Guys race those here, a lot of young bracket racers do it in the winter.
Believe it or not, they pay as good or better than a real drag strip.
I also would like to get into building model cars again. Maybe when I retire.
When I was a kid in Concord Calif. we had a place called Buzzy Bees,
on the Corner of Concord Blvd., sort of big place, 50k sqft a RC cars & hobbies shop
was an old dealership I think, (next door to Service Center Speed shop)
Buzzy bees they sold models & bodies, air planes etc.
we had competitions against different towns & hobby shops, like tournaments
mostly kids 8-14 (IIRC) & they had an adults class too,
they were really cutthroat & would fight a lot
I had 40/41 Fords & Willys my favorites for drags, gassers,
a few others altered & dragster, they didn't do so well
had some cool ones with bodies, like GT40s, Cobras, Chapparral or CanAm cars
they had a scale dragstrip, like 1/16:1 (1/12:1 maybe)
& a radical road course with like 12 lanes
it was for 1/24-25:1 scale IIRC they were a lot bigger than the slot cars today
road-course had like 16-17 turns, really wide took a whole huge room up
they would haul *** & fly off, if you didn't slow into a few of the corners
guys would stand in the center or known bad corners,
just to put cars back on the track
(place was a muffler shop last time I saw, been 10+ years since I've been back there now)
I had a box/like huge suitcase 24" tall like 18" deep, w/opening hinged front,
w/shelves, drawers & supplies extra tires wheels, even bodies in the lil' drawers,
made out of 1/4" ply & Masonite IIRC
that my stepdad Bob built me, to carry my racecars, trinkets
I was decked out, I was into it bigtime
he built a few cars frames/w cages to stiffen them for me from scratch too
with braising/brass rods (he was an amazing fabricator of the day, pipefitter by trade)
& I'd pick out a body, paint it underside, they were clear, usually some metalflake color
had the white tires for the road-course & the black stickies for the dragstrip
spent many a weekend not at a real track down there with Bob
I went thru a big model faze when I lived in Alaska, in my 20's
just to thwart off cabin fever
I'd sit at the kitchen table watch TV, it was dark a lot in winter months
& build 1/24-25:1 scale models mostly...
I had a lil hobby shop in the close by shopping center,
I'd buy like 3 models
just to get good engines or good rims & tires or blower motors etc.
all detailed out
(I think I was getting high on the glue, I went overboard)
Built a bunch of Monster Trucks or 4x4's too when it 1st started,
from scratch, same deal buy stuff/several to build 1 & had a crapload of spares
& make my own
When I moved back to Calif. I gave them to my nephew,
he blew most of them up with firecrackers or traded them for sports equipment or balls
). I try not to put too much of this stuff off until retirement, because we need to enjoy every day now. We never know which is our last. I do have high hopes for more discretionary time to do what I want, though. For now, work is the dominant consumer of my time.
