"But when I take my nitros out to a park kids and parents and grandparents stop and watch and their jaws drop. They come and talk to me, ask me how fast it is, etc.. With electric they would just walk by and not even notice. Exactly the same thing at a local buggy race I ran in recently. Three classes - nitro buggy, nitro truggy, 1/10 elo SC. It was fascinating, as in almost surreal how boring the SC's were to watch after the nitros. I noticed other people noticing this too"

I live across the street from a park and for some strange reason, when I run my electric 1/8th scale in the field, all of a sudden a bunch of kids and parents show up wanting to ask if they can drive it, how fast it goes, how much it costs, etc. At the moment, my neighbors think my electric cars are the coolest things (especially when I gear it up for 60mph speed runs), but I guarantee they would be calling the cops on my if I had a nitro.

You can't compare watching 1/8 scale anything to 2wd SC.

Nitro noise does sound cool and can attract attention, but after five minutes, the constant buzzing goes from being cool to a nuisance. Hence why most nitro tracks are located in West Podunk in the left corner of a cornfield or desert. If this hobby is to grow, it has to be more convenient for the masses.

Also, nitro noise or not, RC racing is just plain boring to most spectators for longer than five minutes. To be honest, even as a driver, I really don't like racing longer than 15-20 minutes.

I love it. It is great to finally get to see all the reasons we do this. I have to respond to one thing though that is the worst thing in Nitro. AIR LEAK

Do you know how many hours, I am talking HOURS I and others have spent trying to get to that AIR LEAK? Back to this in a minute.

I run the Flowood R/C Indoor Park www.flowoodrc.com. During every race, club or other, I am working and trying to race at least one class. Sometimes during a big race, I don't race, but it is a lot easier running electric. I cannot tell you how many races I have had where I did not get to spend any time checking clutch bearings, etc and ended up not finishing the Main because I could not check mine between qualifiers, so it is easier I think everyone will admit that.

Now this to the guy that feels like it is not really racing: I do kids birthday parties at the track. We use Electric SCT for the parties. We would run a 1/8 nitro buggy as our finale to show the kids a nitro buggy going around the track. Since I have gotten into Electric, for about the last 10 or so parties, I will race with the other guy with my electric. You are right about the engine noise. All the kids are pulling for the nitro. But they do not think the E is as fast, then they ooh and ah over that as wel. The perception with people is that Nitro is faster. For the guy that thinks he is having more fun because he is running nitro, I can tell you that is not true. It is just as fun and just as competitive and now with us running triple A Mains, we get as much run time as the nitros during the mains. We just get to split ours and I like that sometimes. Pros and cons on that as well.

Now back to AIR LEAKS. I have spent and seen others spend hours attempting to tune a nitro engine. You check the compression, you change the glow plug, you check the clutch bearings, you make sure nothing is binding. Then you get someone else to look at it because it runs good but won't idle. So, it is determined there is an AIR LEAK. It could be the fuel tank top, the fuel line, the clunk, the fittings, the front bearing of the engine, the glow plug not tight enough or not fitting properly, the screws came loose on the head, the gas tank. Did I leave anything out. Now all of this happens after all the time spent tuning. And the guy running electric are faster because they are practicing all this time you are trying to tune that damn engine. hahah. I am telling you this has all happened to me.

I have also had a perfectly tuned nitro engine and you know what? There is nothing any sweeter, nothing, than to have a perfectly tuned nitro engine. That is the ultimate in R/C Racing to me

There are pros and cons on both but I do think eventually nitro will be a think of the past. Not in my life time I don't think, but sooner or later California is going to say NO MORE. POLLUTION.

One more thing. When it is 30 degrees outside I can run an all electric race at our indoor track without the ventillation system on and keep the place warm. When it is 30 degrees outside and we are running nitro, we have to run all three of the Big Ass Ventillation fans and it is cold inside the building.

In our part of the country we race 10th electric offroad in the winter and people move outside to 8th scale tracks in the summer. To gear up and run 8th scale electric was not that much different for us as beginners coming from 10th scale electric. Everything was just bigger.

Keith.

What happened to Nitro 10th scale offroad?

step one: take engine out of the box
step two: apply engine sealant everywhere you could possibly get an air leak
step three: break in engine

That is more my point... it should be the first thing you do... not after you're ready to throw the engine into the woods cause you've had it. If you have a bad tank then your screwed but it is possible to pressure test tanks as well.... I run the JQ and the tank did leak on me and I went right to a losi tank and she held tune perfectly.

I guess in the end I feel as if a lot of people ditch engines because they can't tune but it's not their fault. If they had access to someone or some hobby shop that was willing to go through it with them they would stick around for sure. But as you can see the hobby shop owners and track owners are going to mold the hobby as they see fit. More indoor tracks, more electric. It's easier to maintain the track and people can run year round. It's more lucrative, it makes sense.....

Finding a pitman at the track is EASY. Most of the reason I race is to meet people and converse. If you stopped because you didn't have a pitman then your track failed you. You should easily be able to make a core group of rc friends that travel and race and if you can't then whatever track you are traveling to will always have a willing person to help you out.

I hate to say it but some of the reasons for running one over the other feel like cop outs. I know you switched to make it easier and that's cool but I'm always left with a feeling that in some cases (not all) that minimal effort is the culprit.

I'd like to put some of you guys who switched in front of a 600 e-heli for your first time and let you go at it setting up all the electronics to work correctly. That would weed out the effort issue vs. those who give honest shots for sure. I know that took me quite a bit of grinding out on the laptop when I first set my own electronics up for mine, even though I had 4 years in land rc already.