Here is a satellite view of the new track layout with the addition.

Anyway, we are back in Maui Hawaii from vacation and while doing some yard work (digging up cane-grass) I came across an old concrete patch in the yard. As Rally fan you are probably thinking the same that I was thinking – BRILLIANT now I can have my track be a mixed surface environment -just how it is supposed to be for Rallycross and Rally cars.

The real problem is to get the soil leading to the concrete patch to become hard enough to drive on it. The original track took about 2-3 month to harden and compact. I don’t have any tools or tractor that could help. I thought about driving the family car over the track, but it won’t work due to my wifes potato patch close by. And trust me you don’t mess with a wifes garden -ever!

The extension will add an additional 90 feet / 30 meters to the track. This will bring the track to a total of 220 feet / 67 meter

Looking at it in a 1/10 scale:  I am still short by almost 130 feet / 40 meters to have a “true” 1/10 Rallycross track which are usually 0.932 Miles  //  1.500 km long.

Here is a picture of the new section under construction.

The idea was to build a system that would be 1) cheap 2) easy to setup and take down 3) able to withstand some very light drizzle /rain.

Luckily we had 3 construction lights and 8feet long 1 1/4 Electrical Steel Conduit – which meant no money spend!

Below is a close up picture of our light setup. I am going to replace the powerstrip in order to make it more weather proof.

Today was the first day the car went on the backyard track.

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Good News:

• Car handles like a champ
• Surprising off-road capabilities even in soft gravel
• Plenty torque and still enough speed using a 7:1 ratio and Brushless Novak motor

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Bad News:

• Track is too narrow in some areas
• My lower chicane is too tight for the steering radius of the Subaru
• Track is a bit short
• Speed Controller and Receiver dust cover still let’s to much dirt in

So I needed to build my own Satellite…

Option A) Buy a RC Helicopter and mount a camera on it.

Option B) Get a long pole and mount a camera on it.

Sad but true, I went for Option B – mostly because even my hobby budget has a spending limit. I used 2 windsurfing carbon masts, which are long, light weight and fit nicely into each other. Granted that if I would have broken a mast I could have bought that RC Helicopter in the first place.
Here are some pictures taken with our camera mounted to the mast:

Long story short, I taped a videocamera onto the mast and started slowly walking up and down the track in a “search and rescue” flight pattern. After importing my video into Final Cut Pro I took screenshots every so many seconds. The result was that I ended up with about 30 individual images that I pieced together in Photoshop.

And here is the final composite:

The track map and track layout section is currently under construction. More on this coming soon! For a sneak peek go here.

Create a 1/10 scale RC Rally & Rallycross track with an emphasis on realism.

The average track length of European Rallycross circuits is between 950 and 1200 meters, which equals roughly 3100 to 3900 feet. The math is pretty simple to calculate a 1/10 track – just loose a zero at the end – which would call for a track length of 95 to 120 meters or 310 to 390 feet. The majority of real-world Rallycross tracks feature tarmac sections, which I briefly considered, but decided against it mainly due to the fact that we don’t own the property.

Theoretically our backyard is big enough to go full length in scale, however I decided to go 1/2 scale on the overall track length (48 meter / 157 feet) in order to keep the impact on the yard at a minimum and to keep every part of the track visible without the need of a raised platform. They yard is slightly slanted.

Initial track layout ideas came naturally by observing existing terrain features in the yard, but it became obvious that a little extra help was needed too. I also created a digital trackmap to help me design the layout. Here is how I build my own “Google Earth” like Satellite Image of the backyard track.

The biggest problem I encountered was that the track was simply to bumpy and the ruts to deep. Again the emphasis is on realism, which means having a 5 inch rock or bump would equal having a 50 inch boulder or bump when looking at it in scale. Another problem encountered is loose soil and the amount of sand in our dirt. I even considered buying a Dakar Rally Model also known as Rally Raid. However the current generation of Rally Raid RC Cars received rather poor test reviews. So it was back to the drawing board.

I ended up removing all the top soil after removing the grass to cut my track into the yard. I then rake and hose the new section down with water before covering it with a sheet of plywood for a week or two. I started putting weights on my plywood to further help in the compacting.