As a kid my brother, who every now and then gets confused, and I received a Model Motoring racing set for Christmas. It was one of the old Sterling Moss sets with the controller that was actually a small steering wheel. We had a lot of fun with this set. My brother even decided at one time these little cars didn't slide around enough. My brother may have dementia now, but back then he was just plain demented! So, he decided to mix these Thunderjet 500 cars with a track he applied oil to in the turns. I shake my head in amazement concerning his ideas sometimes. Needless to say this did not make for good racing. This kind of play was not really race oriented as it was all about foolishness and not competition. This set my mind set against HO scale for many years. HO scale is for kids and is not for real racing.
When my children were small I bought them a HO set to play with. At this time the cars had started having magnets under them to hold them to the track. I tried to drive these cars and found they did not slide in the turns and you either made it around the corners or they flew off violently. The cars were over powered for the track and it was nothing like the 1/24 scale I had been racing. To say the least I hated it. It reinforced my opinion it was not real racing but only a toy to be played with then discarded. At this time Tyco was also coming out with "Wall Hangers". These were pieces of track that would turn and go up a wall. Due to the strength of the magnets the cars could actually go straight up the wall make a turn and come down without falling off the track. In fact the magnets were so strong you could take a piece of track with a car on it and turn it upside down without the car falling off the track. As someone who raced 1/24th scale on large routed tracks it went against everything I thought slot car racing should be. My opinion was these cars and tracks were toys for kids and nothing more.
Let's face it. HO scale has been marketed to the 6-10 year old market and that is what most people think about it. Even today there are HO scale sets that are theme sets designed to draw in the little kids. Why should any adult take the scale seriously. A year ago I wanted to set up a track at my house. I only had a 4'x8' area to work with so I did not have room to make a decent 1/32nd scale track. I really didn't want a HO set up as that was only for kids in my mind. So, I set up a 1/43rd scale. I bought a SCX set and made a very nice track on a 4x8 table. I even went to the trouble of creating a second layer on the table to match up to the track making the surface the same level as the track surface....a flush mounted track. No guard rails needed, the cars without magnets would drift around the turns in a controlled manner. The problem was the SCX track was created in such a manner most other brand cars would not work on it properly. I stripped out the wiring and wired up a 12 volt battery for a power supply. Now other cars worked on the track, but it still wasn't fun. The cars didn't handle well and were too fast for the layout space. I guess there just is no substitute for 1/24th scale. Today, the track isn't even being used it is just taking up space in my house.
I still have the desire to have a track at my house. Plus, I now have a space that is about 10'x5' to work with. That still is not enough space for a decent 1/32 scale track. I don't want to set up another 1/43 track as I just didn't care for the cars. Mind you the price was great, this is the cheapest of all the scales I have looked at, but building the track was a lot more fun than driving the cars. HO is for kids so what am I going to do?
I decided to swallow my pride and just look at the HO scene and see if they have anything other than Dukes of Hazard race sets and Monster Truck sets. Yes, I still see plenty of those. Enough to make me say forget about it. However, I continued to look and saw a set that made me think maybe the HO scale IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO REACH OUT TO REAL RACERS. I saw the Tomy AFX Super International set. This set allows you to build, if you have enough space available, replicas of 17 different actual F1 tracks. This intrigued me, but I still had a negative attitude about the magnets on the cars. I thought, this might be fun if you had some of the old T-Jet cars. I mean you could actually drive around the turns and have the "slot car" feel to it. I decided to investigate farther.
What I found out is, yes there are still the majority of HO scale tracks designed for 6-10 year olds, but there is another side of it. I knew there were home race clubs around the country with plastic tracks. I felt these were probably losers who didn't have a 1/24th scale track close by and raced these tiny cars out of desperation. I also found out there were some serious racers out there and these home clubs run by losers may actually be a little more serious about this than I thought. I found out there were some people who were doing extra work to their tracks to create a better racing surface than the plastic track put together on someones dinner table.
I found out people were putting materials under the track to remove some of the "clack, clack" noise of the cars going from one track section to the other. I found out some people were soldering the rail joints to make a better connection between track sections. I found out people were throwing away the plastic track lap counters and hooking up computers to the tracks for actual race and timing management. In other words there are some people who are actually making a plastic track into a real racing surface. They are putting a lot of work into these tracks to make them better than what they were designed to be.
I found out the cars, while mostly having traction magnets, have improved and have become something more than a child's toy to run up the wall without it falling off. While I am still not confident that I would like magnet racing I am willing to look at it with an open mind. I have found out there are different grades of magnets you can use for traction. To someone who is not well versed in this form of racing it seems it would be a competition to see who can make a car go all the way around the track the fastest without letting off the throttle and without coming off the track. Where is the driving? I recently watched a video of 1/24th scale world championships in the open class. The constant comment was "They are just holding it wide open, There is no driving involved". After studying the situation more I discovered it is not hold it wide open on a good track. No you can't slide the magnet cars around the corners but you do have to control how fast you go into and through the turns. Unlike 1/24th scale these cars do not slide out, they just go until they break adhesion. At that point they go flying off the track. No it is not like it's big brother 1/24th scale, but it is still driving as hard in the turns as you can without deslotting.
I also found out a lot of other people must feel the same way I do as there are a huge number of T-Jet racers out there. These old T-Jets do not have magnets for traction and give you the slot car feel a 1/24th scale racer would look for. I also found out that the T-Jets have various armatures you can use and other improvements. In fact all across the spectrum of HO scale cars there are available modifications for the serious racers. I even saw one chassis that was being manufactured you could buy in three different stiffness ratings. What I have found out is you can do pretty much anything with these HO scale cars you can do with most 1/24th scale cars. The controllers are just as sophisticated. Yes, you can still use the little controllers that come with the home race sets, but there are also controllers made for HO by the same people who make quality controllers for the larger cars.
In other words, the HO scale racing has grown up. There is still the kids track stigma, but there are people who have taken it way out of that arena and made it a competitive hobby. HOPRA (HO Professional Racing Association) seems to be the largest and best organized organization in serious HO racing. This year they had over 650 entries in the national championship races. The cars these people were racing are serious slot cars. The cars are very sophisticated and so are the tracks. This is much more than a kids race set. There are HO scale shows all over the country. I can only figure these are like swap meets and draw a good number of enthusiast.
Back to the home race clubs. Some of these clubs are featuring multiple tracks. They will set up a series where one week they will race on one track and the next they race on another. I have seen numerous clubs where there are 3 or 4 tracks involved. Each track is different and presents different challenges. Not everywhere has these kinds of opportunities. I look around my own area and what I see are kids play sets and no serious HO racers. In my area we have a 1/24th commercial track available, but in many areas they have more people showing up to race HO than we have racing 1/24th scale.
How sold am I on HO scale with everything I have learned? I am going to build a HO track at my house. It will take the place of my disappointing 1/43 scale and I am going to have a ball building it. Anyone who knows me knows I tend to take things to the extreme so the track I build will be no different. Here are my plans as they currently exist. First, this WILL be a plastic track, but it will not seem like a plastic track. I am shooting for a routed track feel. It will not be a track you can take up and change the layout. It will be a permanent layout. The track will actually be a scaled down version of a Blue King track. It will be 4 lanes instead of 8 due to space limitations. It will feature a huge banked turn at the end of the main straight followed by the dead man turn, finger, 90 degree turn under the overpass to the do-nut which takes you to the lead on turn. Yep, a complete Blue King layout. The construction will begin with building a 5'x10' 6" table. In order to not use rails in the turns it must have borders. These borders will be all the way around the track giving it a "gutter" on the inside as well as the outside. The problem here is borders for a plastic banked turn. In order to achieve this my plan is to actually build a Blue King track as if it were going to be routed matching the banked turn with the plastic banked turns angles and radius. Building the "bed" for the plastic track to be placed on will be simple except for the banked turn. The "bed" will not be on legs but will set on the table except where supports are needed for the over pass, around the do-nut, the lead on, and part way down the main straight to make it smooth. AND, of course, the bracing behind the banked turn. the "bed" will be two layers thick. One layer will be for the "bed" and the other will be there to serve as my borders. It will be full width of the "bed" and I will lay the track out on this piece of wood. Once the track is in place I will trace around the track to have a full outline of the track. The top layer will then come off and I will cut out the track area with a jig saw. This will allow me to put the "border back in and lay the track in the open area giving me flush borders. I have no illusion this will be easy or quick. It will be a lot of fun building though.
The wiring will run under the table and come up through the table surface and track "bed" to attach to the track. There will be no plastic terminal track sections as they will not be needed since the track will be wired like a commercial track. Controllers will be hooked up on drivers panels like a commercial track. I am still studying the power supply situation. At this point I am looking at 2 power supplies producing 0-30 volts and 10 amps each. This will give proper voltage for any type of car plus plenty amperage for the fastest cars. This may change if I find a better idea. The timing, lap counting, and race management will be accomplished by use of a photo cell lap counter and computer utilizing a full race management program.
The track will be finished out with a long procedure. Underneath the track, between the track and wood will be a layer of felt for sound deadening. The track will be attached to the wood by either nails or screw, this has not been determined yet. Whichever way it is done the fasteners will be set into the plastic so they do not stick up. To assure good connection where the plastic sections connect I will be soldering the rails where they contact each other. I know there will be a small gap between the two sections of track side by side and there will be gaps between the track and the border. I will resolve this by using plastic putty in these area and the cracks between track sections as well as any divots where the track is connected to the wood by nails or screws. Sanding down this plastic putty should give me a nice smooth surface for racing. This surface will then be painted, sanded, painted, sanded, painted until I am happy with the finish. At this point the rails will have the paint scraped off the top and any paint in the slot will be sanded out. The track will be finished out with lane tape and section numbers for scoring purposes.
Yes this will take a long time to build, but I believe it will be well worth it to give me the home racing experience I desire. I have to snicker to myself at the ultimate cost also, but at least that will be paid for in segments as I go. I recently saw an actual American Raceways Blue King for sale on Ebay for the same amount of money, or maybe even a little less than, I will have invested in this track. So, why build this monster of labor? I don't have room for a 1/24th scale Blue King.
If you think this is silly and HO is still for 6-10 year olds, I suggest you visit HOPRA web site and explore. Maybe even look at many of the HO scale facebook pages. These people can be quite serious about their hobby.
Dude! How your memory has waned since your "accident". The oil was only put on your lane, heh heh.
ReplyDelete