On our family vacation down in Disneyland, and on the way out we stopped at
Ridemakerz -- think of it as "Build-a-bear" for boys -- you build cars instead of bears. lights, bumpers, chassis, wheels, tires, sound, stickers, and assembly stations with power tools dangling from the ceiling. Nice concept, a bit pricey, but exciting for a 5 year old. Given the late time of day, and my budget, we didn't do much with our cars. He got basically a push car with some lights and sound, and I got a little R/C car.
The thing is, the R/C car is the most gutless thing I have seen in a very long time -- it paled in comparison to other R/C toys I have seen that also used 4 AA batteries for power (Disney Mater tow truck that was scary fast for 4AA batteries). Even firm carpet is too much for this car (1/4" knap) you have to pick it off the carpet to get it moving again. The engineer in me thinks that whomever decided what motor and gearing to use for their R/C at Ridemakerz (IIRC, you have only one choice for the car chassis: "R/C, yes or no?") they chose the motor and gearing more for higher top end speed than for torque off the line. Of course, you don't know this till you get home with the car, which for me was 8+ hours of airports and airplanes and taxi.
Of course, the TSA did special inspections and made sure my R/C car and transmitter were not dangerous items before allowing me to take it onto the airplane. :P They didn't swab the radio transmitters in my Toyota car door remotes nor either of my cameras...(don't get me started) ... but they *did* test the mickey mouse balloon my son was carrying. I definitely feel safer knowing that kids balloons won't be dangerous if brought on board.
Anyway, this car has what I will call a binary controller -- either you are applying power to the wheels or you aren't -- there is no half throttle, there is no half-turn. (in my head, I have a Yoda (Miyagi?) voice saying "go or do not go, there is no try").
Mom and baby took a different set of flights home so she could side-trip to see her mom. This left me with a "brand new" R/C car, an excited 5 year old, and a couple of days of time before the holiday break ended. What to do what to do? Aha! Let's clear all the furniture out of the wood-floored dining area and turn it into an R/C car track! Let's just say that my son and I had a *ton* of fun, and it was also educational for me too! Yes, we ate standing up at the kitchen counter -- table? who needs a table for eatin'?
What I learned is that even a "cheap" R/C may be able to do some interesting stunts. Probably the easiest is the slide-turn or slide-turn-stop. Here's how:
- You need a slick flat floor with a bit of space -- I had a hardwood floor, probably about 10x15 (10x12?) with an adjoining room, also hardwood that had some extra space
- Get the car up to speed. (I needed about 8-12 feet of acceleration room for a good slide, 4-6 feet for a fractional turn)
- Turn the car to the side while maintaining forward throttle
- Immediately after (a quarter of a second after?) cranking the steering to the side, change forward throttle to backward throttle.
- tada! your car should have spun around enough for you to see 90-180 degree rotation of the car and a sliding stop.
- If you have good timing, you can switch back to forward throttle to keep going out of the turn, or hold the backward throttle to make use of your momentum in that direction.
I bet someone with some time (and batteries) to practice could probably control it well enough to do a sliding parallel parking job, but I wasn't quite skilled enough. For me I mostly was trying to get enough speed to do a clean 180 to a stop just before hitting the wall.
Tonite, I had the idea to see if I could drift it -- I got about a third of a circle drift turn before I ran out of room. (my wife is home, so the dining area has furniture again) Drifting requires a bit more control to initiate:
- Start with a big enough space for your car (smooth slick surface) size depends on the car's turning radius.
- Rather than speeding up in a straight line, keep the front wheels cranked to one side the whole time.
- Accelerate to get some speed in the turn
- Tap from forward to reverse just enough to initiate a slide, then *immediately* get back on the forward throttle.
- With luck, this will get your car drifting around the corner. Whether or not it can maintain the drift will depend entirely on the car and the surface you're driving.
Plan to allow 10 feet clear floor space if you want to try to drift -- I was using about 6-8 feet square area, and had to be very careful to avoid smashing walls, chairs, etc.
If I get enough control of either of these to be able to demonstrate for a video camera, I'll try to get videos online.
On a side note, my 5 year old son has an R/C car (Nikko brand?) that is actually a larger body with a 9.6v motor with two forward speeds -- the faster speed is actually "dangerous" to use indoors as you run out of room before it is done accelerating and almost before you can react to stop it! You can just see me excitedly yelling "wall!! wall!! watch out for the wall!" just before the car smashes into the wall, both when he is driving *and* when I am driving. Anyway that car has enough power that it can pretty much pivot turn on the front wheel with no special control manipulation other than "crank the wheel and hit the throttle!" -- I keep wishing there was a good large slick area we could take cars like that to play and see what they might be capable of doing.
To my wife's chagrin, probably every time the chairs are out of the dining room for a thorough sweeping and mopping, it may draw kids, big :) and little, with R/C cars...
Happy driving!
rootie
ps. Disclosure? I paid way too much for a wimpy car, and have received nothing in compensation from anyone mentioned in this post. If you feel like sending me something for free in the hope that I might review it, please do so, but I can't promise a post, nor a positive review as a result.
