Meatball Racing

Radio Control Blog

DIY lithium powered lawn mower

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While this isn’t about anything R/C, it’s somewhat related… I recently converted a lead-acid battery powered mower to lithium-ion batteries. Anyone that is in R/C and has a lawn to mow should follow this course.

For the record, I hate mowing the lawn. It’s a useless pursuit. We’ve all got better things to do with both our time and our resources like water and land. This Washington Post article “Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them” pretty much sums up my opinion.

The purpose of upgrading to an electric mower is to get the job done faster, and without smelling like a snowblower repairman when I’m done.
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Hobby Stores getting left behind

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Dear hobby shop owners and employees,

This is a plea, asking you to get to know your competition. If you don’t know what a Turnigy 9x or an XT60 is, you’ve become a slave to your distributors, and your customers are likely going to leave you behind. There is an enterprising young man named Anthony Hand who moved to China and started a company called HobbyKing. You should pay attention to what they (and others) are doing as they’re rewriting the rules of radio control hobbies.

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Sears Lobo II

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My first radio control car that was of any significance was a Sears Lobo. I don’t recall if it was a Lobo, Lobo II, or a Super Lobo, but I found this old eBay listing that looks spot-on:

sears_super_lobo_2

I had other cars before it, some that had wires – “remote control” as they were called. Another early radio controlled car had a single button on the controller. The car would go forward with no input from the controller. When you pressed the button, it would go backwards and turn at the same time – effectively giving you an option to point it in a new direction. The Lobo put all those others to bed.

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Mega Mini

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My son Jules has really taken to R/C driving – and crashing. My formerly pristine Subaru WRX body has officially been put through the ringer:

So I asked Jules what sort of body he would like – hoping that I could save the Subie body from further destruction. But he has a hard time getting past the fact that lexan bodies are clear and can be painted in any color scheme, so he’s often influenced by the presentation color rather than the shape. Unable to get him to commit to something, I made an educated guess.

Mighty Mini

When we race at the Twin City On-Road Club in Cottage Grove during the winter, he usually winds up running in the Tamiya Mini B-main if there’s not enough people for a novice class. We even discussed getting him a Tamiya Mini at one point.

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