THE Cub Report – AE At The Front Again?

Here we are folks, another beautiful week in the rc hobby. Thanks for making the jump over to BigSquidRC, one of the best rc news/reviews sites on the web (but that is JMO, LOL). For this week I’ll start off with…

Back during my “heyday” of rc, Team Associated was known as the technology leader, but in recent years that was not so much the case. However, a couple of weeks ago AE released the RD10 no-prep drag RTR. While there are cars on the market like the Traxxas Funny Car, there just aren’t a bunch of RTR no-prep rigs on the market. No-prep cars are made from 1/10th scaled 2wd short course trucks, and with Associated having one of the best available (the 2wd SC10 platform), it was a no-brainer for them to put one out. The surprising thing to me? They did it before anyone else. As a longtime, hardcore AE guy, it is nice to see AE pulling holeshots again!

In recently years, AE hasn’t been known for starting many new classes, or for jumping into relatively new ones in a quick manner (scale crawling for example). To take scale crawling for example, the Enduro is a top notch rig with definite AE swagger, but it was released after most of the other brands had jumped into the category. Their DR10 drag car is right at the front of the pack ready to start winning on local streets this spring.

Last week AE announced another new product, an IFS Suspension Kit for their Enduro crawler. There aren’t many of these on the market either, and the AE unit looks extremely well thought out. And while “most people” could care less about any brand of IFS suspension kit (read- bashers that send it, not our scale readers), it shows me that AE has their foot heavily on the gas! That IFS project probably wasn’t an easy one to get the green light for, yet here it is! To me it really looks like AE may have just crossed the apex of a very hard corner, and seems to be coming out with a lot of fire for 2020! Man, I hope they not only keep their foot on the throttle for new products that are ahead of the curve, in fact, I hope they hit the nitrous oxide button. AE has been too quiet for far too long, is the beast awakening???

Also… the crew at Castle have been strangely quiet for the last couple of years. However, after announcing a new 1/5 BL motor a couple of weeks ago, they made HUGE news in the bashing world this week by announcing the 1/6 Mamba Monster X 8S. Why is this particular speedo a big dealio? Because, at a sub-$200 price point, you can now get a high quality Castle ESC that will work in sub 1/5th scalers like the X-Maxx, UDR, etc. On top of that, it comes with some of the newest wizardry from Patrick and his crew that has been shown to do a great job of keeping the Mamba Monster X 8S quite cool compared to its competitors when pushed hard. Better still, it just might be the perfect speedo for the hardcore 1/8th bashing scene. For all you 1/8 speed run guys, long jump guys, etc, the Mamba Monster X 8S costs less than many of the ESCs you guys are running now, but should be a very sturdy replacement that works on 8S. I need to shoot Tim Gluth an email and see if he can talk Patrick into coming back on the BigSquidRC Podcast, I would love to hear more about their plans for the rest of the year. So far Castle has been crushing it.

So there we have it folks, yet another edition of ASK Cubby is in the history books. Until next week, support you local hobby shops and bash spots whenever ya can.

YOUR Cub Reporter