# RC Driver Magazine - Jan 2005



## hankster (Jan 1, 1998)

I got my issue a few days ago and figured I'd make a few comments about it. Feel free to reply with your own!

Overall, great issue as usual. I personally like the mix of articles (boats, battle-bots, etc.) they have been doing lately but I know others that wish they would stick to cars and trucks. If you take the time to read those other articles you might just get an idea or tip that you can use with your car or truck.

My favorite topic is the how-to and tips articles and, for the most part, reveiws are my least favorite.

When I read the how-to's or tips, sometimes I think "duh, everyone knows that", but then I guess that maybe everyone doesn't know that and there needs to be tips and how-to's for all levels. In the end I figure if I can learn one thing per issue the subscription is worth it.

I feel the best articles this month were the Making Your Car Faster article (sometimes you just forget the simple stuff), the Setup Sheets article (again sometimes we just need to be reminded), Shop Talk and the Flashback article... too funny!

For the most part I find Reviews pretty worthless. It isn't just RC Driver, but I have yet to see a review of something that was bad. Pick up just about any Computer magazine and you will see a review of something that they recommend you don't buy. I'm not sure where this "no bad review" mentality has come from with RC mags, but having it, IMHO, greatly reduces the value of good reviews.

My biggest gripe this issue was the Comm Drop Article. It shows they tested 10 brands but only gave results for 5 brands. What does that say of the other 5? Were did they stand? Or was this just another "no bad review" thing? The article could have been really useful, but the exclusion of 5 of the tested products not only left me wondering "what the hey", but almost mad me mad. At the very least an explanation of why the test results of those 5 were not given would have helped.

This isn’t a rip on RC Driver, overall the mag was great and is why it is the only RC mag I subscribe to. I know each of us have different ideas on what we want to see and the only way they can improve is if we give constructive feedback. Notice I put constructive in bold... I explained where I had a problem and offered a viable suggestion on improvement.


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## tfrahm (Nov 14, 1998)

Hank -- Basicly, I think we are of "one mind" on this one... RC Driver is still probably the best RC mag out there, but...

Regarding the comm drop 'test', I also noticed some confusing things -- I think it was the Hurricane drops, where the Hurricane web site listed one of them as a BUSHING LUBE - NOT a 'comm drop'...

CORRECTION: It was the Finish Line Blue Lightening that, on the Finish Line web site, is listed as:


> Item Number: 1200
> Item Price: $5.50
> Blue Lightning Bearing Oil


Note it says "Bearing Oil" -- According to their web site, Finish Line's comm drops are RED and called "Hot Sauce"...?


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## PITBULL (Sep 25, 2001)

I have a feeling Hank and everybody else kinda hates it when someone mentions r/c airplanes.I know this is landlubbiers r/c car site.lol.But I have been heavily involed in r/c cars and r/c planes for a long time especially the airplanes.I have raced onroad,offroad,oval,slotcars,and just about anything else with wings or wheels.You could say I am kind of nut when it comes to these types of things.I totally agree with Hank about reading things in the mags you would not normally read.I get Model Aviation mag.When you join the Academy of Model Aeronautics,(AMA)(a requirement when joining a model aeroplane club) you can get this mag.really cheap.When reading this mag. I read things I normally don't read.Most people read the section that pertains to what they are flying at the time. I read things under the free flight or control line or even glider sections.The stuff I learn is amazing sometimes.I read a few of the r/c car mags.but honestly to me I have not read very much that intrests me.I learn more from peo-ple at the track.The pics. are real cool though.The AMA mag is THe MOST interesting hobby mag. I know of.There is not much in the way of r/c cars in the AMA mag.but they will mention them if it is interesting enough,like when a new batt. hits the market that could be used in elec. aircraft or something along those lines.I also think that the r/c car industry or clubs or some of the mags.,,or some of the tracks, (the way they are run etc.)and some of the bigger races are held , could learn something from the r/c airplane community AND vice versa.. I am not really saying there is anything wrong at all with the way things are being run now in the r/c car community. I am the kinda of a guy that is always looking for a better way..At some of the big r/c airplane contests being held across America some of the winners are taking home some big money.. Why isn't that happening in th r/c car community?There sure is enough talent out ther to validate this.I think it would give the r/c car community a big big lift.I think it would put the talent in the right places and the weekend racer in another place.Like I said there is a lot of talented people out there racing that dont get the recognition they deserve.. on the other hand mabe r/c cars and its mags. are still in its early stages.People have been racing building and tinkering with r/c model aircraft a lot longer than r/c cars have been around.I personally watch in aww at some of the r/c drivers just like I do watching the pro r/c airplane flyers that sometimes take home big big money.I know that some of the top drivers get paid good to race but I dont know of a major race that has like a 250,000 purse and limits the entries to dozen of the best from around the world.....The way I see it there are some big things still yet to come in the world of r/c cars,,from the backyard basher to the racer and racing events held across the country..


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## Trixter (Oct 8, 1998)

This is not my attitude but the track operator where I race seems to think that awarding money for prizes is "gambeling", yet at the height of all of their racing they offered small trophies or 'Track Bucks' (which were redeemable at the shop). Now you tell me, was there gambeling. Anyway he is a strange duck and it was his way or 
"There's the Gate". Well anyway I have always thought that there should be a division for pro's only and another for the rest of us. there have been a couple of atempts at this with various organizations, but I too agree with Pitbull that maybe we haven't been here long enough. and our ""Audience Participation"" hasn't caught on the way flying has. The thinking of most folks is 'Boys with toy cars racing for bowling trophies', or all R/C cars are from Radio Shack (no slam on Radio Shack). We've not been able to raise the perception of what we do to the higher level. It is slowly coming up with the help of R/C TV and Magazine coverage, but we need to crack the shell and become mainstream. Many experts have tried to figure this out and it has been discussed on every forum you can imagine, but it is going very slowly. I live in an area that has a SHOPPING POPULATION of about 100,00. There are two hobby shops here, one is nothing but R/C cars and the other is all hobbies and bicycles. The all car shop had an offroad track for 17 years and had to close and move to another location because they lost their lease. No room for a track at the new location. So we have been 2 years without a track. We are trying to get something going but so far we are struggling to get a place for a track. The nearest tracks are about 1 1/2 hour drive in 3 directions. All outdoor offroad, so it is very seasonal. Part of the problem here is that there are just too many other outdoor activities to do and I know that some day it will take off again but I am having trouble waiting. In the mean time I will tavel to the other tracks and have fun.


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## garyk (Sep 9, 2003)

hankster said:


> I feel the best articles this month were the Making Your Car Faster article (sometimes you just forget the simple stuff), the Setup Sheets article (again sometimes we just need to be reminded), Shop Talk and the Flashback article... too funny!
> 
> My biggest gripe this issue was the Comm Drop Article. It shows they tested 10 brands but only gave results for 5 brands. What does that say of the other 5? Were did they stand? Or was this just another "no bad review" thing? The article could have been really useful, but the exclusion of 5 of the tested products not only left me wondering "what the hey", but almost mad me mad. At the very least an explanation of why the test results of those 5 were not given would have helped.


Ok, a few things that will clear this up:

Ten total drops were used. I don't know why the Hurricane Red and Blue did 
not wind up in the article photo, as I do not work in the office and don't 
do the article photography. I personally handed 2 packages of drops, one 
with the Red and one with the Blue to Erich when we were both in Chicago for the RICHTA show.

ALL 10 drops were tested, not 1 or two. The purpose of the article was to 
demonstrate the best of the best in drops. There were more than 5 drops 
discussed in BOTH the stock and the 19T results. All of the drops improved performance. There were those that did very little. Instead of concentrating on the also-rans, I focused on those that excelled and WHY. Not everyone knows what dyno numbers actually mean, and that's why I focused on WHY X drop was better than Y drop.

Is this the end to this article? No. I wanted to include a track test 
section to it, but there is only so much information that I can cram into 
2-2.5 pages. There simply wasn't enough room. I will tell you this, 
the results for the other drops tested showed extremely minimal gains. Like I stated in the article, I did spend over 12 total hours cleaning, prepping, dynoing, recording, and completing these tests. Hope this clears things up a bit.


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## tfrahm (Nov 14, 1998)

Gary -- Thanks for the info...

What can you tell us about the fact that the FastLane *Blue* Lightning is listed on their web site as "Bearing Oil", and their 'comm drops' are *RED* and called 'Hot Sauce' or something like that... The RC Driver article said the 'Blue Lightning' was what was tested...?


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## hankster (Jan 1, 1998)

I still think it was a mistake not to include the results of the other 5 drops, no matter what the results were. That would be like having a headline "We test 10 stock motors" but then only give results of 5 of them. It doesn't make sense from a readers stand point.


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## garyk (Sep 9, 2003)

Yes, it was their bushing and bearing drop that was tested. I didn't realize it until I was boxing everything up to send back to the magazine. I was sent the wrong bottle for testing. Goes to show that you shouldn't be afraid to test and experiment things.

Hankster, space became an issue, thats why the information was provided the way it was. Again, the text was used to explain a quite a bit instead of just relying on the charts. Let me ask you this: when have you ever seen a comm drop test like this that provided any hard numbers? It doesn't happen. To be honest when space bacame an issue, I did look at is as a reader (as one for 12 years before I got on this side of the keyboard). I could care less about the stuff that finished 6-10 as a reader, I wouldn't plan on using it. I would be more interested in the top performers. Just sitting here I realized that I could have provided a 1-10 listing, it just wasn't something that came to mind at the time. Again, this isn't the end of this subject either, and when this gets revisited there will be some changes made too. 

I don't know if it was from a H-talk user or not, but I received an e-mail from someone claiming that advertisers influenced the results/charts/etc. I just want everyone to know that this is 100% untrue. I didn't even speak to the manufacturers to get the product from them, it was taken care of at the office and the product was sent to me. One person even slammed Novak claiming that it was because they sponsor the column that they applied pressure. NO MANUFACTURER ever clears what I write before it gets published. I tried to do this experiment in a super controlled environment because I wanted as true results as possible. To imply that a manufacturer had any sway is simply silly. Just think about it this way: If I were going to be influenced, why would the smaller companies be the ones that came out on top and not the big boys? I think that just adds further credibility to this article.


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## hankster (Jan 1, 1998)

Thanks again for taking the time to post. Not sure if the email was from a member of HobbyTalk, but there is a lot of suspicion on advertisers influencing articles when we never see one that does not recommend a product. Not to harp on your article as it was a well done article that did give great info, but the exclusion of products in the chart that weren’t up to snuff does nothing to help that perception. I had to go back and look again but other then the List of Competitors and the Links, there is no mention of the other 5.

Maybe a year back RC-Oval did a comprehensive test on a dozen or so comm. drops. I went to look for the article but it seems the RC-Oval site is down.

There are a couple of reasons I was interested in the other brands. One was that there is an "outspoken" advocate of Tribo and I was just wondering if your results were the same as RC-Oval's. You didn’t give the results of Tribo but your explanation that they offered little to no advantage shows that it most likely is the same. Second, if I was a user of one of those 5 brands excluded, I'd want to know where they stacked up to want you found to be the best or even against the others that weren’t listed..

Again, thanks for taking the time to read all this stuff. Please don't take it personally. I know how much work a review can be and it never fails that you miss something or have a different opinion then someone else. Overall, the article is great and I look forward for the remainder.


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## tfrahm (Nov 14, 1998)

Hank -- YGM...

(copy of RC-Oval test)


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## hankster (Jan 1, 1998)

Thanks Tom... no date on the article but I'm sure it was at least a year ago. Looking at it again, 8 brands were tested and results for each given.


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## Razoo (Jan 15, 2004)

Garyk-
It was a great article, I guess I'm in the minority here but I assumed that the drops left out (6-10) were not worth reporting ,so it wasn't an issue for me. And your absolutely correct, even if you did report drops 6-10 I wouldn't even think about purchasing them.


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## garyk (Sep 9, 2003)

Razoo said:


> Garyk-
> It was a great article, I guess I'm in the minority here but I assumed that the drops left out (6-10) were not worth reporting ,so it wasn't an issue for me. And your absolutly correct, even if you did report drops 6-10 I wouldn't even think about purchasing them.


That was the general idea and why it was formatted that way.


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## garyk (Sep 9, 2003)

Oh, and Hank, as far as Tribo...they were #10 on both motors...The Trinity, Orion, and Niftech drops were a toss up for differences on either motor type for 6th-9th. Which drop do you use, I can post results on here if you'd like.


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## hankster (Jan 1, 1998)

I don't use drops. Since I race mostly off-road I've found by and far they do more harm then good  Besides, in off-road, maximum motor power is not the most important part... that's left to tires... but THAT is a whole other article... 

I personally would be interested in the other results... even though I don't use drops. It would just be interesting to see just how far they were behind.

Facts.. facts... we can never have too many facts!


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## garyk (Sep 9, 2003)

Here's the results from the 19T motor tests. I'm too tired to do the stock but the variances were similar just for comparison sake. These show the first run of results that were done on a Fantom dyno
Orbital 2R 19 Turn	Power @ RPM	RPM @ Seconds	Torque
Motor 1 Baseline:	61.38 @ 9444	17716 @ 2.20	0.929
Motor 2 Baseline:	64.14 @ 9575	18084 @ 2.20	0.958
Motor 3 Baseline:	67.34 @ 9839	18163 @ 2.00	0.990

Hurricane Red	67.95 @ 9952	18342 @ 2.00	1.007
Hurricane Red	69.45 @ 10053	19294 @ 2.20	0.979
Hurricane Red Average:	68.31 @ 9995	18690 @ 2.13	0.987

Power Shot	67.37 @ 11223	19039 @ 2.30	0.965
Power Shot	68.25 @ 10059	18517 @ 2.10	0.977
Power Shot Ave.	67.00 @ 10819	18675 @ 2.20	0.963

Slick/Zero	69.21 @ 10099	18491 @ 2.20	1.079
Slick/Zero	68.49 @ 9880	18570 @ 2.20	0.997
Slick/Zero Average	67.37 @ 9990	18487 @ 2.20	1.004

Trinity	Power @ RPM	[email protected] Seconds	Torque
best	[email protected] 11364	[email protected] 2.20	0.968
average	67.78 @ 10397	18731 @ 2.33	0.973

Tribo 
Best	65.78 @ 9810	18352 @ 2.20	0.968
Average	63.73 @ 9735	18034 @ 2.30	0.965

Orion 
Best	67.35 @ 9911	18282 @ 2.00	0.976
Average	66.76 @ 9883	18184 @ 2.00	0.97

Niftech 
Best	66.54 @ 10209	18698 @ 2.50	0.94
Average	65.24 @ 10686	18474 @ 2.30	0.928

Zubak 
Best	[email protected] 9951	18599 @ 2.10	0.972
Average	63.98 @9758	18356 @ 2.45	0.937

Hurricane Blue 
Best 67.29 @ 10009	18211 @ 2.10	0.984
Average	66.63 @ 9944	18280 @ 2.15	0.987

Finish Line 
Best	69.20 @ 11444	18855 @ 2.10	0.978
Average	67.20 @ 11309	18662 @ 2.15	0.963


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