You are browsing the "Losing grip" tag archive.
”The battery holder is in plastic”. While this statement is pretty far from the official description of this chassis, it is a very apt way of summarazing the design of MST’s FMX 2.0 LCG KMW. I have tried not to, but it really is impossible to refrain from commenting on a chassis that forces you to squint when you look [...]
In the never ending pursuit of speed, Control and precision, lightweight front axles entered the game a little while ago. The theory is that shaving off (rotational) weight improves acceleration – the wheels spin easier, which in turns improves handling. A lot of you readers will be familiar with the 1:2 ratio: shaving a pound from the tires is the [...]
Yo! G’day mate! What’s up bro’! Hej! How do you do, Sir? If you’re preferred greeting is along the lines of “Yo!”, rather than “Hej!”, you’re probably American, and when it comes to RC, you’re lucky. Do you realize just how lucky you Americans are, when it comes to RC? Probably not, so let me tell you. As per routine, [...]
The most exciting release from any of the big drift manufacturers the past few weeks has been a magnetic body mount from MST. In other words: things are pretty quiet. But it has to be said that MST’s body mount set looks quite nice, way simpler than the ones I have, and simple tends to be good. Still, not overly [...]
Last week I promised to show you some amazing builds, and true to my word, I will. Earlier, I have featured works by Vivian Grobler and Thirdie Lopez, today I make the first installment of Losing Grip’s official Hall of Fame. How to go about finding great builders? Well, easy, it is 2020 and we have Facebook. I asked a [...]
I have had the good fortune of spending eighteen months of my career in a position where I was flying around in a helicopter as my main mode of transportion. Some 250 return trips and rougly one hundred thousand miles flown, meant that I got to listen to pilot’s chatter quite a bit. See, I was sitting in the back, [...]
One thing (at least) you got to give Doug – the Monster Truck guy – and that is that he is very, very productive. That dude is producing solid axle monster trucks at an incredible rate! Clod this, clod that, all of them really good looking and most of them green. I wish I could spit out drifters at just [...]
”Utilitarianism” is not a tongue-twister first and foremost, but a book published by the British philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1863. It is one of the most influential philosophical works of the nineteenth century, and is still frequently quoted. Sometimes in even places as random as columns on RC drifting, something I am positively certain Mr Mills never would have [...]
Is it reasonable to expect that the writer of a drift column called “Losing grip” will never stray from the intended course? Of course not. Travelling in one direction, but with the nose occasionally pointing in another is the very essence of drifting, isn’t it? I hope Brian will forgive me this transgression, but considering that he so far has [...]
Did you watch the video Traxxas released for Father’s Day, almost two weeks ago? This one. On Father’s Day, as it were. I usually watch every Traxxas video as soon as I see them anounced on BigSquid, but not this one. The title was just a tad too cheesy for me: ”Dad & Daughter TRX-4 Hill Climb”. Too obvious. Dad [...]
Would you believe it? 3Racing has announced a new kit, and today exactly one year has passed since the very first Losing Grip column! I will let you decide which one of the two events is the most significant. In a way, I am leaning towards the first one because the D4 is a legend, but then on the other [...]
A couple of weeks ago I looked into the geometries behind camber progression – the way camber increases or decreases druing acceleration, depending on the angle of the upper link. Today I will continue on my endeavour to better understand how, or rather why, different settings affect things. One parameter at a time, to keep things simple (for me…). Having [...]
A couple of grand things has happened this week, Brian has setup an official BigSquid email for me, so should you want it, you can write to me at martin at bigsquidrc dot com. Also, my wife read one of my columns, for the first time ever. She got hooked by the quote by Shakespeare and couldn’t help but continuing reading. [...]
”What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” Wrote Shakespeare, in the second scene of the second act of Romeo and Juliet, a bit over four hundred years ago. The scene is a classic. Juliet compares Romeo, who comes from the rival family Montague, to a rose and argues that he is [...]
In logic there is a term called reductio ad absurdum. It is a way of showing that an argument is untrue, by following its implications logically to an absurd conclusion. Any statement that contains universals such as ”always”, ”never” and ”everybody” would be highly likely to be exposed as false by this. However, that is not relevant to this column. [...]
