Marshall's Huts

I finished today the Marshall's Huts I bought at Gaydon a fortnight ago.  The laser-cutting technology increasingly used for wargaming buildings over recent years is now available for slot car buildings from MHS Model Products.  This package contains two flat packed huts and a good variety of advertising stickers.

A knife is required to cut the last little bits that hold the pieces in the frame and a quick bit of sanding to smooth the edge where those cuts are made.  The huts then very quickly press together with a little bit of PVA to hold it all firm.

At a push, the huts could be used like this, particularly as the stickers cover the brown edges in the staircase and where floor panel meets the walls, but they really needed a couple of coats of white primer to look their best.  Some of the stickers in the pack were for lesser known (in the UK) American oil companies so I chose the Gulf colours for one, and Martini for the other - both big sponsors in racing around the world.  The pack didn't include any large Martini stickers for the sides of the hut so I printed those out myself.  The finished articles:

In place on the layout...

...squeezed into the very few places left around the track where they'd fit.  Very little space left to fill now!

You can bank on it!

The exit of the second hair-pin was always a bit tricky for tail-happy cars, which would sometimes catch their rear ends on the barrier or slip off the edge of the track, and de-slot.

After a recent "box of spares" purchase, I realised I had a load more borders and barriers, so I added them along the whole left hand-side of the hill.

This gives a reliable exit to the hairpin and (once I've sprayed the borders black instead of sand) will look better too.

Andy had a banked corner section which I didn't realise you could still get, so thought I'd try it out.

I think banking that far corner makes sense but it was clear that if I used this piece of Scalextric track, I'd still have to build supports for the track leading up and out of it, as well as the surrounding borders.  Since this portion of track is all on MDF anyway, the simple solution was just to elevate one edge of the MDF to lift the entire layout in the corner, as you can see below.

That corner is the most difficult area to reach, requiring the grab handle device sometimes to avoid doing my back in when I'm stretching over the layout, so I hope the slight banking will make the corner easier to take at speed and so reduce de-slotting on that part of the track.

First large-scale digital trial

I spent the afternoon round at Andy's where we put together a decent sized track to test out the Scalextric Digital system.  We set up a layout with seven switching points - three to change between the two lanes, one for a short pit lane, and three to navigate the three-lane section.

The Scalextric Digital powerbase and display has lots of clever functionality, although it's a real pain to use.  But we set a couple of Metros driving themselves around the track, making random lane changes, and then used our cars to try and get past them.  We started with Metros ourselves until we got used to the track and then some of the more cherished cars that we've converted to digital came out to play.

One of the challenges with the computer controlled Metros is that obviously they don't come off the throttle when there's an accident ahead, and their random lane changes mean you have to watch for being side-swiped - as Andy was here by a Metro coming back out of the pitlane, de-slotting and taking a wheel off his Bentley!

My Jaguar Mk2 with Ninco chassis proved a lot of fun, if a bit of a handful at times.  Fortunately we remembered to put some barriers up which limited the three feet drops onto the garage floor!

UK Slot Car Festival

Andy and I attended the UK Slot Car Festival at the Heritage Motor Centre yesterday.  As we got near the venue, we were seeing more and more classics on the road, and on arrival found that as well as the Slot Car Festival, it was also the Gaydon Spring Classic that day.

We had a wander around the classic cars (although our favorite cars we saw were the new Jaguar F-Type and Toyota GT-86 in the visitor car park!) but the Alpina was particularly nice.

Plus a nice Capri and classic Lotus wedge.

It was also the 40th anniversary of the Austin Allegro (or "all agro" as my Dad used to call his).

There were several dozen Allegros gathered - I'd be surprised if it wasn't most if not all of those still on the road.

The actual slot car festival was good too!  It gets bigger every year (I only realised on getting home and looking properly at the programme, that we missed three of the rooms!).

Following the delivery of a Carrera car this week (Carrera is to Germany what Scalextric is to the UK), I was on the look out for other Carrera models.  They are detailed cars, good to race and cheaper than Scalextric.  I'd bought a Ferrari 456 earlier this week (my favourite Ferrari after the 250GTO):

And I found a bargain Shelby Cobra at the show:

I found another couple of rare Carrera cars right as we were about to leave the show but I can't blog about those yet as I've passed them to Louise to give them me for my birthday :-)

I also bought a good example of a motorbike and sidecar combination.  Andy has lots of these but this is the first I've bought.  It drives rather well.

Lastly, I bought an assortment of spares, a couple of flat-pack marshall huts and a bodyshell for a conversion project I have in mind.  A great day out!

Ultimate Racer sound scheme

One of the many great things about Ultimate Racer is being able to customise sounds for various events.  I've trawled the web to find more Murray Walker soundbites to add to those that come with the program, and edited them where needed e.g. to match the timing of my start lights.

I use the Windows speech synthesis for the first three events but the remainder are Murray Walker commentary and sound effects.  The table below shows the mapping to audio files.

For users of Ultimate Racer who wish to use this sound scheme, I've zipped up all the audio files and the image above and you can download them all here.

Christmas comes early for Bruce and Dick

Good to know even Batman has a games room.  Here's a great clip from an episode called "The Duo Defy".

Race Status Board

A further project using the Phidget outputs - a race status board.  I'd already made a vintage version of a race board but found it a bit high where the building was located, so had already detached the board to another location.

This left the time keeper's hut looking a bit insignificant.  I had another tatty-looking event board unused so I decided to adapt it.  I cut it up and cut some black plasticard as a backing plate.

I sprayed all the pieces black and printed out the circuit name and some labels.  I then wired up a set of LED indicators for each lane.

Not pretty but out of sight...

The Ultimate Racer software controls the lights, indicating in the relevant column for lane 1 or lane 2 who is in the lead (Green), who has the fastest lap (Blue) and who is Out of Fuel (flashing Orange when low, constant Orange when completely Out of Fuel).

I'm really pleased with the Phidget board and the extra projects it has enabled.  It's looking a bit busy under the table now, but there are still a few pins left for other ideas...

Start Lights

F1 style start lights is the second project using the output pins on the new Phidget board.

I wanted to keep the vintage Scalextric Start-Finish banner so I cut some plasticard to fix underneath.

I got five pre-wired red LEDs and connected them to some network cable which goes down the post, through the table and is wired into the Phidget board.

The five lights follow the F1 sequence of coming on at one second intervals, with the race starting when they all go out.  Here's a short clip of the starting sequence.

Also featured in this video is the latest bargain - a McLaren F1 GTR from Ninco in bright pink - which was on a three hour sale the other night at Hedley's Hobbies.

The McLaren F1 was conceived by Gordon Murray and the exterior of the car was designed by Peter Stevens (who also designed my old Lotus Elan).  In 1998, it set the record for the fastest road car in the world, topping at 243 mph.  The car features numerous proprietary designs and technologies; it is lighter and has a more streamlined structure than many modern sports cars, despite having one seat more than most similar sports cars, with the driver's seat located in the centre (and slightly forward) of two passengers' seating positions

The return of Murray Walker

Not the most nailbiting Scalextric race but good to hear the legendary commentator again!