RAL

iTrader: (67)

I would love to see a decent carpet racing facility in SoCal. Traction is great.........race rain or shine. Being able to afford the square footage I can see as being an obstical. On site parts availability is definatley a good idea. At least a speed shop with the bare necessities. It would provide a testing/practice opportunity for the "plethora" of pro-racers in the SoCal area that need to work things out before going off to various carpet events around the country. Boomer Had a good idea of having a local hobby shop have a small speed shop present on the track site to sell tires, motor spray, brushes, gears parts etc. From a business sense I would highly recomend opening a track in the La/ OC area. With a decent track I assure you you'd have a successful following of racers. SoCal RC raceway is only as successful as it is because of the fact that that there is really no alternative. Provide an alternative and you will be successful.
Honestly.......I don't know how many people would drive down to SD on a weekly basis to race when they have SoCal raceway right in their back yard. Its my interpetaion that alot of the souhters california racers won't be so inclined to drive out SD every week. You've always got the die hard racers that won't even bat an eye at the 1.5 to 2 hour drive out to SD but wether those few.......the dying breed of hardcore racers...will be enough to keep the track doors open.........that I can't promise.

MarkA

iTrader: (21)

Yeah, if you want to know what NOT to do when opening a track, go talk to the people at Ricky’s RC in Temecula.

Erik R.

iTrader: (2)

The 120'x60' track size sounds nice. It would be a lot nicer than El Cajon, their slot car track was bigger than their on-road track

futureal

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Once again, the reasoning behind the SD area (as opposed to further up north) is simply that I have a house here. Plus, I am hoping that with a strong track and more local support, we will be able to tap into this area a bit; after all, San Diego is a pretty damn big place, and I know there are R/C enthusiasts out there, we just have to find them and give them a good reason to come out and give racing a shot.

We talked a bit more about parts support and decided that we'd work on getting that going before the track's opening, since the popular opinion seems to lean in that direction.

I don't think the facility would be ready to go before March of next year, but you never know. I will be back in the midwest next month and probably through November or December, and then I will be at the Novak TC Champs in January in Milwaukee and the Snowbirds in February in Florida. Hopefully by then we will have a building in mind and be ready to go.

Boomer

So, what is happening? Is this going forward? What kind of status.

Erik R.

iTrader: (2)

Any updates??

OSherman

iTrader: (3)

indeed...inuiring minds want to know...

futureal

Yes, it's going forward. I won't be able to get back to San Diego (permanently) until this spring at the earliest, and we are still looking for a building that can suit our needs. My partner in the venture has been working on that side of things.

We originally were looking at a 6000-7000 square foot place, but after visiting a few carpet tracks out here I think that I want to have at least 4 10' lanes if not 4 12' lanes available on the track, for more flexibility in terms of layout. So our "minimum" target size for the track itself is about 100' x 40' but that is still on the small side, I'd like to do nothing less than 120' x 48'. That puts us just under 6000 square feet for the track itself, meaning we are looking at a 8000-9000 square foot building to support it. It looks like rents are running in the $4000-5000/mo. range for a building of that size (industrial/flex zoned), which is doable, but a bit tougher. We're kind of torn between downsizing the track to save money from the get-go, or altering the business plan enough (e.g. retail) to make it look better on paper. Or the third option, go with the plan we have and hope that it works.

I was originally looking at ozite carpet for the surface, but after running on this newer DuPont stuff, I think that is the way to go. It has more bite, seems to wear less, and -- best of all -- it doesn't kick up fuzz the way that ozite does. Much cleaner to run on. Scott Ernst just laid the DuPont stuff down at Trackside this summer, and it's awesome. I think that Mike Boylan is using it for this year's Snowbirds as well. It's a bit cheaper, too.

The other idea I've had is to make the place a multi-use facility to keep it open 6-7 days (nights) a week. Some form of carpet racing 3-4 nights a week, and then leaving the track open for practice on the other nights while we do something else. One idea was to keep it open one night a week for a BYOC (bring your own computer) LAN-gaming arena; I've never seen anything like that, but it just might be crazy enough to work, provided it's not going to be an insurance headache for us. If anything, we could make a little extra off of it and have an excuse to keep the track itself open for one more night.

I'd also like to try and get some ramps/jumps constructed to run a little foam indoor truck racing. We do that out here and it's pretty popular. I think it would be, at the very least, somewhat "new and different" for the region. With SD lacking a big off road track, it might give people something to do with their trucks until we (or someone else) finds a place to stick a real offroad course.

Also, oval has been making a huge resurgence out here. How's it doing out there?

I am going back to SD in 2 weeks for a little while, then to Vegas for the CES in January, then on to Florida for the Snowbirds. Somewhere in there, we are going to finalize this plan and start legitimately making offers on a building. I'll definitely keep everybody posted.

Oh, and if anybody knows of a building in the area that might work, by all means let me know.

Erik R.

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for the update. As far as oval racing goes, I don't think there is many oval racers around here. The track I run at every week (SoCal) is actually an asphalt oval track, but no one has run oval there as long as I've been going there. You would get some 1/10th GTP pan cars for sure though.

futureal

Yea, it seems like the oval out here is more of a local phenomenon. They are getting 40 guys every Friday night at Trackside in Milwaukee... not bad for a "dead" class.

I wish we could get GTP Pan cars going out here again. I would love to do those in San Diego... I think that touring cars have evolved to the point that they can hook up as well as a pan car with foams... so why not just run a pan car with foams and save the money/trouble?

Boomer

and why not run a pan car which goes faster. . .

I don't think they have gotten to the point of hooking up like a pan car - we can still turn inside of them without even thinking about it and we still run as fast in stock as they do in mod. . .

but in any case, not trying to start pancar/sedan flame war. really!

If you set up shop in Northern SD, there is a good likelihood that we can bring down a class on a semi-regular basis. We've got a good number of Pan Cars that live in Southern LA County and in OC, within decent distance. Shoot, I would do it every now and again and I live in Northern LA County. . .

MarkA

iTrader: (21)

In Southern Cal. the Oval guys race at Hot Rod, some three hours north of San Diego on Friday Nights. They call 20 a big turnout and 5 of those are old dirt oval cars/trucks so I wouldn’t go out of my way for them but then again, if they wanted to show up on a night that was otherwise dead, maybe.

jbackslash

Hi,
I just moved to Oceanside and I was wondering where the local tracks and shops are located. I mostly run nitro on road, but am willing to purchase off-road or go electric if I can find someplace close enough to run on a regular basis. Any info would be appreciated.

futureal

Sadly, as far as I know, there are no local tracks at the moment, although I heard someone was putting together an offroad track in the Clairemont Mesa area.

If anybody's still interested in an update on our R/C Tech project:

I have acquired the scoring system (AMBrc) and done a ton more research on what it will take. My business partner moved out to Wisconsin with me (temporarily) and together we are running the local club track here in Madison, trying different things, rules, classes, etc. I am also travelling to different faciilities and whatnot.

So while the plan is still contingent on me having the balls to quit my current job and move back to San Diego, it looks like everything else is a go. I will keep everybody posted on it.

MikeR

iTrader: (15)

You can call up Hobbytown San Marcos which isn't too far away from you. About a half hour away is Hobby Central in Poway which will be racing this Saturday.