Hinckley Radio Control Car Club

Now that i have sorted out' how to put a photo on the forum. I thought you might want to have a look at stafford rc club. The barriers that keeps you from driving of the track is fire hose which is full of sand. also a long the side of the track are big wooden pillers which dont help. All along the right side and the bottom of the photo are the tables for you to pit at. These tables have thin boards tapped to them which now and then a car might find its way through them hitting your legs. what a fun place to race!

Oh nearly forgot to mention, the lads from Stafford wanted your address, they wanted to give you something, I abliged naturally

Seriously though, sand filled fire hose is used at most clubs to segregate the racing lanes as its very flexible and easily forms the shape you want, its also reasonally forgiving when a car hits it. I recall in the past its use at Midland Electric, Leamington and Charnwood in Leicester. I think we are very fortuniate though to have a "builder extroadinaire" to build our track sections, if it wasn't for him we would probably be doing exactly the same.

hose was used at hinckley for a number of years, here's some of it in action at the old venue



Going way back when the club was racing at the leisure centre there was some lovely concrete piers and heaters on the main straight that would take your wishbone out if the mats had fallen over.

Hi James

I think we still have the rolled up hoses secured with black tape shown in the picture.

Interestingly though, the carpet shown in the picture appears not to be taped down, can anyone confirm if that was the case then ?, did the cars catch the edge of the carpet ?

im sure the carpet was secured to the floor . ie permanent . i think they used to do cricket practice in there .

Carpet in the leisure centre was permanent, but the photos are from the boys club which definitely did not have permanent carpet and was similar to our current setup.

Before we stated using the white masking tape we didn't tape the joins in the carpet all the way along.

We did have more problems with cars catching carpet and the carpet moving but the grey (later black) gaffer tape which was all we had gave no traction when you drove on it so you couldn't put tape on the racing line.

Some of the members at stafford if not all' would like to have guttering. 1.. the sand filled piping a night mare to get out of the van and drag across the room to where you want it. 2... you dont bounce of it when you hit it. Iwas talking to a member of the committie of stafford the other day and asked why does the club still use this piping. his repley was. I dont know why really its so old the sand keep coming out of it everytime you take it out of the van. you would think the club would buy new stuff to help make things better. but even i dont know where some of the money goes. AND thats a committie member talking whats that tell you!

hinckley rocks