THE Cub Report, 07.05.09

Welcome Squid fans, to yet another riveting edition of THE Cub Report!

Rc’ers are still talking about ‘The Hack’. So what was ‘The Hack’? Well, it went down at the ROAR electrics nats last weekend in Nebraska. In the first A-main of 2wd Mod Buggy, Maifield and Tebo were running first and second. On the last lap, Tebo pulled a spectacular pass for the lead by jumping over the top of Maifield. The next corner, which turned out to be final turn on the track before the loop, was a fast sweeper. Ryan Maifield tried to force a pass there, but got in to Tebo, causing both to crash, letting the uber affable Ryan Cavalieri take the win. Remember me bitching about one lined tracks a few weeks ago? The Omaha track, like 99.9999% of the tracks in the country, was extremely one lined. The only option to get by another driver of similar speed was to take a big risk, or wait for them to bobble. In the Maifield vs Tebo case, Ryan made a bad decision and tried to pass where it was simply impossible. A true “hack” is classified as being intentional, and I have no doubt that Ryan wasn’t trying to take out Jared. Many people are flipping out that Ryan intentionally took out Tebo, but their crashing together dramatically decreased both their chances of winning the 2wd mod buggy title, and in fact, Cavalieri ended up winning the overall.

ROAR has started trying to enforce a more strict “rough driving” penalty. Once again let me appeal to the tracks, as contact will always be a factor the more one lined a track is. Btw, I heard ROAR’s enforcement is partially due to me talking about how nice the RC Pro Series is because they constantly monitor rough driving. If The Cub Report is partly responsible for this, I’m very flattered, but something they should have been doing without constant prodding.

So, several of the racers at the ROAR electric nats left their trophies behind. A racer leaving their trophy on their pit table, or throwing it away, is the worst insult a racer can impose on an event. One of the head cheeses at ROAR went on-line after the event to cry about the racers doing that. They also post veiled threats to unnamed racers that because they chose to leave their trophies behind, it will be held against them in the future. First off, racers only leave trophies if they feel like they’ve really been sh*% on, and it takes a lot for racers to even consider leaving trophies behind. Secondly, like I’ve mentioned in previous editions of The Cub Report, the sanctioning body at a race is there for two reasons- to provide rules, and to provide officials. It is not appropriate for a sanctioning body to make veiled threats to unnamed racers on internet message boards. It only proves how unprofessional they are. If the sanctioning body truly has an F’n problem with a racer, suspend their membership, ban them, whatever, just don’t cry about it on-line.

So Horizon has been getting their butt kicked on new truck sales. You see a kid walking into a hobby shop with $200, you see him walking out with a new Slash. Well, last week Horizon released a teaser on their upcoming short course truck under Losi badging. It’s about damn time they jumped into that game, and very unlike Horizon to be so far behind in a product segment. Let’s hope the extra time it took them to jump in results in something truly spectacular, like electric 4wd with working lights and a chrome package. 🙂

Btw, I am constantly begging Schumacher to use their proven Cat 4wd platform as a base for a gnarly short course truck. So far, I’ve been deprived. I guess I can keep dreaming about throwing a massive 3S Li-po roost off all four tires of my brand new Schumacher short course truck at all the lesser 2wd’s. I love to dream.

All the pieces are in place, the Big Squid RC Li-po Shootout is gonna go off this weekend in Chicago. Yup, we’ve got the balls to do it, and yes, there were even a few manufactures with enough balls to submit packs. At this point, it looks like a real war is brewing. Thunder Power, SMC, CheckPoint, CORE, and more are ready for battle. We’ll be testing 10 packs total, with only ONE winner at the end. We’ve got 6 test drivers, ten ICE chargers, a half dozen power supplies, a CE Turbo 35, and a half dozen Slash’s lined up for testing. As a teaser, the testing criteria are- 1. Capacity, 2. Top Speed, 3. 30 amp discharge voltage under load, 4. Weight, 5. Price, 6. Fit, and lastly, 7. In Car Performance. Yes indeed boys and girls, we’re gonna make a bit of rc history this weekend, doing on honest shootout.

That’s it for this week. Support your local tracks and hobby shops!

Your Cub Reporter