I'm a writer, and I want to tell your story.

[kyledrives]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for accepting my registration. To be perfectly upfront with you all, I'm an editor with TheDrive.com, an automotive news and enthusiast site. I joined because I stumbled upon this hobby on YouTube and I'm fascinated—I can't believe I didn't know this was a thing, and I have a feeling a lot of our readers will feel the same way. I just think it's really cool.

I want to write a piece explaining the RC truck and construction world to everyone, talking to as many of you fine people as I can in the process. I want to learn about how you get into it, the lengths you go to build and maintain these perfect models, and the skill needed to drive them.

Feel free to PM me if you want to participate, or email me at kyle [@] thedrive.com. You'll likely see me pop up else where on here. And if this is all in violation of the rules—I promise, I'm not here to mess around—feel free to delete this and ban me.

Thanks and have a great day!

[frizzen]

Looks like you've got a pretty cool site over there.

There are about as many ways to get into this weird little corner of the RC hobby as there are with the real car world. Some buy kits, some buy Ready To Run / Almost Ready To Run, some scratch build, some convert toys, some guys will custom build for customers, some build machines that are just absolutely Artwork!
Maybe you like cars, trucks, suvs, semis, dumptrucks, emergency equipment, earth moving, warehouse logistics, forestry, building, demolition, millitary, historical equipment, future concepts... Some of us go to meets, some just play at home, a few even use the machines to improve their home.

With most RC car / truck / buggy stuff it's all about speed & racing, or just bashing. They compete, hold championships, have trophy girls, or go for Epic, and break parts goofing around having fun. It's awesome, it's sexy, it sells magazines! But other drivers, slow reflexes, or a glitch can instantly turn your car into a yardsale crash. Rules change every season and it often turns into how fast can you spend. Your dialed in competition rig can suddenly go from podium finishes, to back of the pack because some new part or chassis came out and dominates. There's often a lot of secrecy about what the winning or even competitive setups are.

On this side of things we usually like precision, power, scale, details. This is much more like a friendly, grown up version of 'playing with Tonkas in the sandbox'. Drive it like it's real, respect everyone elses stuff. I have yet to meet anybody who runs these, that aren't more than willing to help out with anything they know including better setup tips, and even sitting down building it with you.

You can spend as much as you feel like to get into 1/14 - 1/16 scale Truck and Construction models. Converting a cheap rc Car up to proportional hobby-grade electronics, fairly easy to keep around $100. Semi tractor kit, $500-600 should get you going. Hydraulic equipment like an Excavator that's ready to rock, more like $2,000+...

Downside is most local hobby shops tend to ignore us since we don't break enough parts or really burn through the consumable parts, and like you mentioned it seems like very few in the USA know about this facet.

Stick around, ask lots of questions, maybe hit up a meet somewhere, i think you'll have fun here.

[skeeter]

I stumbled upon this side of RC hobby a few years ago. I found a Tamiya Grand Hauler on Evilbay for sale. I thought the price was decent, & bought er. Being a dump truck driver for a living, I wanted to buy a kit to make it into a dump truck. I stumbled upon this forum in the process of looking for said kit. Once here, I discovered that a dump kit (at that time) WASN'T commercially available. I learned (from this forum) that there were several dump trucks that were scratch built. Of course after seeing dump trucks, I had to have some scale RC equipment to go with er. Fortunately that was commercially available, & didn't have to be custom built with CNC machinery. I DID find that the hydraulic machinery was rather spendy. I also found from this forum that several folks were converting Bruder childs toys to be RC. I bought a hydraulic excavator, but of course I needed more. RC is an addiction. One is NEVER enough! Fast forward a couple years, I now have 3 RC trucks, 2 hydraulic machines that were commercially available, & several Bruder kids toys that I've converted to RC.

Eventually myself & some others in my area that are interested in the RC trucking & Construction hobby met & started having RC FUN! We started a Facebook group to try & find others in the Pacific Northwest area that may be interested in the hobby as well.

Here's a link to a video at the Northwest Model Hobby Expo in Monroe Washington the weekend of 26 & 27 January. We had a few of the Bruder toys & Huina toys that we made available for ANYONE to try out, as well as demonstrated our hydraulic equipment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9frjPlyotls&t=153s