valentine’s day, friday the 13th, PJ & Mr NanoTrax birthday… all in one weekend! that’s over now & today started a new week. what’s crazy is i’ve been a webmaster for many years & have been offering design services for the past 3 but i haven’t been receiving many web development projects. now that i’m involved in the biggest OFFLINE investment i’ve ever undertaken, i’ve got about 4 web design/development projects knocking at my door. i’ll get around to them eventually, but i don’t like to be rushed as good work never comes out of that situation. speaking of that, we’ve made some serious steps in putting Track Version 3.1 into effect but we still have a few hurdles to overcome. as you can tell by the photos, we have a unique, colorful dome at each pivot. we now have to create a soft, crescent shaped section to place at the curves. both of these elements add to visibility & lessen car damage. we’ll add some extra highlights to the track later but for now, we’re just focusing on the basics. by tomorrow evening, we should have the materials for the 2nd floor track (Version 4.0) in from our supplier. i’ll leave the colors we chose as a surprise.
the floor tiling on the main showroom floor & balcony of the shop have been completed so today, the interior designer & his crew moved in to began the work on the ceiling. they’ll be in for at least 3 weeks & i’ll be taking shots daily of their progress. once complete, i’ll present a slide show going from a bare shophouse to a completed showroom, ready to accept new customers. in the gallery, you’ll see additional pics of my upgrading PJ’s dNano Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. i shipped that out today & it cost 56USD. so, that means shipping just about anywhere else is gonna be cheaper than that since he’s on the exact opposite side of the planet. expensive, but hey… its special for many reasons. also in the gallery, you’ll see pics of the track laid out roughly to show progress & size comparison pics of my 1/8th Mugen MBX5T and Joom‘s 1/43 dNano Porsche 911 GT3. yes, these cars are tiny but fast which is cool cuz people don’t have to be so intimidated about the hobby. 1/8th scale is rough, dirty, in-your-face type R/C which is GREAT but dNano is small, compact & high tech for a whole new generation of R/C fans. last but not least, you can see the tech layout of one of our track concepts. each section represents 1 sq. metre so the track on our showroom will cover 30 sq metres! yes, that’s pretty big. i can’t wait for opening day…
Track Version 1.3 is complete but its now obvious that this track has suffered serious growing pains in our learning journey. don’t get me wrong, its still a good little track for playing at home but definitely isn’t the version we will release for sale or racing in any way. the way we did the edges/walls of the track initially was difficult, messy and over the long run will become damaged and unsightly. even the insulation padding that we added was messy. quick word of advice: don’t mix super glue & insulation material unless you want to see smoke and get melted black rubber on the tips of your fingers. its a good thing i keep a few bottles of nail polish remover handy…. don’t ask why. to top of the completion of the track, Nalani and i separated the colored rocks and i made a nice little rock collage type thing. i tried to think of some deep meaning for it but nothing came to mind – its just cool looking with separated colors. we’ll retire this track when its in shreds, but for now, we’ll keep it for memories, practice & hanging out with other r/c addicts who visit to share beers & laughs.
we’ve reached an agreement with the owner of the building where we plan to open the shop. he seems eager to get things going with us and open to ideas about what we want to do with location. he’s coming in from Bangkok before friday, we’ll sign the papers, make the deposit and then we’ll be ready to really get started. assuming everything goes as planned, i’ll take pics and post after the weekend. speaking of this weekend, there’s a 1/8th scale nitro race in Rayong so i think i’ll take my Mugen MBX5T over and see if i can come away with some hardware. i haven’t practiced on it in a while but i think Thom, my mechanic @ PRC has put some time into making sure its ready to race. besides, my dNano Mazda 787b is out of commission until i get some tires. my supplier has been really helpful but supply is limited and many of the most wanted items are still unavailable. i’m hoping to get more tires, accessories and optional parts in soon. i did just get a small order which included some wheels, a ball diff, alum. rear wheel hubs and a battery but nothing i haven’t seen in stock already.
i’ve already started laying out the design for Track Version 2.0 (see my sketch in the gallery). Pee Bey gave us some good advice on how we should set up the course to keep it interesting. another important point is creating the track sections in a manner that allows us to modify the course whenever we want without having to completely rebuild a new track. we’ll spend a lot more time with the details as this will be one of the feature tracks at the shop when we open. the course will be nearly 1 full metre wide allowing for dNano‘s and Mini-Z‘s to race on it. in addition to working on the track layout, i’ll be upgrading the dNano Porsche 911 GT3 with the ball diff that just came in within the next day or 2. i’ll wait until monday for that as i may have something else special to add… before i wrap, one more bit of good news: the shirts came in and they’re nice but the green is a bit brighter than expected. i’ll be sure to shoot a pic of Nalani in his, we got 2 of them in his size.
its monday and as expected, we received our items for Track Version 2.0. the original material was ok but the pieces were way to large for any mobility. i doubt highly we’ll be scrapping the original though cuz i asked Joom how much she would sell it for if asked and she replied 500 million US dollars. i think its safe to say there’s some sentimental value there – lol. the new material consists of 1 square metre jigsaw pieces of stiff but flexible rubber (black) along with long pieces of a harder rubber in green. in the morning, i’ll take some time to figure out a design for the new track layout and we’ll get started on construction sometime next week. we’ve already invited the guys from PRC over for a race at our home soon so we’ve got to get Track Version 1.2 ready and that of course means adding another soft rubber to the “walls”. at the moment there are cable ties holding the rubber hoses to the slim rubber sheets used in our original design. these will hold just about anything they can get around in place forever but unfortunately, they cause irreparable damage to a dNano body when making impact at high speed. check out the pics of the Mazda 787b and the Porsche 911 bodies and you’ll see the scratches & loose headlights. i feel kinda sorry for the first 2 models in my collection cuz they of course will be the ones that go thru the growing pains of our initinal track designs and my slowly improving driving skills.
as you can see in the pics, the hoses suspended by cable ties are now being covered with insulation material. its so soft, you could probably sleep on a sheet of it as if it were a mattress and not tell the difference. but it is rather expensive costing 300 baht for a 1×2 metre sheet. luckily, a sheet was enough for most of 2 sections from our original track. i cut the pieces myself and we applied them completely covering the walls of track, inside for protection, outside to make it look presentable. as you can see, this was a rush job as we wanted to test the effects on the cars more than make it “pretty”. i ran the Mazda 787b on the track and on the padded sections, i went full blast and slammed into the edges to see what would happen. the car bounced off like it hit a soft spot of cotton and bounced off with absolutely no negative effect. this is PERFECT and we’re now considering adding a small bit to the edges of the new track to get the same effect.
we met with the manager of the building today and he seemed like a really nice guy perfectly willing to help us get our business going and as quickly as possible. i don’t want to say too much about it, but i’ll post pics of the location after we sign the contract. expect an update in a couple more days once i’ve received new parts for the Porsche. if you haven’t peeped the dNano homepage lately, stop by and check out the latest models including the Audi R8 & the Lamborghini Countache. i’ve gotta get that Lamobo for myself… that’s a classic joint right there! as we get new models in stock, i’ll let you know of course but Kyosho is keeping the collection under wraps. any questions about upcoming releases or current stock, send an email to sales@nanotrax.net.
here are pics of the first version of our track as promised… more to come as the next version is now in the works. we’ll be headed out to check on the uniform polo shirts in a few minutes, enjoy the pics!
