Bringing the RC Hobby Indoors

I have some terrible news, Australians: It’s winter, and winter is cold.

When I drove into the HD offices this morning, it was exactly zero degrees. At least I think it was zero, my fingers were frozen so I couldn’t refresh the weather app.

We all like warmer climates better and the general consensus is that you can do more fun stuff in the warmer months.

But fortunately, my love of RC cars isn’t weather-dependent.

Obviously the ideal conditions are a warm, sunny day, with a specially prepped track and a bunch of mates to race against.

Here, especially in Victoria, we don’t really have those conditions at the moment.

But that’s okay! In this series of blogs I'll cover some RC-related Things To Do™ to distract you from the frostbite, in no particular order.

1. Build a car!

Building an RC car not only teaches you how they work, completing the build comes with a great sense of achievement.

It makes me think of that meme from the first Iron Man movie. I was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps! And you don’t have to be Tony Stark to do that.

There’s a bunch of different kits on the market to suit all budgets, tastes, and skill levels.  

My love of the vintage-rc scene is no secret around here, and for good reason – I have more Tamiya kits than I’d like to admit on the internet and I’ve still got 2 to build. They’re all massively overpowered and despite being able to only drive one car at a time, I’m still going to get more.

You can check out all the Tamiya RC kits we have in stock here.

For something a bit more challenging and prestigious, there’s also vintage build kits from Kyosho and Team associated.

Kyosho and Team Associated also do some pretty impressive race kits, as well as TLR.

But for the full super-precision-racecar experience (and if you really like carbon fiber), you should probably look into building an Xray.

No matter what you put together though, you’re going to build a bunch of skills. It’s a much more fulfilling experience than putting together a Swedish table with an allen-key. You get to put together gears and arms and suspension, and you can even paint the body any colour you like, to make something unique and entirely yours. Best of all though - it's a great activity to gets kids off screens.

That’s just one of many ways the RC hobby can get you through the winter months – stay tuned for more!