UK Slot Car Festival 2014

Last Saturday, Andy and I conducted our annual pilgrimage to the UK Slot Car Festival at the Heritage Motor Centre.  Beautiful weather for the first long journey in my new MGB on some fabulous A-roads.  The show was a little bigger and is now spread over two days.  As well as a large number of traders and manufacturers, there were lots of tracks to try out and appreciate.  Our favourite amongst these was the Targa Floria track and we chatted to the creator about the design and techniques used.

Another highlight was one chap's Italian Job project.  This had started with the minis and a wonderful scratchbuilt coach (which had powered braid inside so the minis could be driven up the ramp!) but grew to encompass all the main vehicles in the film - police cars, jeep, digger, the Lamborghini Miura that gets trashed at the beginning of the film (in both perfect and trashed versions!).  A really great job.

Another new product from Steve Ward of Penelope Pitlane caught my eye - genuine 1:32 scale go-karts.  There have been a couple of models of go-karts produced by Scalextric and Ninco.  The Ninco in particular are great (Andy probably has the largest collection in the country!) but at 1:18 scale, they are over-sized for my layout.  The new ones really are tiny but the scale is perfect.  They come as a kit but here's the couple painted up that were on display at the show.

In my continuing search for unusual pairs of cars to race against each other, I bought a couple manufactured by Carrera modeled on streamlined German cars from 1937 - the Auto Union Typ C Stromlinie and Mercedes-Benz W25 Avus Stromlinie (it says W125 on the packaging but it's definitely the W25).

They are huge cars with removable covers for the large but very skinny wheels.

They run very fast and have magnets fitted in the centre of the chassis and ahead of the rear axle.  I took the rear magnets out to slow them down, help get the rear end out and make them more interesting to drive.

Scalextric Challenger - the imaginary friend

When I'm testing out new cars, keeping the slots clean, or just having a quick blast on the track, I've often wondered about having a second car running around the track.  The quick and simple solution to that is a rubber band around a controller holding the trigger partly in.  This gives you a car at constant speed - not a great competitor as it has to be slow enough for the tightest corner - and isn't great for the controller.

After a bit of googling, I came across a product called Scalextric Challenger.  This seems to have been sold for a couple of years around 2004.  Web reviews were varied but if it worked, it was what I was after.  These occasionally come up on eBay second-hand but seem to be quite costly and hard to get hold of.  Amazingly, I managed to find one brand new in stock in a railway model shop on the South Coast.  I snapped it up.

From the box cover: 

Pit yourself against the intelligent race system.  Challenger learns any circuit then races it to the maximum.  New Mercedes CLK with on-board computer intelligence.  High tech trackside control gantry with LED countdown.

 Inside the box you get the car (I have the alternative black version), a strip with a pair of magnets, a set of controller keys, and the control gantry and base.

Out of the box, here's the bits needed with the gantry put together.  The magnets go under the track so that the car can detect where the start-finish line is (I just used a flat magnet as this one clips on the side of the track, which can't be done with borders fitted).  The control gantry takes a couple of AA batteries and is effectively a remote starter for the car - IR transmitter at top, with red and green lights for countdown underneath.  On the back are three buttons to instruct the car: Learn, and two race modes Slow and Fast.  The controller keys are for different manufacturers systems and replace the usual controller so that full power is sent to the track at all times.

To use it, you place the car on the track near the start-finish line and it will slowly creep forward until it detects the magnet.  Then press the Learn button and the car does two slow laps, its on-board processor memorizing the track by recording the position of the guide as it goes round.  After two laps, the car will stop again at the start line, you press a Race button and it goes off at speed when the lights turn green.

So does it work?

No, not out of the box.  I found the car much too fast even in Learn mode.  It would deslot on my hairpins and after helping it round those so it could actually learn the track, as soon as it was at race speed it would come off on many of the corners.  Very frustrating.

Some websites suggested truing the tyres or swapping them for slicker ones.  That didn't help.  But some suggested an extra magnet to keep the back end from swinging out on the corners quite so much.  That worked!  With the addition of a bar magnet behind the rear axle (initially blu-tacked, but to be epoxied next) the car stays on the track all the way round, and proves to be a challenging competitor.

Here's a short video of the car learning and then racing my home track.



It's also an unforgiving competitor.  Of course it doesn't stop until the end of the race, so it won't slow down to let me catchup after I de-slot and, much worse, it won't stop if I've come off into its lane - it will just pile on into me!  So I may wire in a momentary push button at the controller key which will act to switch the car back into creep mode.

Of course I'd rather be racing against a real person but this is an effective extra challenge when I'm using the track on my own.

Mercedes McLaren

The Scalextric Club Car for 2010 arrived today - the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 722 GT.

The "722" refers to the victory by Stirling Moss in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR with the starting number 722 (indicating a start time of 7:22 a.m.) at the Mille Miglia in 1955.  This model is highly detailed (unfortunately not with the gull-wing doors of the real thing) but I fear that rear spoiler isn't going to last long...