Originally Posted by
1/4milecrazy
The hobby is what you make it. You do not have to dump thousands of dollars into it to enjoy it. I have 30 something R/C vehicles, 1/24th to 1/8th, crawlers, race buggies, trucks and truggies, pan cars and touring cars, quad copters, bashers and racers, nitro and electric.
An RTR crawler and a playground or parking lot can equal hours of fun without high dollar investment. Anybody that thinks you have to spend a boat load of money to buy the best 1/8 nitro race buggy kit to have fun is not gonna enjoy it. Nitro itself can be a huge downfall to the hobby. The sound and smoke may attract people to the hobby initially but the maintenance and tuning might turn them away. Also hobbyists need to be ambassadors. If you are out bashing and a group comes up to you showing interest in the hobby YOU are responsible for pointing them in the right direction that will keep them interested. Also racers need to lose the chip on their shoulders. How many racers have you seen that decide they dont want to help a new racer, or even give bad advice? Experienced racers need to be mentors.
No offense, but I disagree with most of that. It's too simplistic to say "racing is what you make of it". The reality is you spend $1500 on your gear, and when you constantly go to races and are surrrounded by guys who spent twice that - the guys with a spare kit under the table, 20 sets of NIP tires, a spare OS Speed, and on and on, you'd have to have an incredibly thick skin to not feel some pressure at some point to spend more to keep up. No, you don't have to, strictly speaking. But the pressure is built in to the hobby.
IMHO it's largely due to the racers themselves. Constantly striving to be like a pro, when so SOOOOO much of it is nonsense. The average club racer doesn't need a modded Speed and shouldn't need a second kit. But the push is always there.
Seven or eight years ago racing was much more.......... egalitarian. You could buy a Go motorbox and show up to race and not feel woefully underequipped. Now everything is über hyper uptight, with pages upon pages of forum threads talking about fractions of mm and whether 7-10-3 is betteror 7-10-2.5. Or whatever..
Moving on, nitro is not a problem. Nitro rules. Electric racing is so boring it's like a dissonant tear in the fabric of the universe. It's watching-paint-dry boring and silent, and still costs a ton. It has all the atmosphere of cleaning your room as opposed to the rock concert of a nitro heat.
And no, I don't have to be an ambassador for anything. The hobby is money and time intensive enough. Most people can barely keep up. I couldn't, on both counts, which is why I'm out of it..
Oh yeah, and one more thing - racers' constant hungering after whatever's
new new new leads to the very ugly aspect of RC which is that nothing has resale value, as a buggy is perceived as "oudated" sometimes after less than a year on the market. I saw a used RC8T with Novarossi engine and decent servos in top condition go for a 150 bucks recently. But the simplistic idea persists that equipment is what wins, as if it's nearly as important as the driver and setter-upper.
I love nitro, and after MT's died out, I got involved in racing just to keep running nitro, mostly. The rest of racing is way too boring (1mm or 1.1mm?.., 30 wt in the shocks or a mix of 27.5 and 30?..) and up-tight. And in the last years the price has definitely gone up steeply. If numbers are shrinking it should be no surprise to anyone afaic.
It also just takes way too much time. Having to show up on Friday afternoon and leaving Sunday evening is just not in the cards for most adults.