I've Been Lazy...

Man, nothing since the holiday. Well, the club has been doing a lot of running together lately and I'm loving it.
I have gotten back into Slot It cars and have added a Ninco Xlot F430 Ferrari to the stable. These are absolutely great running cars regardless of the price. I got mine via a trade that resulted in mine traveling from Down Under...but it is was worth it all.

What about the track, right?
I've got me Carlson timing track and have the Trackmate interface in route to me as I write this. I also have the last of the Sport borders coming soon to finish the outside of the track. I'm using 2 layers of 3/16" masonite to fill in the infield areas. This matches up to the height of the Sport track perfectly.

My first race night is set for March 20th and will involve some special guests from out of town. We're going to run a Ninco IROC series. The cars will stay in their lane and the drivers will move from car to car and lane to lane. The person who adapts to each car and lane the best will come out on top.

So, it's coming soon....very soon.

Happy Holidays...

Thanks God it's over. I need a weekend to recoupe from my weekend. I don't want to see another piece of ham any time soon either. I had four Christmas get togethers in the past week and 3 out of the 4 resulting in eating baked ham. I good for a while in regards to eating pork.

The good news is that I did get cold hard cash as presents and will be moving on to the next phase of making my track race worthy. I'll be buying some wood to fill in areas and creating borders in other areas around the track. This will make all 4 lanes ready for racing.

Plus, with the remaining cash I will have a good start to getting my Carlson timing system. $110 total. So, if all goes to plan I'll be able to run in each lane very soon and able to order the timing system sometime in January.

Hope all went well for you this holiday season and here's to a brighter New Year for all of us.

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

Wiring Is 95% Done...

I got the last of the driver stations installed the other night. I think they look really nice. I'm glad I mounted them to the inside of the side of the table. This keeps them back away from things the could bump them or get snagged on the bolts.

The only issue I'm having left is with the main str8. We put a jumper in the middle of the 11' str8 thinking this was the ideal location for it. However, when a car hits the str8 before and after the power tapped section of track they slow down. Also, it is only happening on the inside and outside lanes. It has me scratching my head. So, it looks like I will be adding a jumpers to the very beginning and end of the main str8.

Yeah, 16 more wires to cut, crimp, run, tack to the bottom of the table and solder to the underside of the track pieces. It couldn't be easy...could it?

Driver Stations Viva Las Vegas...

I know you can buy the plastic colored fender washers online to show which colored wire clips to which post on your driver stations. I figure it's $10.00 I could use elsewhere and I like to be different from the standard. I looked and looked for something white, black and red that I could use to mark the controller posts. I'd find enough white and red of this or just enough black and red of something else. However, never enough of all 3 colors.

Then I remembered I had a cheap card players kit with 2 decks of playing cards, a stack of yellow, white, red and...YES, BLA....uhhh blue poker chips. I didn't let the lack of black chips stop me and out came the black Sharpie marker. Very soon a white poker chip became a black one. I think they look pretty good and still give you a little chuckle at the same time. I only wish I thought of this last week, because I know someone who took a trip to Vegas. They could have picked me up some better looking chips to use.

Viva Las Vegas (with my upper lip twitching)

ALWAYS DOUBLE DOWN

I Forged Ahead & Into The Night...

I ended up staying up until 2:30 AM Sunday morning getting all 24 jumper wires run, cut, crimped and installed on the distribution blocks. I just have the driver stations to finish now. Our backs and necks are sore today. My right hand it toast and swollen from all the crimping. However, it's a sweet pain since it means I'm that much closer to being club racing ready. Soon folks...soon.

It's Alive...

Well, thanks to our club's newest member Matt and his electronics experience the Legion Region Speedway has REAL power now. No more wall warts here or stock controllers. MG variable power supply and PM controllers all around.

I just need to jump wires from the main power block to the other 2 jumper blocks and finish up the driver stations. We simply hooked up a controller to the driver station wires to check that all was working properly.

My daughter even got into the act and became Matt's little helper. He even taught her about what wires do what and this and that, etc. She still probably knows more about wiring a track than I do.

Thanks so much. I'm gonna pay you back one way or another for everything. It's very close folks. Can you taste it? I can.