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Conference vmszoo::rc

Title:Welcome To The Radio Control Conference
Notice:dir's in 11, who's who in 4, sales in 6, auctions 19
Moderator:VMSSG::FRIEDRICHS
Created:Tue Jan 13 1987
Last Modified:Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1706
Total number of notes:27193

589.0. "GAS VS. ELECTRIC POWERED RC CARS" by STAR::WIGGINS () Wed Jun 29 1988 13:30

    
    I'm new to RC and am in the process of trying to decide
    what kind of car (off-road) to buy.  I think that gas 
    power would be fun, but noticed that most kits are electric
    and that most people in this notes file have electric cars.
    
    I would appreciate your thoughts on the advantages/disadvantages
    of gas vs. electric powered cars.
    
    Is it possible  to switch back and forth between electric motors
    and gas engines in the same car without changing radios, servos,
    etc.?
    
    Is there a differnce in speed/power?
    
    How about racing?  Are there races for gas-powered cars?
    
    Etc.?
    
    Thanks,
    Ken
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589.1Gas/Electric - Local rules prevailBTO::NOYESWed Jun 29 1988 13:4623
    
    	I believe it is mentioned somewhere else in this conference,
    but am not sure where.  The biggest problem people have with gas
    (RC type, anyway!) is noise restrictions on local club activity.  
    	Some areas frown on gas engines in cars, and won't even let
    them race.  (For example, the track in southern Vt. does not allow
    gas cars to race...just electric.  This is due to restrictions placed
    on the club by the town.
    	Best bet is to join a club in your area, and find out the local
    rules.  I have two electric cars, but have alwany wanted to get
    a gas powered Vanning...just haven't had the money, and haven't
    been able to justify the cost, since I am also into airplanes now.
    
    	You can be sure that you will find Much more competition in
    the electric class, due to the fact most people run electric.
    (It would be pretty boring to race against yourself all the time,
    if no-one else owned gas and that is what you raced!)
    
    	You will enjoy either....check out the local situation and
    decide from there.    Good luck!
    
    	Brian
    
589.2I'd start with ElectricBTO::COLBURNOne of Mike Tyson's long lost brothers!Thu Jun 30 1988 06:2816
      Another problem with gas powered cars is that the vast majority
    of them do not have reverse,which in my opinion is a big 
    disadvantage.About the only two factors that make a gas car desirable
    at all is that they are more durable than electrics because weight
    is not as much of a concern,and they go like stink!
    
      Depending on what you will use the car for should be pretty much
    how you can decide on what to get.Like Brian said,if you plan on
    racing,find out about the rules of your local club.That should
    make it simple in deciding what to get.Good luck!
    
    						Kevin Colburn
    
    BTW:Brian,is the track you are talking about in Rutland?There is
    also a track in Middlebury where races are held on Saturday.Let
    me know by mail if you want more info.
589.3Radio controlled Turkey for saleMKFSA::GOULDTue Nov 21 1989 15:4590
     
    This is from the Notesfile on HYDRA - HYDRA::DAVE_BARRY.  I thought
    it was kinda' funny, I also thought you all might get a kick out
    of it.  It DOES somehow relate to RC, cars in particular, so I put
    it here for lack of anyplace better.  
    
    Hope you enjoy it.
    
    Fred
    
		From the Boston Sunday Globe  11/19/89

				Dave Barry

			"Thanks from the ferrets"


	Thanksgiving is the special time of year when we traditionally 
bow our heads and, in a moment of quiet reflection, ask ourselves whether 
it was medically necessary to eat those last 4 cubic yards of stuffing.  
But it's also when we pause to give thanks for our many blessings, in 
the tradition of the Pilgrims, who were very thankful after that first 
winter in rock-strewn New England, a winter filled with cold and dirt 
and disease and starvation and death and hostile rock-throwing Indians.  
Yes, they had much to be grateful for, those Pilgrims, and on that first 
Thanksgiving the ones who were not totally dead yet gathered together to 
compare parasites and give thanks.  "At least we don't have portable 
cellular telephones," they said.

	This is more than we can say about the modern era.  Just recently
I went to a movie, and right in the middle of a crucial scene I heard this
irritating electronic noise, and this woman sitting in front of me reached 
into her purse, pulled out a telephone, and , right there in the movie 
theater, started having one of those vital conversations that people tend 
to have on portable phones. ("Guess where I am!  The movies!")

	Of course, I'm used to people talking in movie theaters. As far 
as I can tell, a large segment of the population goes to the movies solely 
for the purpose of having loud personal conversations while chomping on Baby 
Ruth bars the size of naval cannons.  But this was something new, a major
electronic rudeness breakthrough, and this woman should be very thankful 
that the state Legislature, over the objections of the National Rifle 
Fondlers Association, recently enacted a mandatory 15-minute "cooling-off" 
period on the purchase of machine guns in theater lobbies.

	Of course there are some technology items that we should be thankful
for, a good example being: Robo-Badger.  I am not Making Robo-Badger up.  I
found out about him thanks to alert reader J. Rhein, who sent me an Associated 
Press article by Robert M. Andrews concerning a fascinating project at the 
Smithsonian Institution's National Zoo designed to save the rare endangered 
black-footed ferret.  The zoo has been breeding these ferrets, and plans to 
let them go, but zoo biologists are afraid that when they (the ferrets) get 
out in the wild, they won't know how to protect themselves.  So they (the zoo
biologists) got hold of a Wyoming road-kill badger and had it frozen and flown
to Washington, where a taxidermist gave it a fierce pose and mounted it on
the chassis of a radio-controlled toy truck.  The idea is that Robo-Badger 
will lunge around after the ferrets, causing them to develop a healthy fear 
of the many stuffed radio-controlled predators they will surely encounter in 
the wild.

	The article also stated that the biologists have been teaching the 
ferrets to dive into their holes by pelting them with rubber bands.  I am 
still not making this up.  So we're talking about people who look perfectly 
normal, who have normal children and wear normal clothes and drive normal 
cars to a normal-looking building where they go inside and 'SHOOT RUBBER 
BANDS AT FERRETS.'  I bet they also argue over who gets to drive Robo-Badger.

	Well I don't know about you, but when I read a heart warming story 
like this, it makes me want to express my thanks by eating an enormous 
Thanksgiving dinner that continues to expand inside my stomach for the better 
part of a month.  So let's transform ourselves into total goobers by putting 
on our French-style chef hats, and then let's head for the kitchen to to make 
this: EASY TURKEY RECIPE

	Step No. 1 in the preparations of any kind of large deceased
animal for eating is to learn about its various body parts, and there is 
no better source for this kind of information than an outdated edition of 
the Encyclopedia Britannica.  According to mine, turkeys belong to the same 
biological family (technically, "The Johnsons") as chickens, and both male 
and female turkeys have - this is a direct quotation - "a fleshy head 
appendage, the snood."   Of course, the turkeys at the supermarket no longer 
have snoods, which forces us to ask ourselves, what the turkey industry is 
doing with them.  Putting them in large trucks and shipping them across state 
lines would be my guess.  This time of year, you could be driving on an 
interstate highway and inside the truck right in front of you could be 
hundreds, possibly even thousands of pounds of snood (SIX DIE IN SNOOD SPILL).  
And driving right behind could be a ferret biologist.  It's best not to think 
about it.  It's best to simply take your turkey and stuff it, then cook it in 
an absurdly hot oven for about two days while basting incessantly, and then,
just before serving, mount it on a radio-controlled toy truck.