November 14, 2006

John Sotiropoulos is Greek 1/8th National Champion

John Sotiropoulos

Serpent have a report on their site celebrating the fact that they have won the 2006 Greek 1/8th scale championship. John Sotiropoulos claimed the title driving a Serpent 960 and benefitted from a bit of luck in the last round of the championship to have his main title rival John Arkoumanis fall out after he himself had problems.

With his main rival also encountering problems the RC Microracing driver worked his way back to fourth position enough to give him the winning margin in the standings over Kyosho driver John Arkoumanis. Backing up the strength of the Serpent 960/Mega package Vaggelis Papachristos took third overall in the championship standings.

You can read the full report here.

Source: Serpent [mytsn.com]


November 14, 2006

2006 Singapore HPI Invitational Challenge 3

HPI Challenge Singapore

Although the race took place at the end of October, the report from the 2006 Singapore HPI Invitational Challenge 3 is only online now. Being hosted at the East Coast Park Raceway, the event attracted racers from all around South East Asia including Australia. After the race was over it was Alvin Koh who had gotten TQ and won the event ahead of Ong Chee Yong in second with 15 year old Nicolas Lee rounding off the podium.

Located at the center of Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand, Singapore is one of the best countries to host an international event. With TV crews and many spectators, the event made an exciting weekend for the whole nation. HPI was the main sponsor of the event, aiming at vitalizing the RC market in Singapore.

You can read the full report here.

Source: HPI Japan [hpiracing.co.jp]


November 12, 2006

Danish Indoor Electric Touring Championship Rd2

Danish Indoor Round 2

Martin Lissau has written his report from the second round of the Danish National championships in which he finished 2nd. Martin has yet to take that top step of the podium with his new Xray T2007 having also taken 2nd place in the first round of the championship but we’re sure its only a matter of time before that happens.

The finals were not the best-driven finals in the world, but after some good battles and close racing (sometimes a bit too close) Jonas took first place. After Steen had some problems, I took the no. 2 spot and he took no. 3

Read Martin’s full report here.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]


November 9, 2006

Serpent release drive calculator

Serpent drive calculator

Belgian racer Christophe De Vocht has developed a Drive Calculator program to work out drive ratios for all of Serpents current, and some older, models. The user can input all the pulley sizes as well as the tyre diameters for it to work out the ratio, it will also suggest a tyre size to get a user determined front to rear drive ratio too. As far as we are aware Christophe has also made versions for other manufacturers too.

You can download the drive calculator here or from the 960, 835 and 720 download pages on Serpent’s site.

Source: Serpent [mytsn.com]


November 9, 2006

Team Magic E4 Concept Car

Team Magic E4

You may remember back from the iHobby show, we wrote about the new Team Magic E4 electric touring car. We were quite harsh about its 3 belt system and centrally mounted batteries and likened to a 1/10th 200mm gas car with an electric motor in it. Well that opinon hasn’t changed but these studio pictures from the Taiwanese manufacturer definitely show this car in a new light and i’m starting to like the look of it, look at how low it is….nice.

Looking at the pictures though also highlights a few issues with the E4, like the fact that the speed controller position looks like an after thought, mounted on the pinion side of the motor.

Check out the pictures for yourself here… content


November 9, 2006

Adam Rogers & Rob Fox win Rug Racers Rd2

Rug Racers Rd2

The second round of the Rug Racers Winter Series 2006 took place in Hertfordshire last weekend. The event saw dominate performances from Adam Rogers and Rob Fox, in modified and 19T classes respectively.

From the outset Adam Rogers was the favorite for this final, but with Kit Jones putting in a time that was less than three seconds behind Adam, would he be able to challenge Adam at all? The answer to this question was no, with Adam showing a commanding drive, bettering his qualifying time and showing why he is a national winner and a consistent top ten qualifier at that level.

You can read the full race report here.

Source: Helger Racing [helgerracing.com]


November 9, 2006

More on the Xray T2007 bearing problem

Xray bearing

Like we reported a while back, the Xray T2007 has a problem with the bearings not lasting the distance. This was originally thought to be the not enough lubrication applied by the bearing manufacturer, well the scientists over in Xray did some more research and found that:

The situation is in fact due to the increased precision and higher tolerances of these ball-bearings; when dust or carpet fibres enter into the ball-bearing it becomes trapped and the ball-bearing locks up and unfortunately, this tends to happen sooner than the previous batch of ball-bearings.

Nice way to put a positive spin on it there guys. Anyway click here to find out what you should do to stop this and maintain your bearings.


November 8, 2006

Olly Jefferies wins Rd1 CML Carpet Masters

Olly Jefferies

Hot Bodies racer Olly Jefferies has taken FTD and the win at round 1 of the CML Carpet Masters held last weekend. Olly recently switched to Hot Bodies and had considerable success so far, taking FTD at every event raced along with winning round 1 of the Carpet Thrashnals and now this win. It is all seen as preparation for the GP Carpet World Cup, held in Geneva at the end of November, which Olly is planning on attending.

Since getting my Cyclone I have been concentrating on carpet racing in preparation for the forthcoming GP Carpet World Cup in Geneva at the end of the month, the car feels really good on carpet and easy to tune, I am also feeling more comfortable with every meeting with the new car and really looking forward to the Geneva meeting.

You can read the full report here.

Source: Hot Bodies [hbeurope.com]