Your first time in R/C

[Bash'er Maxx]

Being the student of human nature that i am I love listening to peoples stories. Let's hear your story of your first experience with R/C. Mine was in the mid 80' my uncle at the time who built R/C planes bought a Tamiya grasshopper and a Kyosho pegasus. Not even in my teens at the time I couldn't believe the speed of these things. Now I own a tamiya hornet, wild dagger and a traxxas E-Maxx. Short story but hopefully entertaining. Lets here your story.

[secondhand_rc]

got into RC in 1987 with the tamiya blackfoot (still own btw) progressed to a rc-10 competition edition (also still own) up to my 2 recent cars a 2.5 t-maxx and a losi xxx-nt and hope to have more!!! that's my story

[1 bad bug]

My first time in R/C was in 1998 when I got a Radio shack "Red Arrow" as a gift from my grandfather. I remember wearing the treads completely off the wheels and making my other friends cars look like they were toddler's toys.

[SAVAGE BASHER]

When I was about 10 yrs old, I was at the county fair with My brother and his friends (waiting for the truck pulls to start) and there was a guy showing off on the horse track with a Tamiya Hornet. That's when it all started. That thing was AWESOME. We all sat on that grassy hill and watched him spin dusty donuts and power slides on the loose turf with that buggy until he ran out of batteries to burn.

[JGtruggy]

I had many of RC's as a kid. But in 2001 is when I bought a T-maxx. Not much good I can say about that rig. Couldn't hold a tune even when pros would tune it. Broke everything. Now I have a Savage 4.6 that is an amazing basher. Also running a Losi 8T, RC10GT2, and my son now 13 has an E-maxx but now wants nitro:D Very addicting hobby and I'm now turning to racing as bashing get's boring.

[dbjaime3]

Only played with my boys Walmart RC. I went to Hobby Town to buy 2 of those $30 helicopters, and left with 3 Nitro Traxxas Stampede for myself and my boys. They are sitting in garage waiting till Christmas Day.

[playzwtrux]

About 20 years ago, my parents bought me a R/C truck from Sears (I think). It was sweet. Anyway, they never would buy me a "real" one but I had a great time anyway. It was black and about the size of a Mini-T but the wheels fit in under the body. We had a hard tile (not ceramic, the cheap stuff that came in 12" squares) floor in the kitchen of our house and we would get a little soap and water on the floor and get a running start and slip and slide that thing all around. Once you went through it once it was on. Good luck getting any traction out of that thing with the soap on the wheels. WHAT A BLAST!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH the memories. Didn't get a real R/C until about 10 yrs ago or so when I traded a guy some car stereo equipment for a Traxxas Sledgehammer. Wish I still had that truck. Anyway, this is it.

[JLM]

My first actual experience with "remote control" was when I was about 7 or so, back in 81 or 82. I was a po boi, so I built a plastic rotor blade setup and mounted it onto an old electric motor I found, small, like out of a vcr or stereo or something, and jammed the two ends of wire into the wall outlet.

It was a thing of beauty for about 1.5 seconds!

After that my RC experiences were limited to crappy RC's with wires attached that only turned right in revers and went straight in forward, then in my teens I got a radio shack buggy for christmas (it went about 30kmph), had it for a few years then ditched it at my ex gf's dads place (long story, but was worth getting away, believe me!). After that I tinkered with some radio shack toys and stuff for my nephew, but about 8 months ago I bought myself a traxxas rustler xl5, quickly got bored of the limited speed/power and bought the mamba max esc with 5700kv motor. I've got some RPM, some FLM, and some TRX hopups on there. Its my baby. I've found my place in the hobby rc world and I'm never leaving :)

Next up, if I win the lottery, I wanna get the warhammer :D

heres a video of me beating the hell out of my rusty:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=39uMriPEWjo

[gene465]

My first R/C experience was when I was stationed in Coronado CA and I was deployed on West Pac in 1987 and a few of the guys on the boat were into R/C trucks one had a Clod buster, he gave me a Nikko believe it was the Rhino and I beat the heck out of that thing in the cargo area of the boat. When we stopped in Japan I purchased the Tamiya Hornet and actually had that thing until about 5 or so years ago. A RC10T came next and the rest was history! lol Raced onroad for a few years and about 6 mos ago got back into off-road again! Tried to get my teenage kids into racing on-road but they lost interest after a few races. :( Their loss! My gain! :D

[bugz2002]

wow....i cant remember how i got started but i just remember my bugging my parents to buy me rc cars. didn't get a hobby grade untill i got my own job it was a stampede. i jumped that truck soo much. loved it. now i have a t-maxx and i jump that truck like it is going out of style.

[dale_gribble]

I started in about 1985 or with a Tyco Hopper. You guys will remember that. It wasn't the 9.6v model, it was the 8 x AA model. I then graduated to a Radio Shack Golden Arrow.

From there on it was my first hobby kit- a Marui Big Bear. Which, coincidentally I just bought a NIB kit.

http://www.intergate.com/~rpurcell/rcu/fleet/big_bear1.JPG

I then got an RC-10 graphite buggy and then was out of the hobby from 91-03 or so, where now I am into it pretty hardcore.

[jsears]

Only played with my boys Walmart RC. I went to Hobby Town to buy 2 of those $30 helicopters, and left with 3 Nitro Traxxas Stampede for myself and my boys. They are sitting in garage waiting till Christmas Day.
Wow:eek: Three Stamps....Will you please adopt me? Please... Please....Please

[blitzer621]

I was something like 7 or 8 and got one of those little rc cars that only turned in reverse for a birthday gift from my grandma,it didn't last very long after I tried to see if it would drive under water. Long story short ..... I was addicted to rc cars ever since. I would realy like to get an rc boat,hang a lure from it and try to catch a fish.:D

Happy holidays to all.

[tearemupanfixem]

I had a few different cars when I was 9 and 10. I can't even remember brand names. But I knew then that rc stuff was cool. I now have 2 kids that I have introduced to rc, my daugter-8 and my son-10. An electric for my daughter and nitro for my son and me. The first time we ran them they only lasted about 5 minutes before we crashed and had parts flying. We now have a pretty good supply of parts so we can fix'em and keep going.

[Gt-bone]

My first RC was the heads up buggy. I think it was made by nicco or tyco. I just remember his head turning when I turned the wheels. I was probably about 11 or 12. Then of course I broke it so I took the motor out and glued a prop to it which got glued to a caboose I had on my HO scale railroad. The caboose had a light in it so I got power from it. What a site that was.
I just bought my first hobby grade RC In Jan. of 07. It was a gt2. I was so excited when I finaly got the motor tuned in after break-in that I forgot to pull the antenna up on my controller and it took right off into the creek in my back yard. Needless to say my first upgrade was a fail-safe. I now have a decent size collection of stuff but my Mugen MBX5R gets most of the attention.

[mx757]

well as a kid i had a radioshack flame thrower buggy (i think its stll in my closet) then i got one of the tyco jeremy mcgrath dirt bikes. i thrashed the hell out of that thing until i broke the litle battery mount of of it. i got away from them for a lng time, racing bmx from the age of 12 until i was 16 and motocross from 15 on and i still am racing moto. at one of the local motocross tracks they recently put together an rc track that they race on. when i checked it out i decided i needed to get into it. 7 weeks ago i had an accident on the motocross bike in which i broke my leg pretty badly. during the time between then and xmas i looked into rc and how i wanted to start into it. i picked up a HPI MT2 G3.0 to race and play with for now. i am already planning on my next car being the cen matrix tr arena.

[Taqrin]

Wow, this could take all day, but long story short....I have two brothers, one older and one younger, and as kids, we had all kinds of neat toys. My first recollections with motorized toys was some kind of a robot that came in its own case that turned into a sort of dump box that tagged along behind it. That and a model train layout my dad put together some how with out our knowing it and surpizing use on Christmas.
After that I started nailing motors, wheels and batteries to pieces of wood and having drag races, soon my brothers and I were into plastic models and airplains, then control lined plains and my older brother got into R/C plains and I went back to model trains, but tinkered with the plains still. I even designed and built, what I called an r/c ski buggy. It was basically a wooden body with three ski's and an airplain engine mounted on the back with a reverse prop that pushed it along useing a front steerable landing gear from a plain up front and a 2 servo radio.
eventually leaving home in my early teens and left the hobbies behind, got married and had a kid....yadayada.....some time a few years after that(early 80's maybe), as I was brousing a hobby shop, I saw a Tamiya r/c truck(can't for the life of me remember the name of it, give me a minute, it may still come to me)that had a full working suspention(leaf springs and such) a working tranny with like 6 gears and a big azz battery, and thinking "holly cow, this is wicked" but then seen the price ($400)and again saying "ditto".
Needless to say, I didn't buy it but it has always stuck in my mind.
It wasn't till some 20 years later, while surfing eBay, that I spotted this same truck, now at $1000.00, it was more like holly crap, I whished I baught that truck back when....then spotted a Clodbuster and remember seing these as a kid, baught that instead, thinking it would be neat to have a piece of history.
Well, after receiving my clod in the mail, I seen a few vids on rock crawlers and decided to turn my clod into a crawler and I did. but while waiting for parts to arrive, and scanning eBay again, I spotted something even more interesting,.....NITRO trucks, mainly the Savage truck and just had to have one....and thing started to snowball from there.....well its been a number of years now, I have over 30 trucks and my long lost hobby is very much alive and will not die till I do.

I said I was going to make it short, and this is as short as I could make it...:eek: Sorry!
My older brother is still into r/c plains, and thanks to me, he now has a Nitro truck for his kid and he wants one too.....lol....:cool:

You did say you wanted to hear a story.:D

[Bash'er Maxx]

Thanks to all who have posted on this thread. I have read all up to this point and all I can say is WOW! You guys and gals have great memories. I'm thinking of starting a new thread titled "Stories and Adventures in R/C". We have the gang at R/C driver to thank for some stories in there magazine but sometimes it's a long wait between issues. (Please don't take that the wrong way) Please keep posting other stories if you like. I enjoy reading them and thanks again.

[Mattdg67]

I got into the hobby around 2002, I was on the way to my brothers football game and I passed the hobby shop and thought it was cool, so on the way home me my brother and my mother stoped in to look around. I bought a Micro RS4 (which I still have, it's needs an ESC then I can post some sweet pics of it) and my brother got an E-maxx, which he sold in 2004 when he left the hobby.

Matt

[Philderbeast]

Man, when I was around 6-7, my uncle bought me a tamiya super beetle mt, (which I still had up untill about a month ago when I got to looking at it's chassis and thought wow, I bet I can make a trailor out of that for my e-maxx to pull my revo around). That little adventure is still in the works. But anyways, my uncle would take me to the local track wiith him, and we would run our MT's till closing time. I later, (after a job provided the cash flow), found myself getting deeper into the wild world of MT racing and bashing. Needless to say my 3 year old daughter like her little r/c's also...I will finally have someone to race in a few years.:D

[Softair0]

I started getting in to the r/c hobby on a VERY boring summer break day when i thought to myself how fun those cheap wal mart cars are and finally got myself a Duratrax evader ext. Ever since i have been addicted to the hobby and my friend has a losi xxx-t that we run together. Very new to this hobby (1 month :O) and i already want the new waterproof traxxas E-maxx.
So now every weekend i drive my parents crazy asking if i can go to my local hobby shop.

[D'mon]

I bought my first R/C back when a young teen. I bought the original Subaru Brat. About the same time as I tossed the RS380 for a 540, my Dad bought a Hornet. We used these cars to terrorize gophers and birds in the grassy fields near our campsite. I wore out that Brat, moved on to an RC10....but still miss the simplicity of the Subaru Brat engineering.....I'm glad it's back in production (and with an RS540).

[roadrunnr43]

about a bunch of years ago we went to our LHS and looked at stuff and saw the brand new savvy .25, saw the price, forgot about it. 3 years ago, I wanted someting fast, and 4wd. because my friend's older brother had an original grasshopper/lunchbox and was beating my pants off
with it against my radio shack. stumbled across the hobby again,
7 months later, BOOM! new magnum NX. now ive got my (other) friends
nitro evader BX.

a pity though, my friends lunchbox/grasshopper is now a pile o' platic in their basement, he tried to hook up a drill battery for more juice and it died

R.I.P. whatever you were

[quick5pnt0]

To be honest I don't remember my first experience in R/C cars in general. I know as a kid I had numerous toy store r/c cars. The first one I remember was a white buggy which I believe was probably a Nikko.

As for hobby grade R/C, I first found out about the hobby when I came across an RCCA magazine in a book store when I was about 12. (17 years ago) I didn't buy one right then and there but convinced my mother to go back a little while later so I could get it. I still have that magazine around here somewhere.

Not long after I picked up my first hobby grade vehicle which was a Tamiya Blackfoot that I spotted in a flea market. I asked my mother if I could get it and she made a deal with the guy to pay him off a little at a time and to pick it up before Christmas. Believe it or not it was two Blackfoots grafted together to make an 8 wheel pulling truck. The guy even took two ABS Blackfoot bodies and grafted them together as well. At the time the truck seemed to be the coolest thing on the planet to me, but I realize now that most of the modifications done on that truck were somewhat ghetto.

My first kit (and second hobby grade r/c) was a Tamiya Bullhead. After saving all of my Christmas money and Birthday money I finally had enough to place an order. Unfortunately I ordered a junk radio which when plugged into the stock MSC the receiver burned out (obviously the wiring was different). My father called the place I ordered it from and they were nice enough to send me a new Futaba pistol grip radio system at no charge. I really wish I knew what hobby shop that was because I'd love to send them some of my business now.

[Steve.M]

I had a few Nikko's, Tycos, and a Radio Shack MT that I beat the snot out of.

They were just for fun, nothing serious. Then on vacation I saw an edition of RCCA in the drugstore / pharmacy and picked it up. I read through that thing probably 50 times, circling all the cars I wanted in the Tower Hobbies adds.

Kinda forgot about it for a little while, and then got back into it and got a Nitro Sport SE for Christmas. (I think this was freshman year in highschool).

It has been an obsession ever since :)