It’s a hard life being a school kid!

Article by Dan Rowlands

One week before the Much-More UK GP, we at the Stonehaven & District Radio Car Club (SDRCC) were again hard at work preparing for an event of a different kind…..this time involving 13 to 15 year old pupils from local school Banchory Academy.

The school have an activities week every summer where the students can choose from a range of home based or overseas adventures.

One of this years activities was appropriately named ‘Wings n’ Wheels’ and was organised by John Vickers from the school side who, has had a long standing passion for all things RC (previously only airborne!).

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John had previous knowledge of my RC car exploits and the Stonehaven circuit following discussions with my wife who happens to teach at the school. As John’s plans for the week were underway he contacted me for some advice and ideas for the ‘wheels’ part of the week.

Various planes and helicopters were purchased and the pupils visited some flying clubs and gained some building experience. Meanwhile, I co-ordinated the purchase of 21 HPI e10 RTR kits on the school’s behalf, they took up a lot of room in the garage! The SDRCC committee were only too pleased to help and club chairman George Haining offered his services to run a miniature race day for the kids at the track.

At this point I must thank Matt Benfield and Racer magazine for their generosity in donating some magazines (and decals!) for the kids to swot up on.

So, after the kids had done some pre-work on the cars, including plastering Racer logos onto the Lamborghini, Skyline and Mustang shells, the scene was set and they arrived at the SDRCC circuit on the morning of Friday 5th June.

The weather looked promising but who can ever tell in the UK! SDRCC had purchased trophies for the top 3 and also gave the kids a free club membership each.

The day was set-up to be as much like a real race day as possible, with 4 qualifying rounds and 1 final planned. Immediately it was apparent that these kids were more skilled than some of us with a transmitter! The HPI e10’s didn’t look out of place on Stonehaven’s huge track and everyone enjoyed the racing action, even the several staff who had made the trip down to supervise.

In the middle of round 2 the rain came down but this didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. It soon passed but looking at the clock it was apparent that we could only fit in 2 Qualifiers and one Final. We had to swap TX and RX crystals every time and also swap clip in AMBrc transponders. On a ‘normal’ race day, we take the luxury of 2.4Ghz and Personal Transponders for granted!


The B final contained 8 cars and the results are below:

B Final Wings n’ Wheels

Pos	Car	Name	Result	Avrg Lap	Best Lap
1	2	Craig Reid	13/ 314.291	24.176	22.827 (9)
2	5	Matthew Thompson	13/ 316.522	24.347	22.956 (12)
3	3	Keiran Drummond Anderson	12/ 304.457	25.371	23.560 (12)
4	6	Melvin Mcaskill	11/ 300.659	27.332	23.254 (8)
5	4	Cameron Harper	11/ 307.226	27.929	25.193 (9)
6	7	Andrew Donnelly	10/ 300.324	30.032	27.855 (3)
7	8	Jack Mennie	10/ 304.397	30.439	26.913 (3)
8	1	Lewis Morrison	5/ 115.252	23.050	22.298 (3)


The A final contained 10 cars and results are as below:

A Final Wings n’ Wheels

Pos	Car	Name	Result	Avrg Lap	Best Lap
1	1	Darren Reid	14/ 323.672	23.119	22.508 (6)
2	5	Adam Davies	13/ 307.884	23.683	22.290 (6)
3	8	Aaron Thompson	13/ 310.644	23.895	22.365 (8)
4	4	Euan Watt	13/ 319.513	24.577	22.541 (4)
5	9	Liam Dogget	12/ 300.744	25.062	22.219 (2)
6	10	Rory Wilson	12/ 308.244	25.687	22.622 (4)
7	7	Shaun Duguid	12/ 311.529	25.960	23.782 (2)
8	2	Daniel Ingram	12/ 344.183	28.681	23.238 (3)
9	6	Aaron (Azzy) Thomson	11/ 318.851	28.986	27.573 (9)
10	3	Joe Nonthakhamchan	8/ 305.884	38.235	24.094 (2)

Well done to the champion, Darren Reid, and all who took part.

Everyone went home with a huge smile on their face and we look forward to welcoming our new members back at the next SDRCC club championship round. The school also plan to start an after school R/C club, which I may even attend myself…..now, where’s that Mabuchi 540 motor?!

All in all a great day and a brilliant way to introduce new people to this great hobby.