Hi & welcome,

You'll find the track surprisingly flexible and forgiving. Much larger gaps have been bridged.

If you want track & borders I have a lot for sale in the slotforum swapshop at the moment.

 

Great looking track with a good use of the space, great to see a variety of radius used in the bends, the gap as shown on the drawing is small and can be easily closed.

 

Just looking at the track again, I think the XLC in the bottom left corner, may cause problems being straight after an R1 bend, as cars may miss the sensor if drifting, maybe better on the next straight. Best to build the track and drive it, to ensure that you like the flow and are not missing the lane changer.

 

Thanks for the advice! I moved the lane changing track two pieces forward, I guess this will work, but I´ll have an eye on that when racing the track for the first time.

 

Oh, another question: What about additional power tracks? Being digital, every lane has it´s own power-supply by now, but I wonder if the track needs more energy input. In H0-scale the advice is, to add a power-track every 12-15 joints.

 

we call them power taps, because "track" might confuse people to think it's ok to put additional powerbases or controller tracks in. There can be only one power base/track, but you can distribute power around the layout using power taps. Essentially, these are wires that go from the base track, or the one next to it, to other parts of the layout. Ideally, they all come from the same spot and go to multiple places around the layout. There are no hard rules about how many power taps to use, but as many as you are comfortable adding is a good start. Remember to keep track of both which lane is which and which direction cars are traveling so that you don't create a short. Keep the lanes separate from each other so that you can still use the 2 lane analog mode in the new powerbase when you want to. If you cross the lanes over, that mode will usually go into safe mode until you correct the problem.

 

Mr. F.
What is the difference between a "star" layout of power taps vs. a single spine connecting power or a loop paralleling the track to do the same thing?

Is it not sufficient to just make sure that the "taps" are parallel to the existing track lanes and rails?

Cheers!

 

All those methods work well enough. What you don't want to do is "tap" from one part of the layout to another, and then from another part to another, willy-nilly. While you might make things a little better, it won't be as good as when each tap is effectively/electrically from the source itself.

 

Hi Mars,
I would increase your pit lane by a lot, it is really difficult to drive over the unpowered entry flipper at a slow enough speed that allows you to stop in such a short pit stop
Maybe think about using banked curves to effectively increase the straight length, that way you will get to accelerate for longer and it should make it more interesting with a variation in fast track and twisty complex track

 

I just came up with the idea of adding a crossover/bridge to my layout. In my opinion, it makes the whole track more interesting, especially on a landscaped table.

What do you think of this version? Lane Changers in the right place, pit lane long enough? Your feedback is more than welcome! The track is very roughly inspired by a german "Race of Champions" layout from 2011.

Looking forward to your replies so I can start buying some more trackpieces. Pictures of my work in progress will be posted, if you are interested in it.

Cheers!

Markus

 

Nice track.

I LOVE the number of R4 (or are they R3?) curves on the right hand side of the layout - this should make for some interesting tests of bravery on the throttle!

I have one suggestion but ONLY if you are going to go down the SSDC and PitPro route. If you use SSDC software and use the PitPro conversion on your pit lane game with the 2 sensor option (one for pit entry and one for pit exit) you could move your pit lane so it runs alongside the start/finish straight. This would allow for an even longer pit lane and would be much more like F1 circuits. SSDC allows you to set it so the pit lane entry is before the start and exit after the start so a pass through the pit lane will still register a lap. SSDC will also allow you to limit pit lane speed between the entry and exit sensors so a longer pit lane means more realistic delays as a consequence of refuelling.

A beautiful track like yours deserves some decent race management software.

 

QUOTE (Mars @ 6 Mar 2012, 05:17) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hello!

This is a picture of my first SSD layout. It uses the maximum space I have (4 m x 2 m).

It will be a permanent layout, fixed on a table. But before I do that, I´ll have to buy the track pieces and testdrive it for quite a while.

Cars will be magless.
There is a little gap between the tracks on the bottom right side. Are the Scalextric Sport tracks flexible enough to close it by connecting the two pieces?

What do you think about it?

Thanks in advance for your replies!

Cheers

Markus

Hi Markus,

Nice layout indeed! I do have a couple of suggestions from experience. I think someone mentioned that you may want to extend your pit lane, if you're using pit pro, this won't be long enough for both sensors.

Also: since you will likely be running pace cars, you may want to reconsider the tight curve along the bottom left-hand side of the track, there will likely be pile-ups here with pace cars, unless you set them at a much slower speed. I've experimented with several layouts, and the ones that work best are the ones with no less than an r-2. I love racing with pace cars, and I've been able to set them at very competitive speeds using to smaller than r-2's.

But, if you don't plan on racing a lot with pace cars, this looks like a challenging layout.

rob

 

**Update**

After reading your helpfull feedbacks, looking at many layouts here on the forum and playing around with Trackpower (a very handy tool, I don´t regret spending the money for it) I came to the following "final" version of my layout:

After thinking again about the available space I have to minimize the table-size to 4m x 1.6m. Still okay, but I had to make the curves a little bit smaller. That leads to more R2 curves than I wanted, because I favoured R3s before.
Any suggestions? Any mistakes I made? Please take a look at the pit lane. I fear, it´s still to short. I use a pit pro version of the pit game with a sensor at the exit to count completed rounds.

The layout will be fixed permanently (after a few weekends of extensive testdriving) on 4 single frame-constructions (1m x 1.6m) with plywood tops. The 4 modules will be held together by nuts and bolds (just in case I want to rearrange it again someday). This construction will be put on 4 cheap but stable Ikea tables. I guess, in that case the plywood doesn´t need to be very thick. What is your suggestion?

Cheers!

 

hi
one thing to keep in mind when running magless and using pit in and out sensers is to keep them at least half a straight away from any bend..

This gives the car a chance to straighten up properly and trigger the senser.

I found this out recently and had to re-work both of mine as i had gone for maximum length between the pair of sensers.

Other wise best of luck with your build it looks a nice layout with a similar overall footprint as the one i am currently building..

As for tyres eurethane's work great on magless cars,i have fitted these to most of my cars (scalextric) with no added weight and they run superb..

 

HI Markus and welcome.
I still think you need to extend your pit lane.
Mine is 9meters long and its great for refueling ok you dont have that space.
but you could have the entry before the corner and exit after corner would make it alot better
have a fiddle and see.
all the best ade.