amongst the first to point this out) to talk up something or other, you (and others; I am not trying to single you out or condemn anyone) seem to think there is some plot amongst manufacturers to fixing prices or what not.

That I think is just not true. They have costs they pass on. The TC market being one of low volume in good times, the prices need to be high so companies can recover their investment and make a profit (which I think is on the slim side anyway). In lean times (as I think we experience right now), it can only be worse for the manufacturers. So their choice is up the price or get out of the bussiness.

One good example of good management strategy is Tamiya who base their top end TC kits around existing entry level cars, so most of the research and design work is done and paid for by the cheap kits. For companies like Corally for instance (and others without a whole lineup of cheap kits) the whole expense has to be recovered from sales and since they don't count on too many sales, the price goes up. A lot of things are connected here too, for you can not invest a high production capacity factory when you are not sure you're going to sell 100 or 1000000 cars. Everybody is going go wiht a low production capacity to save initial investment and this can have adverse effects on the production volume (see again Corally's latest car which is simply unavailable (sold out), and my guess is that they just don't have the production capacity sorted out). Either that or they're short on cash and are waiting for more cash to build up from sales.

And I am pretty sure if they could bring the price back down without loss of performance (which would tax their sales immediately, who wants to buy a car that's not going to be competitive?) they would do it.

There is also the negative effect of other areas of the hobby developing and raising costs like modern battery technology, motors and electroncis. that all takes money away from what we can spend on new cars. So don't blame the manufacturer. After all, it's just like with the magazines. They can do whatever they want. If they want 1000 bucks for their car, it's up to them. The market will respond (and you suggest one response already - slowdown in sales as people turn away from the hobby or the class).

My personal choice of answer is to buy more cars and less motors, electronics, etc. This of course is limiting the choice of class I can race, but I am cool with that. Recently I bought my first brushless system but that was primarily a financially motivated decision. I have realised that having to replace black can motors three times a season would cost as much as buying one brushless system that if would last me two seasons (at least, otherwise it is not going to pay for itself) would bring about the added benefit of reliability, consistency and low maintenance (hopefully). Time will tell if my decision was good or not, but even if it turns out it wasn't, at least I tried something new and I will learn first hand what the technology is capable of. And I am not ruling out going back to black cans if numbers don't add up in the financial department. My brushed equipment is not for sale!

Team Lotus

DerekB, you are taking this way too personally. No one here was attacking you or calling you a moron or prick or saying your opinion is invalid. Actually, I thought you felt our opinion was invalid. At any rate stop taking this so personally! Also, I do not discount oval racing as that is part of on-road as well. Where I live we have a carpet oval that is raced on Saturday nights and I do race there. I have nothing against oval, however I do prefer road course.

You do make some valid points and I thank you for that. We on-road fans are just fustrated that our favorite form of rc cars seems to be getting the short end of the deal by the magazines and manufacturers and we are trying to affect some change here. You may not like our methods, but it seems the concept of asking politely does'nt work so we wanted to try a direct in-your -face approach to at the very least get a dialog going which is what has happened here. Hopefully this will lead to more discussions and more people, magazine editors and manufacturers will get involved and maybe together we can do something to improve the on-road racing scene.

Keith Billanti

iTrader: (15)

DerekB=

Good post. Not going to quote it-- makes the post too big.. but well said.


KB