THE Cub Report, Version 03.29.2010
The second BigSquidRC great Li-po battery shootout is nearly finished. Over the weekend the crack BigSquidRC crew performed a majority of the testing. Now we are wrapping up the photo, graph, and writing duties. Packs were submitted for this shootout by CheckPoint, Hyperion, Ace, Zippy, JGB, Winforce (the 2S 5000 mah $7.99 pack), Common Sense and Venom. Some of the results will SHOCK you, so stay tuned, as we should have full results posted in the next week or so. This is a must read if you are in the market for a new Li-po battery, or if you are just wondering if that mega cheap $7 pack you saw on Ebay comes even close to stacking up to a $100 pack.
ROAR released a PR last week stating- “Too many manufacturers have exercised too must creative license regarding the aforementioned, which compels ROAR to take decisive and immediate action in order to prevent continued and dramatic departure from scale realism in the off-road segment.” Now that is funny stuff right there, funny on many, many levels. The first, and biggest reason it’s funny is that even if you were to put an exact scaled down copy of a Ford truck body on a rc truggy, it’s still gonna look like a Martian machine. Ever notice those huge tires that stick out a mile from the body on a truggy? Ever see anything remotely close to that in the “real” world? I didn’t think so. Another reason I have to laugh is that “non-realistic” bodies in nearly all classes have been legal for years. Please oh please grab any 10th buggy body, or 10th stadium truck body and show me a full scale counter part that looks even close. Also funny is why only now, after the Bulldog/Punisher/Losi 8T 2.0 type bodies have been on the market for over a year, does ROAR decide to take action? Why weren’t there rules and/or specs already in place to prevent a body such as the Losi 8T 2.0 from being legal in the first place?
Scale realism is good for the hobby no doubt, but there is also room and even perhaps a need, for a non-scale “elite” class. In full scale, it would be impossible to find a production car that looks anything like a modern Formula 1 car. Formula 1 is the pinnacle of racing on planet Earth, and to achieve the performance that the cars do, they have to look quite Martian. The same can be said in the rc world, to get our race cars to perform at the most elite level, they end up looking Martian like a modern truggy. Certainly more emphasis needs to be placed on racing short course type trucks that look very scale, but when Drake, Tebo, and Hara are trying to go as fast as possible around a bombed out off road track, we as fans want to see them going as fast as technology allows regardless of look. The biggest problem lies where local events should be littered with short course looking trucks to encourage noobs to get into the hobby, yet every local yocal wants to race the exact same looking truck as Drake. Could you ever convince a local that while an uber but Martian Losi 8T 2.0 is cool, he really should be racing an HPI Blitz to encourage onlookers to give rc a shot? At the end of the day, ROAR has two jobs- first to make rules, and secondly to provide officials at big events. If ROAR is honestly concerned with helping take our hobby to all new “mainstream” heights, rules would need to be implemented to extremely encourage short course classes at the local level, not to waste time on banning bodies that are already sitting on dealer shelves.
That’s it for now folks. As always, support your hobby and visit your LHS, local track and/or bash spot!
YOUR Cub Reporter
