[AussieCapri]

I've been poking around for a day or two so thought it time to say hello.

I'm a semi retiree living in Canberra Australia and have been involved with cars, at a relatively sedate level, all my life.

I didn't get into slot cars for a long time because, when the craze hit, I was already working as an apprentice mechanic and trying to be grown up and cool-although I did build an Airfix Mini which broke (I also tried all sorts of things with 1:1 cars with similar results).

About ten years ago, I bought a Scaley Bathurst set with a couple of British Escorts liveried as Brock and Johnson cars at a garage sale. I thought my daughters would get some fun out of them (they never did).

I also harboured an itch from long ago when my younger brother got a F1 set (Cooper and Vanwall?) for Christmas back in the '60s and I resented the fact that I was having to be so grown up and cool.

I used to race in the Online Racing Series but petered out when it all got a bit too hard (It relied on consistent lap times and I couldn't get anywhere near the leaders even with a car set up to run automatically).

I have 1:32 and HO but don't use the HOs any more. I think there is also half a set of Micro Machine 1:87 somewhere in a drawer (thinks: Hmmm, this could power a Goggomobile Dart or something equally silly if one of the Scratchies [fellow ORS refugee Fergy, p'raps] could lend a hand.

Oops, nearly midnight and Bathurst is on tomorrer

Goodnight and congrats on a great forum

Charles

 

[Fergy]

Welcome to SF, Charles!

Great to see a fellow ORS'er here - we did have quite some fun there for awhile!

PS - please keep Hans and Feathers securely restrained there in Oz!

 

[ruhdwulf]

Welcome Charles! I'm a newbie myself... so still learning the ropes.... er... slots. Lots of helpful people here and good advice.

Mike

 

[McLaren]

I want to learn more about this Online Racing Series, any details guys?

McLaren

 

[Fergy]

QUOTE I want to learn more about this Online Racing Series, any details guys?

It isn't what you are probably thinking, McLaren! Nothing hi-tech. Just slot racing and email, with some compatable timing software thrown in. It dates back many years before something like SSW was even thought of. Heck, I still had a 486 PC!

Chris Moellering (from the US), and Bryan Brown (from Canada), formulated a concept that people could race each other, all over the globe, regardless of scale, specific track layout, etc. It was originally based on the concept of variance of lap times, though additional factors crept in as the formula evolved.

The idea was that people like me (in Canada), Charles (in Australia), and others in the US, Sweden, Britain, etc. could race on our tracks for a certain number of laps, submit a recorded log file of the laps, and, after factoring (in essence everyone's median lap was factored to a common number), a composite race could be created electronically which would illustrate the cars progress, lap by lap, against one another.

It was like virtual proxy racing, without having to send your car!

Although the formula had some flaws (more on that later), the concept attracted a fairly good following. The one thing everyone had in common was that they were totally in it for the fun. Like many clubs, the competition was secondary, but the BS and banter was primary! We had a board, on which drivers and teams portrayed themselves as virtual entities (it was a bit strange

, but immense fun

- you had to be there!).

ORS survived very well, and we had fun for about a year and a half. Well, I did, but I was not as early a starter as Charles was, and he left the series not long after I really got started. I think perhaps he saw the flaws in the racing while some of us were still entranced by the general atmosphere - it really was a great group of people! In fact, the BS outweighed the true nature of the racing for a very long time.

The big flaw in the formula was lap consistency. How could someone who raced on a short, tight, track with 14 turns possibly compete with someone whose track had 6 turns and fast, sweeping bends? The latter could be much more consistent and that is what paid off. In fact, we tried anti-sandbagging rules, whereby you needed to run within a certain percent of a qualifying time or you would be penalized, etc. but the reality remained - everyone's times were normalized against each other, so the most consistent lap would win.

Ironically, we had some incredible battles. Some of the best were between HO and 1/32! We had one race over something like 60+ laps that was won by just .001 second between different scale cars on very different tracks.

But.... attempts to grow the formula, attract people, the volume of work, etc. led the originators to delegate the work, and what ensued was a failed attempt to make it a mathematical nightmare.

It ceased to be fun. It died.

But I think Charles will agree that we had fun with it for awhile!

ORS Formula One and Sportscar World Champion

 

[AussieCapri]

QUOTE But I think Charles will agree that we had fun with it for awhile!

We certainly did. I even built an HO track so that I could keep racing over winter. I never expected to win a race and had some good battles in the early days.
For me, the fun stopped when it all got a wee bit too serious (not the banter though, we had the best BS artists on the net at the time!), to the point where I once tried a car rigged to run without human control and compared the result against one of the winning files--it lost dismally. I started to think (wrongly, I suppose) that there might just have been some file enhancement giong on. True or not, the fun was gone. Still, I did have a lot of fun there for a while and would like to thank all involved.