First try at an HO tri oval, Xtraction clun night Options

[marctownsend]

There has been quite a buzz around the idea of oval racing in the UK HO scene of late and last night FLBT finally got to have a dabble.

A decent turn out of 10 were on hand and while the majority set to some maintainence of the 1/32 track Andyslots, Paul and myself built an oval with two high banked 135 degree corners and what ended up being a two corner wide radius 'tri oval' section.

Curiosoty from across the room turned into marcosmantula and a visiting Lee Parsons joining me and Paul for those historic first laps into the unknown, and it was great, a surprising amount of grip to be found from the Xtractions on stock rubber.



Talk eventually turned to magnets and marcosmantula, Lee and myself conducted an 'Indycar test' using my three Nationals prepped Mega G's, now that really was exciting, such a challenge, enormous fun, quick but ultimately a mugs game if you are supplying the cars. It did end in tears, the damage done by me sending my best Mk2 into orbit, but hey it was only B final material last time out and it was due a rebuild!



The main event wss four heats and 'two to step up' finals, folk really appeared to enjoy themselves and the quality of driving and therefore racing improved as the night went on ending in a great A final, polesitter Karl drove a calm and disciplined race in the favoured blue lane to see off some very close attention from dragrap who after an off while battling for the lead eventually lost out to a charging marcosmantula. If anyone could do something from the yellow outside lane it would have been HO debutant but hardcore slot racer Lee but he took a very credible fourth.



I'm afraid the above is from memory as the results got left at the club but you will note not one of the EAHORC regulars made the A final, I finished 7th but had a great time and judging by the smiles and comments plenty of the others did too.

Comments from those in attendence and the curious more than welcome.

[Slingshotx]

I'm afraid the above is from memory as the results got left at the club but you will note not one of the EAHORC regulars made the A final, I finished 7th but had a great time and judging by the smiles and comments plenty of the others did too.

Results are up on flbt.co.uk (Rob emailed them to me)

Looks like fun, sorry I missed out.

[marcosmantula]

Disappointed my 0.746sec lap wasn't mentioned

[slowracer]

Thats great stuff boys, well done Marc, Andy and Paul for getting this on. The ovals can be quite destructive on cars, as we found out at the AVHORA 'Christmas Cracker' report here, especially the fragile Aurora F1 bodies, its good to see that you have embraced the Magnatraction/X-Traction ideal of no magnet racing, the technique is quite different.

I guess that you made some sceptics into converts last night!

I am pleased that the word is out, HO racing in any form is cool

[marctownsend]

Forgot to mention, the fastest lap of the day, by quite a margin, was set by marcosmantula in yellow using a Mk1 Mega G in HD mode, but he doesn't like to talk about it

[woodcote]

Nice one

It's tri-oval time at WHO next Wednesday with our Nascar class. That'll be our fourth oval race at Worthing - the previous three have been brilliant fun and really close racing.

Interested to know the make-up of your corners - including any supports - and the track length so we can compare notes

[Julian_Boolean]

Nice one, the original X-Traction tyres are fairly grippy, they respond well to treating with 3 in 1.

[montoya1]

great stuff Marc, looks like you guys had fun. I especially liked, one of the revisions of history, in one of the responding, posts.

I assume the 135 deg measurement is taken from the bottom edge, rather then from the table up to the highest point, which would be 55 degrees.



For the EAHORC routed banked turns I am going to get them constructed in such a way clear, tall flexible barrier can be attached. These will be 15 degrees. Storage remains the big problem.

Looking at the results:



And the fact he ran at all, I begin to suspect Neal does not dislike the smaller cars as much as he protests - He did one national, at the venue that got incinerated, I would love him to do another, and it just so happens there is one coming up fairly soon in the neighboorhood.

All this talk of ovals recently got me looking for these, from Feb 2005:



















And, yes, we ran Magnatractions on the HO oval. We ran six scales that day too.

[montoya1]

Sorry, in the above post I of course meant 45 degrees, so that is the wrong image.

[marctownsend]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

The banked turns were each made of three standard AFX banked curves using one of the 'high' standard AFX four lane supports in the middle turn of each. We didn't use the 'low' supports as for me the transitions are crucial and I couldn't see how a good job was possible using these. Instead we undertaped either side of the turns and let physics take care of the rest. I have to say it worked a treat.

We didn't measure the track but I'll have another look at the pictures when I get home and try and work it out, andyslots built the flat bit while I was doing the banked bit, hopefully he can fill in the details, my guess is 12s and 15s.

Deane I see how my op reads now, the 135 was the radius, banking was whatever the AFX curves are stock. Although the high banked turns were not a challenge in isolation they do enable high speeds in a small area and that speed made the flat bits real tricky on the way in and of course the exit speed had a big effect on the run through the banking.