A few years ago me and a few of my friends bought Nitro-powered RC cars, specifically the HPI Nitro RS4. They were great fun to build and race, even though most races ended with crashes resulting in trips to the hobby store or mail ordering parts from Tower Hobbies. I haven’t raced my car in a few years, although I did recently get it out of storage and was surprised to find that there was still enough juice in the batteries in the car and the transmitter for me to turn it on and manipulate the servos.
Now I’m thinking of getting into RC again, as a ton of folks from work have the Traxxas Jato 2WD 2.5 RTR 1/10-scale Nitro-powered off-road truck, which they race on occasion in a local park. All the cool kids have one so it’s probably about time that I cave in to the peer pressure and get one myself. Some people play golf with their fellow professionals, we race RC cars.
I just checked out the Jato at a local hobby shop and it’s rather expensive (~$400) but looks like a pretty nice truck. I like the fact that it’s off-road which hopefully translates into greater versatility and hopefully durability. It seems to have a powerful engine and has niceties like a two-speed transmittion, rubber-sealed ball bearings and dirt guards. Also this truck is pretty much ready to run, no major assembly required, and it has an electric starter which sounds much nicer than the rip cord/glow plug system on my old RS4.
The Jato was $400 at the local hobby shop (RC Unlimited) but only $352 at Tower Hobbies for just the truck or $379 for a combo package that includes a 1500mAh NiCd starter battery and charger, fuel bottle, etc. so if I get it, I’ll get it there.