Something Grew Overnight @ LRS...

The small, practice session sized crowd almost reached capacity overnight. Matt's generosity put another nail in my coffin. My family and a couple of my daughter's friends went over to Matt's for a cookout. We had good food, fun with our small cars and a big car, rockets, fishing, etc. Plus, he put 3 packs of 21 Carrera figures in my hands to help save my eyes and to make the LRS crowd more respectible. I will still paint some of the new ones for more variety. However, painting a shirt or hair will be a lot easier than painting them completely from a blank white figure like the MRRC figures.

He owns my soul so much. He does say on occassion, "The Devil comes in various forms." I'm waiting for the day that Soul Contract shows up in one hand with a pen in the other. Thanks again and again Buddy.

A Small Gathering @ LRS...

Well, I've slowly and I emphasis slowly painting some MRRC figures to fill the recently aquired Carrera double-decker grandstands. I go on record now by saying, "Painting little plastic figures absolutely sucks!!!" I really need a light magnifier to do these. However, they are decent enough for now. Later, I might do the additional washes to bring out the detail more. This already represents hours of my life that have gone by.

I used a toothpick to do the eyes and lens of the shades.

I also mixed my own colors for the clothing and accesories.

I did do a wash of sorts on the Grease Monkey. He had to be dirty.

The Marshalls and yes, every corner has a yellow flag. The 4 right flags were made from a piece of wire and a print our of color on the PC. It works for me.

I got a long way to go for a good sized crowd. A club memeber said that I've got the Practice Session crowd right now. The good thing is they can be added little by little. I see pre-painted Carrera figures in my future to save the cross-eyed headache of painting them myself.

I also used the same self-stick vinyl as I did on the grandstand to do a finish line effect with 1/2 inch white squares. I like the look and hope they hold up to the cars and guides rolling over them.

Long Time, No Updates...

I've slowly been working on scenery items and deciding how I want to do those scenery items. I finished painting the table top green. I decided on a Carrera Grandstand. The double decker with the VIP Box up top. I've figured out where the pits are going to eventually be and will be aquiring the double door Carrera Garages and the VIP Boxes that fit on top of them down the road.

I got lucky with the bottom 1/2 since it was given to me by my buddy Shawn and the top 1/2 was a great deal at $25 shipped. I had planned on painting them because they're just too white for my tastes. Luckily, Shawn had already painted the one he gave me grey as I planned on do them to begin with. However, he used the small can of Testors primer to do it. So, I had to either repaint it or bite the bullet and match it with the Testors at $4.00 a can. I hit Michael's 3 nights in a row coming home from work with one of their 40% off coupons each time. Every dollar saved adds up in the long run. I also lucked into about 5 cans of Testors in various colors in the clearance section at $1.49 each. Bonus!!!


Moving on to the issue with these Grandstands. I hate the seat stickers that came with them and Shawn's had faded big time and wouldn't have matched the new section. Plus, I don't have too many people. (Thanks Matt for what I do have) So, how can I jazz them up with a smaller crowd? I went to the real world for inspiration or madness depending upon your outlook. I purchased some white self stick vinyl for the Cricut machine the Mrs. has with the thinking it was going to do the cutting of 178 1 inch squares for me. She already had the black vinyl. Figured out where this is heading yet? Checkered flag seats!!!

The problem was that the cutting blade and matt that holds the vinyl in place needed to be replaced and that was another $20. I opted and chose to do it by hand. So, using the straight line cutter she had for her crafting projects I cut the 178 squares. I then had to remove the stickers from the one Shawn gave me and it was a pain in the ass. Then out came the tweezers and a very sharp Xacto knife to cut the vinyl from around the stair section. 2 days and who knows how many hours later, I ended up with this.

I still need to paint the sides of the roof grey to match and I'm thinking about paint the roof a flat red. It will need custom Welcome to Legion Region Speedway stickers for the advertising space too. Plus, all the little people I still have to paint by hand...UGH!!!

Then with the help of my Dad these came into play next. What are they? A little support, that's what they are. I have Ninco walls with the fencing and wanted to add them to my layout. They look great, but more importantly they work. The problem is that I'm running Scaley Sport track. So, the tabs that lock them into place don't work. I also, didn't want to damage the walls with nails or screws to hold them in place.

So, we came up with the wooden supports that have a groove that allows 2 wall ends to slide into the groove and be held in place by clear silicone. Then it was just a matter of screwing the support to the table.

Tell me that doesn't look cool. I dare you!!!

It will look even better once the trees are put behind it.

Layering = Visual Depth...pure and simple.

Here's the overall shot as it looks today. I still need to decide on how I'm going to make my other walls around the track. I want to paint a track logo in the big open green area in front of the grandstand. The monitor is where the grandstand will end up once it's replace with a LCD TV/Monitor. It's slowly getting there folks.

Wiring IS Golden...

What an ordeal it was getting the Legion Region Speedway wired and running. After Matt and I spent a Saturday wiring the whole track we thought we were good to go. I only had to run wire to link all the wiring blocks and taps. I did everything that needed to be done. I got the driver stations all made and installed. Hooked up the Professor Motor controllers and pulled the trigger. "OH CRAP!"

It just couldn't be that easy. The sensitivity of the trigger was too much. I barely pulled the trigger and the car was flying done the track and forget about getting the car through the esses and hairpins without it deslotting.

Oh yeah, lanes 1 and 4 had power glitches, slow down and dead stop areas. "WHAT THE !#@%*!" was heard coming from the basement on several occassions as my wife retold me later.

So, I switched some track pieces. Lane 1 stopped having the glitches. "YES!, oh crap." The glitch just moved further down the lane. Everything I did just caused me problems. I even add 2 more power taps at each end of the main str8. "This should take care of it." NOPE!

I put a post on our local club's site and our crazy scientist of the group sent me this link about issues with Scaley Sport track and how to solve them.

http://www.slotforum.com/forums/index.php?autocom=custom&page=SLAP-03

I just did the tab part of the above link and it solves all my issues. The PM's work just fine and each lane has perfect power all the way around them. I highly suggest anyone putting a Scaley Sport track together do the tab fix to all their track pieces whether they're brand new or used. If I had known to do it before hand it would have saved all the effort Matt and I put into it today.

We took 136 pieces of track apart, bent 8 tabs on each piece of track and reassembled it all. That's 1088 tabs that had to be tweeked. However, the end result was perfect power in all lanes. It was just a, "magnificent pain in the ass," as Matt put it on our club site.

Matt is my electronics savior and I owe him big time for all the work, assistance and wire he donated to the cause of getting my track up and running.

Next, comes the borders, walls and guardrails to keep the cars on the track and off the concrete floor.

Here's a video of Matt taking a lap after all our hard work. The track was filthy, but we ran the hell out of it after we were done fixing it all.

http://s635.photobucket.com/albums/uu72/noigelfoeno/?action=view&current=MattLapAfterFix.flv

One more wall climbed and hopefully the rest are just the walls that go around the track...lol

I've Been Lazy...

Well, no real progress on the track. However, at the first race at one of our club memeber's new 3 lane woodie I finally got the "missing" R4 curve to complete the layout. I still have no idea where it disappeared to in the basement.

I plan on getting the parts list together this week for the wiring. Then it's getting the cash from the Boss to buy it all. I can also do it now since the landlord was nice enough to get power outlets installed in the basement for me this week. 20 amps...I think I'll be covered.

I can however, post a picture of what I've been doing the past month. I've been wheeling and dealing like crazy to get cars I've been wanting and some that I didn't want but were presented and I agreed to taking in trade. I've been on a Ninco kick...big time. They are great non-magnet runners with just a little weight behind the front axle and some sanding and profiling of the rear wheels. I still can't afford to by them, but trading is a whole other ballgame.

Left Row

Slot It Totip F40 Ferrari (super smooth runner)

Ninco Gulf Mosler (stock)

Ninco Lambo (NC2 / I love this car)

Middle Row

Ninco BMW V12 "Art Car" (I posted this one already)

Racer DP (b-e-a-utiful)

Slot It Audi RAW "Racing Version" (putting it together was a pain..small parts vs big fingers)

Right Row

Fly Ferrari 512 (I posted this already...unicorn captured)

Ninco Lowes Acura LMP (I wanted the Patron, but this will due for now)

MRRC Chappy (need to find new rears, but a great looking car)

I still got a Ninco Vortrom "Lightening" Mosler coming and another car yet to be determinded from a member of our local club.

I've been a Ninco whore...wonder what brand we'll be running on my track when it's done? More posts to come sooner than later. I promise.