Coffee, crawlers and aeroplanes… Highlander RC, March 16, 2024March 16, 2024 After what felt like a lifetime, Saturday finally rolled around, and that meant it was play time! Sounds a bit sad when you say it like that. If you hadn’t guessed it by now, yes, this is the highlight of my week. Getting out, into the great outdoors to drive around scale pickup trucks, for hours on end with friends. As usual, we made a quick stop off at Cabin Coffee. It’s mental how busy that wee place is at that time of the day. It seems to get busier and busier. After a quick cuppa, we decided to go for a quick recce of the surrounding area. We had a look at a couple of spots, but nothing jumped out as having any crawling potential. Well, there was one spot, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. If it’s as good as it looks from the roadside, it’s gonna be epic fun! After struggling to decide where we were going to go, mainly due to my time constraints, we settled on going back to Glenfeshie. Snow capped hills & sunshine The day started off cold, probably around about -2C when I went out to top up by bird feeders. I only knew it was cold, as I just about killed myself on the patch of ice that lay in wait in the shadows outside. I hadn’t noticed it doing the usual morning garden chores, until I ended up doing my best Bambi on Ice impression. Thankfully, I never decked it, although my back may suffer for it later. At around 10am, Tacticool rocked up in his behemoth of a Mitsubishi. He had offered to drive today, so that meant coffee was on me. After much dicking around, we finally arrived up Glenfeshie just after 11:20am. 5 minutes later, we were plodding along the large gravel banks that graced the sides of the River Feshie. We weren’t sure how high the water level would be, as we had quite a bit of rain through the day on Friday. Much to our surprise, it wasn’t much higher than it was last weekend, with the exception of the odd “river crossing” we had to partake in. Thankfully, they weren’t very deep, meaning I got to keep the electrics reasonably dry on the Hi-Rock. Ooooh, Fwends! As you might have spotted from the image above, there’s someone new this time around. Last time out, Tacticools youngest offspring loved it so much, that we only went and bought one for himself. You might be asking as to why I don’t just use Tacticool’s real name? Well, it’s because I still haven’t asked him for permission to do so, and to protect his identity should he decide he might want to become Batman one day…. Agent O as we will call him, had purchased himself the FTX Outback Fury 2.0. Sharing an almost identical footprint to the Hi-Rock. I genuinely thought it was a lot more compact, as the pictures online make it look a lot more squat than it is in person. With it being only 35mm shorter, and 5mm taller than the Hi-Rock, there’s next to nothing in it. And yes, it was more than capable of keeping up, even if Agent O did fall over a few times. The rig that is, not him personally. Mind you, he wasn’t the only one to park it on it’s roof! This time out, the Bronco had a new weapon up it’s shell in the form of a new motor & ESC combo. Having killed the stock motor the weekend before, Tacticool decided to go all out and go down the Hobbywing route. I’m not entirely sure which setup he went for (keep your eyes peeled for a feature post), but the difference in crawling speed, throttle control & torque was insane. I was surprised at how good it really was, and when I eventually kill the motor in mine, I will be making a similar upgrade. Lay of the land The terrain around this particular spot is very flat. When I say flat, I mean level. The river gravels vary in size from fine sand, up to large boulders, several feet in diameter. Nothing that any decent 1:10 scale crawler wouldn’t be able to tackle. But therein lies the challenge. Actually getting from point A to point B is where the fun begins. One section is nice, smooth sand, that transitions into a collection of small pebbles and rocks, before rapidly developing into endless boulder fields, where one wrong turn can get you wedged in tight, or getting beached, leaving your wheels spinning frantically with nothing to grab hold of. In amongst these areas, are larger, more technical giants, that require millimetre perfect driving, in an attempt to find the smallest amount of grip to traverse them. So yes, needless to say, we failed on the bigger obstacles, alot! Lights, camera….ahh F**K IT! It wouldn’t be a day out if I wasn’t trying to get a decent picture or video every 5 seconds. Everytime we tired to get a decent video of us taking on the larger problems, we failed time and time again. However, as soon as the cameras were off, it was textbook. Typical. You’ll just have to take our word for it. Out of the 5-10 attempts I made, my first attempt off camera was perfect. Out of the three rigs, the only one that made it over successfully more than once was the Bronco. The low down, constant torque and speed of the Hobbywing motor, proved more than a match for one particular obstacle. The motor is able to maintain its speed during both ascent and descent, allowing for perfect control on the downward side, something that mine sorely misses. At least for the time being… ….aeroplanes, well, gliders… I suppose you were probably wondering about this part by now? No…ok, well I’m gonna tell you anyway. With it being such an amazing day, the local gliding club were out and about. I would say I would have loved to have been sat up in one of them on a day like today, but as B.A. Baracus once said, “I ain’t gettin’ in no plane, fool!” Yeah, I hate flying. Simple as that. The Gliding club is located on the opposite side of the River Feshie, accessible from the Feshiebridge side, and roughly 1-2 km from where we were. I apologise for the crappy picture. The zoom on my phone camera is naff. Looking ahead to Sunday As I mentioned earlier, we are going to scope out a new spot which isn’t to far from home. The terrain looks amazing. To us, it just looks like a load of bedrock, but at 1:10 scale, it looks like a vast, sprawling baron wilderness, with large sections of bedrock, a small waterfall and fantastic views across the Spey Valley. Tomorrow can’t come quick enough. And on that note, just a wee notice to let you know that there won’t be a blog tomorrow evening. Normal service will resume on Monday, hopefully a bit earlier than usual. Until then folks, thanks for stopping by. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you are enjoying this blog, or if there’s anything you’d like to see, or think I can improve one. Post Views: 45 Days out Friends of Highlander RC