Design, build and race your own circuit!

[WesR]

Thought you might like my new Magracing track.
If you are interested in race circuit design, racing lines, driver
challenges allied to a bit of practical model building and competitive
and skillful model car racing, this new system has a lot to offer.
Scale is 1/32, like slot racing, but cars follow a wire embedded in
the track. Almost any curve, hill, track feature can be easily
built in and the 'S' bends and chicanes need quick reactions from
the drivers. So dont just design a track, build one!
Had 2 years of great fun building this.
Wes R

[bio]

Hi,
interesting staff. Never heard of that - but I'm not really in this business, so no wonder, I guess.

One question: if the cars follow an embedded wire, how do they overtake each other? As I see in your picture, the red and blue cars seem to go on the same "track". How can the blue car overtake the red one if it's faster?

bio

[ECW Dan Selby]

This is kind of on a sidenote, but not..

Me and a pal set up a track in my garden when it snowed last year. He then got his RC car out, and we decided it'd be a cool idea to attach my iPhone to it.

I found an app that worked as a webcam. We need synced it to my computer (in my bedroom upstairs) and used it as an onboard cam.

So effectively, we were driving the RC car using my television screen which was streaming the on-board camera! the only problem was slight lag, but still very fun.

Just an idea!

Selby

[Yannick]

The "track designs" of mine which I have actually run on, are cycling routes on existing roads and treks around the area of the town where my parents live. One lap or stage or whatever you would want to call them, usually is 20 to 40 km in length. The region has rolling hills and some short steep climbs, too, so it's quite fun to cycle there. I like to include some sort of sprint stages, mountain stages and cross stages (usually along a short part of unfortified trail), too. I had to miss out on that fun for the last two summers, though, due to work commitments.

In my teens, some 20 years ago, I used to run oval races on bicycles with friends in the backyard of my parents which was lined by hedges. That was a lot of fun. The hedges provided good protection from falling outwards at the end of a corner. There were never more than 3 people actually in such a race, though maybe 5 or 6 would actually have fit onto the track. We always had to sweep the area of the track clean with brushes every time before we went racing to clear the stuff falling down from some trees growing over the track. A friend of mine and I had agreed to do the cleaning on an alternating basis, one day me, one day him. At one point, I was sick of him not sticking to our agreement, having sweeped the floor for several of his stints in a row, too. So I said either you sweep it, or we run on the dirty track. Even though he was some years older than me and, in retrospect, should have been somewhat more responsible, he said no and we started our race that day on the dirty track. At one point, he overtook me going into turn 3 on the inside line but then, his bike tripped over a plum stone, he fell and sprained his ankle. That was the end to this sport because my parents intervened.

If I was better at computing and had more patience with myself and the machine, I'd most certainly use Bob's Track Builder to let some of my racetrack designs go live in a racesim, but for that to happen, I would need the help of a patient instructor with lots of experience with this software who lives locally. So this is highly unlikely. But I have run on some of my track designs in the past, even if it was "just" cycling.

[ECW Dan Selby]

Where do you live?

I'd do it for cash. I'm unemployed and need it! :P

Selby

[bio]

... I'm still curious how the cars overtake each other.

bio