Woody,
I'm curious to see how your SMCs work out. A couple years back, they were having big issues with their Lipos, major puffing, etc. and those batteries were NOT cheap. $90-$100+ each! When the company was asked about it since it was happening so often, they came up with a million things you had to do to take care of their batteries. I can't remember the list as I didn't have any of their batteries, but it seemed pretty lame to me. A lot of racers at that time quit buying them because of the problems. (There was also a thread on tech). The puffing was MAJOR - I knew some drivers that had them. But it may be remedied by now, so let me know how they work now if you get them. I may need to pick up a battery or two, or maybe I just need to stop balancing them so often. Sometimes I even take them off the charger too soon. I tried straight charging a pack a couple days ago and it actually balanced the cells out higher and better than using balance mode, and the battery had more punch. In balance mode, sometimes my battery will "time out" too, but in straight charge it seems to do fine.
Not sure how much we'll make it out there to the track this year. Looks like
8th scale is dominating now and it looks to be geared more for 8th scale. Nothing at all wrong with that, so don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I know the 8th scales are capable of so much more than the layouts you had last year. And I'm glad you are getting more guys to run with. That makes it way more fun. But I think our little 10th scale stadium trucks will basically be "jam cars" now and mostly in the way. I am enjoying the photos you are posting and like seeing how high the vehicles can jump. I think you are doing a great job with the photos. Those cars are not easy to photograph at their speeds. Thanks again for starting this thread. Take care!