Interesting discussion on RRR board

[sjslhill]

Why are the number of FE racers so low at events?

I was not aware of this having been out of event racing for sometime. There was a huge peak back in the day and I can't exactly remember the exact year. MI, MN, OH, WI, IN had numerous racers at one point and the future looked really good. Technology was constantly changing and rule discussions often ended in building up walls. MN had a club, do they now? Cleveland? Wisconsin? Did changing motors too often, batteries changing too much or boat classes change too much? Does Europe have the same problem?

Or is this simply not true or do many just run for fun and don't attend events?

[iamandrew]

Well I live 2 hours north of sydney in australia and i dont think there is boat racing classes here what so ever, there is a club that does 1M sailing boats during summer, but apart from that, theres just a bunch of about 10 boaters which turn up to a local lake park on a sunday morning, they all run gas boats, apart from me, which my genesis is always awaiting parts so it usually gets one run a month hahaha.

Im not sure why there is not many racers, but to be honest, my attraction to RC boating isnt to race at all, its just fun :)

[Doug Smock]

[QUOTE=sjslhill;346842]Why are the number of FE racers so low at events?
QUOTE]
Hi Steve
It's not just FE events.

http://www.rcracingevents.com/cgi-bin/browseraces.pl

See your posts in off topic. lol
Doug

[JCAustralia]

Big part of it may be due to the depressed economy?

[T.S.Davis]

We beat it to death over there. Well....I did. Maybe we'll get another take on it here.

As for MI, the MMEU club has more pieces than ever. Even when we were hosting large Michigan Cups the actual club members that made that happen was a pretty small group. Too small to even have club racing. But we put on a good show once per year. That was the only racing we were doing unless wse travelled. Now there aren't many races to go to. Not FE races that is. Some of us got tired of having to travel to race so we focused on building some club racing. We're sure having fun with that.

The CAFE guys are scattered and/or retired from racing. We saw the Wisconsin guys last weekend. Sounded like their pond has become a solid. What ever happened to the Batavia race?

[Heath M]

Hi Andrew,
2 hrs north of sydney would put you around Newcastle right? Well you've got the hunter valley club there which run both gas and electric and are part of the AMPBA.

[sjslhill]

Constant demand for rule changes killed the Batavia yearly event. The Batavia guys still run once a month I think, they have been. I know that Ned goes there and runs at home himself all the time.

I see Doug says it's not just FE. I would have expected that Nitro would be almost dead by now with Gas and FE being a really large group, guess not. Well, it's sad that FE has not grown to larger numbers.

FE has some of the most interesting options now, it's amazing, maybe too many? I must admit, I have never programed an ESC on the PC, what? I am having some fun with my sons running some mini thunders on LiPoly, although I am confused at time with what I am seeing.

What about Canada?

thanks,
Steve

[sjslhill]

Good to hear from you Aussie guys! Does Andrew still have a website and race?

[T.S.Davis]

Something we were talking about at the pond last nite. With electric guys that have gone to the local hobby shop and picked up say a Geico for instance, they're not necessarily intersted in actually racing them. Run them sure. Squeeze more speed out absolutely but not organized racing. Not all of them care about that. Might be 1 in 10 if we're lucky that even think about racing them. There's something about "racing" that freaks some guys out.

I wonder how that goes with nitro and gas. Does everyone think "where can I race it" as soon as they buy it?

I thought Batavia did their own thing no matter what NAMBA and IMPBA wanted. You ran their way if you wanted to play with them.

[LuckyDuc]

Why are the number of FE racers so low at events?

I was not aware of this having been out of event racing for sometime. There was a huge peak back in the day and I can't exactly remember the exact year. MI, MN, OH, WI, IN had numerous racers at one point and the future looked really good. Technology was constantly changing and rule discussions often ended in building up walls. MN had a club, do they now? Cleveland? Wisconsin? Did changing motors too often, batteries changing too much or boat classes change too much? Does Europe have the same problem?

Or is this simply not true or do many just run for fun and don't attend events?

The MN guys, Dan Proulx, Dave Arndt, Lee Simonson, and Mark Anderson still meet up twice per year to race with us WI guys. Some of us WI guys (Jeff Cirves, Doug Peterson, and myself) made the journey to MI a few weeks ago to attend the P-Shoot out race. There were a few OH guys there as well(Howard Tucker and Alan Nayman).

Us WI guys still have a club, but our FE club pond is under renovation by the county... So we have now joined forces with the largest nitro club in District 4, The Badger Model Boat club, based in Kenosha, WI. As a result of us joining with the IMPBA nitro club, we have picked up a few new FE racers as well.

I'm not sure what the race attendance was prior to 2009, as that is when I started racing, so I can't give a comparison to what it is like these days. I can say that model boat race attendance is down from last year (For nitro and FE).

I have reached out to several FE sport boaters here in WI, and they just don't seem interested in racing. They seem content with sport running. What can be done to get sport boaters interested in racing? If I knew, I would probably have another 4 FE boat racers. We have had better success getting some of the nitro guys into FE than sport runners.

I thought that exposing some of the people in my RC flying club to model boats might get some interest peaked, but that didn't seem to work. Perhaps promoting at RC car events would be more beneficial to building our ranks. Who knows??