Originally Posted by TAMIYAMANUK

Cmotif any sign of these Irn Brus yet matey or have you eaten them already

Originally Posted by psy87

The International Racing Team originated on Trinity's TechTalk back in the winter of 1999, during a time when the Internet was actually a lot smaller than it is today, and "TTT" was the premier forum for chatting about the R/C hobby. At the time, chat rooms were not as prevalent as they are today, and certainly not specialized enough to cater to a community as specific as R/C. IRT was formed in the wake of what most of us old-schoolers will remember as the original online R/C club, BRT (Biff Racing Team), which grew into legendary status over time. Biff is still around, actually I saw his post right here in this thread. Many other R/C clubs were formed in the wake of the IRT, such as the Maverick Racing Team and others. We were all friendly rivals in that we strained to recruit members for our own sub-communities. Some of you might even remember the fiasco that was the attempted MRT/IRT merger, quite an incomprehensible maneuver in hindsight. To be sure, "Maverick Racing" and myself were just kids then and we really had no clue what the hell we were doing.

While TechTalk was a good primordial soup for the R/C online community, with the popularization of the vBulletin forum standard, there was a new forum born. RCtouring.com was the grandaddy of this site, RCtech.net, and it quickly exploded into a cleaned-up, more organized forum than TTT. IRT was one of the first clubs to make the switch to RCtouring, and there were some bitter bannings and actions of the like from us spamming TTT forums with RCtouring advertisements. However, I'd like to say we contributed the initial glut of dedicated, informed and informative members to RCtouring, part of the reason why the forum grew so quickly.

RCtouring met a sudden demise though, which I still never have gotten an explanation for. Simply put, one day, the site just went down and never came back. Myself and other moderators never found out the whereabouts of the owner of the site (whose name is lost to my memory), but I do remember Troy (TSR6) hypothesizing that the owner just got absolutely drunk one day and deleted the contents of the site in a fit of rage. However, the community needed somewhere to go, and Futureal quickly set up a new, similar site with less of a focus on Touring Cars and a more general atmosphere. RCtech.net was born.

Now, to back up a bit, the IRT was in its heyday on RCtouring. Some of us met up and raced together, with two meetings in Merced, California hosted by the ever-generous Cmotif and his church community. Myself, someguy, and ez2win (original IRT members now long-out of the hobby) made the trek up to central California from our San Diego base and had a great time racing and hanging out with some of the earliest IRT members. Glad to see that a few of you are still around. Soon after RCtech became our new home, however, myself and a few other of the original IRT members exited the hobby of R/C. At this time we were in our later years of high school and pressures from school and changing interests prohibited our deep involvement with the R/C hobby. Most of us never really returned.

The Internet is a funny thing, though, and now that the IRT is in its 7th year of existence and holds status as one of the oldest R/C clubs on the net, its still alive, mostly thanks to the dedication of several core members, most notably Cmotif. Once in awhile I drop by, usually thanks to the reminders of someguy (who messaged me today telling me he'd posted here) though I do not race R/C any longer and have not been involved in the hobby for years. As Cmotif said above, some of the reasons for the club's shrinking are due to the evolution of the Internet and more and more specialized clubs, communities, and forums. The IRT was founded at a time where the community was so small and tight-knit that we were truly an international club sharing the same interests. Today, so many people have Internet access that smaller, more focused groups have taken center stage. Regardless, the beauty of the IRT was always in its diverse membership and the feeling of camaraderie amongst members across the globe. That ideal won't ever change.

So the founders may have exited the hobby, the team itself might have shrunk in size, and a full members list has been lost in the vast swamp of digital mess and computer evolution that has occurred over these 7 years, but the IRT lives on. If we had kept an accurate numbered list of members, the IRT would, by my rough estimate, comprise of over 1,000 members strong. The team started as an idea and a single thread on TechTalk, but has evolved into an ideal that has had a profound effect on the online R/C community and the lives of several R/C racers themselves, most significantly the original group of kids from San Diego who like to play with R/C cars. What started as a club formed by online alter-egos of teenage kids became a living, breathing community of hundreds of racers from around the globe of all ages and backgrounds.

IRT has grown up and is aging gracefully. So are the people who were here when it all began. The kids from San Diego grew up and left the nests and went off to college, leaving hobby and home behind and spreading out across the West Coast. Mike (someguy) now attends the University of Oregon in Eugene, Cliff (ez2win) is studying photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and I am attending Stanford University in northern California, all of us sophomores. Our lives have all been touched by this club, and we've remained great friends, as we've all known each other since we were in the 2nd grade. The IRT played a huge role in our lives, and we're glad to see that it lives on within its membership.

Perhaps there will be a time when we dust off our now-ancient R/C's and relive the olden days. Until then, always a pleasure to stop by and chat with the crew.

-- Paul aka psy87
IRT #1