Roosclan Racing 2013 - updated: District & Council

[roosclan]

Well, with son #3 crossing over to Boy Scouts, Roosclan Racing is down to 1 member this year. Son #4, Seth, is a Wolf this year, and after winning champion in Pack and District and taking 1st in Tigers at Council and 4th overall, he decided that he wanted a different kind of car from last year -- which looked like a car. His comment this year was "I want to go thin for the win!"

So, after scouring the interwebs and getting ideas he came up with Arrowhead:




I was looking for airbrushing techniques to try on my scale model cars, and he saw a youtube video on doing a water droplet effect and fell in love with it. It is amazingly easy to do if you have an airbrush, and a spray can will work if you have the fine-spray nozzle and turn it horizontally.

My son's den leader is a local orthodontist, and while his hands work magic on teeth, they didn't do PWD well at all. Our boys are in the same den, and his son finished last in almost every heat last year because he didn't know how to help his son build a car. He asked me this year if I would help him so that his son would not finish last (didn't ask for help to build a winning car -- just so his son didn't finish last. Typical genuine humility for this guy). He's a really nice guy, and our boys both seem to suffer from ADHD, so it was a challenge to keep them on task. Each time they came over to my garage he was so patient with his son and drew him in to work on his own car as much as he could (when an 8y.o. has a friend to run around the garage with, it can be hard, though). I taught him not only the basic physics, but the finer points as well, and we set up a 3-wheel rail rider with finely polished axles (on his dental lathe at work!) and a CoM at 7/8".



I gave his son free reign of my paint supply, so he picked some purple-to-green color shifting paint for his flames. He did an excellent job sanding and spraying the Duplicolor black on, and even did well with my airbrush. We had to hollow out the car a lot and covered the bottom with some packing tape, but in the end, I think he'll give my son a run for his money instead of "just not last."

[Deleted]

WOW! That first car is really impressive! I am just impressed at the quality of build!
Impressive!
Murph

[X-Ring Racing]

That's one of the nicest water drop effects I've seen. My son did the same thing 2 years ago after watching some video's, inspired by a "W" Racing car... I think it was named "Orange Crush" or something along those lines.

That's what it's all about, it feels great to help out other kids!

[roosclan]

Feb 26, 2013 22:27:56 GMT -6 slt said:

WOW! That first car is really impressive! I am just impressed at the quality of build!
Impressive!
Murph

Thanks! I've been using this building technique with the boys for 3 or 4 years now, and it really makes it easy to design, build, and finish the cars. On top of that, I can remove the bottom and recover the tungsten cubes to use for the next year!

As for the painting, we only use Duplicolor from a can for base coats and clear, and anything else is done with the airbrush. We even use Pledge with Future Floor Finish for a clear coat, and it does a great job as well.

Seth has ADHD (I'm sure of it), but when he gets focused on something he puts everything into it and does a great job. He got the Bondo glaze putty v e r y smooth -- better than his older brothers ever did -- and that's half the battle of getting a good paint job.

Feb 27, 2013 9:38:31 GMT -6 X-Ring Racing said:

That's one of the nicest water drop effects I've seen. My son did the same thing 2 years ago after watching some video's, inspired by a "W" Racing car... I think it was named "Orange Crush" or something along those lines.

I practiced the water drop technique quite a bit to make sure I got it down right before handing Seth my airbrush and teaching him to do it. He did an excellent job following my instructions and got just the right amount of detail. Kids his age tend to get too close and put too much paint on if not restrained a bit, but I was able to stand back and take pictures letting him do it all:

That's what it's all about, it feels great to help out other kids!

It really does!

[roosclan]

Well, we just finished the pack race and the district "Salt Flats Race," which is an all-scout district-wide race (not the official district race, which is 1st & 2nd place of each pack -- on 4/13). Seth didn't do to bad, seeing as how he won 1st overall in his pack, and Salt Flats Grand Champion...

His car this year wasn't as fast as last year, running 3.021-3.038 for the most part, except for the slow lane that gave him times of 3.055 and 3.074. I'll get pics up later tonight after I get the munchkins in bed.

[mwdpwdracing]

Nice Job Roosclan...

[Evolution]

Awesome!

[Sporty]

I like the pictures of your son, air brushing,. cool..

[roosclan]

Well, we managed to make it to the District race on 4/13 and the Council race on 4/20. I realized I never included photos of the pack race, so here are pics of all races:
Pack race:



For the Salt Flats race later in the day, they turned out the lights and had the track lit up:



A month later we finally had the District race. He came in first in his pack and 1st over all again. Here's how it looked at the district race on 4/13:


this heat is the only time Seth came in 2nd:


Like the genius I am, I forgot to take my camera to the Council race. It was held at Encampment 2013 at the state fairgrounds and I was working the 3D archery station for Venture Scouts and completely forgot to have my wife bring the camera with Seth to the race. The only pics I have of the Council Race are the trophy shots from my cell phone.

The Council race was by far the most exciting race this year. With a ton of cars, there were 134 heats, with each scout running twice in each of the 4 lanes. The victors were determined by their cumulative times from their 8 runs. There were two other cars that were as fast as Seth, and he took 1st in Wolves and 2nd over all. The speeds were very impressive at this race, and for the first time in our family, we broke under 3 seconds! Seth had a few runs of 2.998s. The first place winner had a run of 2.98s. I'm not sure what happened between the pack & district races (run in different locations but consistent speeds) and the council race (also a different location), but it was nice to see that his speeds were considerably faster. We had been having a good bit of humidity the past month or so, so I enclosed Seth's car in our plastic carrier with a dessicant canister right next to it. Hopefully it drew any moisture out of the graphite/moly blend and kept it drier.

The times between 1st and 3rd place in the overall standings were amazingly close: 24.000s, 24.004s (Seth), and 24.007s. That's .007s spread out over 8 runs!
Den trophy:

Overall 2nd place:

[DerikX Racing]

I love the water drop effect. Did you use the technique that used actual water and let it dry with the paint over it? I’ve been trying to master smoke, the guys on YouTube make this look so easy, but I’m getting better.

The arrow car is great by the way. I’ve showed it to my son who is now a Webelos II and he wants to use the arrow to design his car for next year “our last year of scout racing ”. Of course we will not stop building and racing cars though. We have seen other cars that have attempted the arrow but nothing as sharp looking as yours.

[roosclan]

Apr 27, 2013 8:58:41 GMT -6 DerikX Racing said:

I love the water drop effect. Did you use the technique that used actual water and let it dry with the paint over it?

That's exactly what we did.

[notsofast]

That arrow car is one of the coolest designs I've ever seen. Pretty wicked looking. The second car looks like it was dipped in paint and had a pic taken of it while it was wet. Very good job kids.

[twistediron]

Sent from my XT1080 using proboards