ASK Cub Reporter, 02.28.1013, Version- Your Honest Questions, My Dubious Answers

“Scale” short course comments

As a long time – 30 years – RC enthusiast and racer, I feel that you guys are way off the mark with your “scale” comments lately regarding short course. The class will never grow if we don’t move it more and more towards performance. We cannot go back to Slashes and hard “realistic” tires. Do that, and the best selling RC kits in a long time will wither and die.
Also – dish wheels are not only scale and realistic – they look cool.
Tony F.

Cubby– Yo hey Tony, thanks for the email and congrats, I’ve just proclaimed yours as “letter of the month”, thereby entitling you to a free (and quite uber) BigSquidRC t-shirt. Be sure and shoot Brian your snail mail and shirt size so he can hook ya up.

Don’t ya just love America? The land where everyone can have their very own opinion, one that can never be swayed.

There is a reason why DE Racing and JConcepts are selling “dish” short course rims, people like you Tony. You dig that look and that is totally your right, it’s part of the beauty of America.

However… my view is different than yours. I regularly “quiz” muggles on things like “How does this truck look to you?”, and I’ve found they immediately warm-up to a scale looking SCT, and come up with some pretty baffling answers when shown an 8th scale buggy or 10th scale “stadium truck”. It only goes to reason that if most “outsiders” find SCT’s attractive and inviting then that’s what we should be racing.

And… going to scale looking tires has absolutely nothing to do with going to a rock hard compound tire. On the full scale side of things, I don’t know if you’ve held a full scale SCT race tire in your hands lately, I have, and I can assure you
it was not composed of a rock hard compound. On the small scale side of things, a tire in M4 compound doesn’t “look” any less scale than one molded in the rock hard stock Traxxas compound.

On that subject, do you think it’s impossible to have a great performing rc tire in a “scale” tread? I can tell you from first hand experience that the stock tires on the Axial EXO Terra Buggy are phenomenal. They provide great mechanical grip on blue groove and drive like champs out in the fluff. Nobody talks about the EXO tires because they are rarely raced, but I’ve driven them on well over a dozen tracks from coast to coast, and while they do not give quite the traction of the preferred tire at each track, they are Amazing on a wide variety of surfaces. Given some development time I have no doubt that a company like Pro-Line could put out scale looking tires that would amaze you. Based on this I see absolutely no reason why scale looking tires are not mandatory in the SCT and SCB classes.

You say “The class will never grow if we don’t move it more and more towards performance.”. Here I think you sound like some sort of hard-core long time rc racer. Racing isn’t about knocking tenths off the track record, it’s about beating the guys you lined up against. Rc racing is horrible about it all being about knocking out faster lap times at any cost, not about actual competition, and really that’s one of the many reasons rc racing has become the joke that it has. And you say you’ve been in the hobby for “30 years”, but if you actually knew anything about rc racing you’d know that faster does not mean more fun or higher turnouts, far from it.

Lastly… you mention that dish wheels look realistic? Realistic to what, cars running on the Bonneville Salt Flats? In case you’ve never seen a full scale SCT wheel/tire combo in real life, HERE are three pictures. The pics are representative of what every truck in the TORC and LOORRS series are running. The photos were taking by me at a TORC race last season and I can absolutely assure you I didn’t PS them to remove a dish (LOL). If you still think I’m full of it simply Google Image search “TORC Racing” and see how long it takes before the first “dish” wheel pops up.

And finally… have you ever thought about what you can do for your hobby? Just because you can run UFO looking dish wheels on your SCT does that mean you should? How many muggles see you driving/racing each year? Do you want to leave them with the impression “OMG what the hell are those things?” or would you rather leave them with “OMG those trucks looked awesome!”?

Hey Cubby, I have a question to you I have an hpi blitz with all stock.. im looking
to upgrade it with a brushless system Im thinking about buying the castle creations
sv2 4600 So here is my question: Can I use this brushless system with the stock hpi
radio and receiver??
Thanks! (no name given)

Cubby– Hello Mr No Name. I’m about all written out after Tony’s email so I’ll keep it brief. Yes, a Castle system will work with your stock HPI radio gear, but I’d recommend the 3800kv SCT system for your Blitz. Why? Because it has a bit more torque and it’s a lower kv, meaning it’ll be easier to gear properly, it will run cooler, and it’ll have more low end snap.

That’s it for this week folks, shoot me your questions, answers, comments and various rants to Cubby at BigSquidRC dot com. Get free stuff (read stickers) when your email hits the big time, and maybe even win a free t-shirt if your email is extra kick-a$$.

YOUR Cub Reporter