THE Cub Report, Version- You Wreck Me
Well hello there, my name is Cubby and yours is not. This is THE Cub Report, sometimes a weekly rant, sometimes just a bunch of totally made up stuff, but always full of “it”. Glad you made it, lets dive in…
Damn, Ryan Dungey is crushing it. He won his third straight AMA Supercross Saturday night in Oakland, now some moto industry types already calling the series over. A normal Dungy is hard to beat, this year’s Super Dungey is going to be nearly impossible.
Someone that didn’t have a good Saturday night was “Super” Sage Northcutt. The amazingly talented (and Ryan Dungey look-alike) Northcutt was set to be the next big thing in the UFC, but an early tap against Bryan Barbarena’s arm triangle (from half guard) now has to have a lot of people hitting the rest button. First the golden child Rousey gets pummeled, then Sage loses, what’s next, is Coner gonna get owned by a nun? That’s what I love about live action sports, you just never know what the ending is going to be (another example- Cooper Webb in the 250 main Sat night!!!).
HPI Racing owned the Nuremberg Toy Fair this year. No, our guy Igor wasn’t on the ground to shoot pics and snoop around all the booths this year (he was actually on American soil), but a lot of the manufacturers did a great job getting out word on their new products to us media types in the states. Topping that list was HPI, a company in a state of change, but they are charging hard into ’16. They had a slew of kick ass releases and did a great job of communicating with the world wide press to make sure consumers found out about them.
Btw… of note from HPI, the Venture FJ just about brought down our website the day we posted the under-body shots of it. Previously, the most traffic our site has ever received was the day we posted up news about the X-Maxx, but the under-body shots of the Venture FJ crushed all our site records for most people on-line at once, most in one hour, and most in a 24 hour time span (btw, broke all those records by nearly DOUBLE!!!). This tells us two things- scale rc is still coming on strong, and that HPI hit the nail on the head with the Venture FJ. Unfortunately, the FJ is rumored (you know how I love posting those rumors!!!) to still be a ways out, but the sooner they can get them on American shores the sooner they can start raking in the money. And by the looks of the numbers we’ve been seeing on the website, they better bring extra Brink’s trucks to haul it away.
Horizon Hobby also had a solid Nuremberg show. Yes, they pre-released a lot of cars a couple of weeks ago, but they still had some nice surprises for the show. The biggest in my mind is the uber new Spektrum DX6R. For a long time Spektrum has had decent gear, but they’ve never made a hard play for the top of the heap. The DX6R brings a LOT of new tech to the plate, a lot of tech we’ve been waiting to see from one of the top players for a very long time. If it feels good in hand, and if it works like advertised, even I will cut the check for one.
Btw… after talking with insiders over at Horizon, it sounds like they’ve worked long and hard to increase the range on their Spektrum radios and to fix some of the smaller gremlins on the AVC stability control. We have yet to test one of their latest systems, but we have been told that range has been much improved and that AVC won’t limit turning radius anymore. Good for them for working hard, can’t wait to try the new gear.
Snowbirds went off last week, once again with a big turnout of on-road racers. But I wonder, was every on-road racer in America there? Because I can’t find any locally. On-road is beyond dead at a local level, Snowbirds is lucky that the few that are left are willing to spend a week in Florida every January.
Oh ya, and in perhaps some of the biggest news I have heard in a long time, there is a local club/FB group (RC Freaks of St Louis) that has opened a dedicated bash area. It will be open every weekend from 10 am to 4 pm just for people to bash (cost is $5 to get in). The bash area has some big dirt & wood jumps to catch air, plus it has an area for rock crawlers, an area for the trail crowd, and they are planning on much more. I have long wondered if a “bash only” entity could take off, so have a lot of other people in the industry, and we are about to find out in St Louis. While a track seems to be good for running away about 80% of the people that step inside the door, a dedicated “bash only” track shouldn’t have that problem. There is no expensive transponder to buy, no marshals to get ticked about, nobody on the stand losing their sh!t because you accidentally tapped them, it could be future and we should find out it can keep on going in the coming months. So far they had 15 entries last Saturday, then 70 on Sunday, they are off to a good start. Maybe the wave of the future is to indeed tear out the loop and just go bashing only, time will tell…
So there ya have it for this week, get out and support your local hobby shops and bash spots when ya can…
YOUR Cub Reporter
