WHERE IT ALL BEGAN FOR ME
MY STORY
RC RUNS IN THE FAMILY
It was on the year I was born that my dad had gotten his first electric RC, that’s 1983. It was a replica of the 1983 Renault A310 Alpine GT sponsored by Calberson, elf and good year. It was no easy task having electric back then. Batteries where NIMH and motors all brushed. No LIPO batteries and brushless motors. This had a 550 brushed motor and was rear wheel drive. ESCs did not exist, power distribution was still analogue through a coiled resistor and moving arm with a servo, today it’s digital. It was wicked fast back then.
Check out the two images below. The first was taken around September 1983, my dad charging the batteries. Have you seen the charger? When I was around 6 year old I started driving it. Over the years we had stopped using it, it went in storage and we though we had lost it. My dad switched to RC boats. It was 37 years later whilst cleaning the garage that I found it, well what was left of it. I decided to upgrade it, a new chassis, modern electronics, restored the body and added some lights. On September 2020, I gave it back to my dad. You can imagine the surprise, seeing it after all those years.
Over the years we had some RCs always running about the house but what I remember very clearly is this bigfoot replica. My dad had just gotten back from Germany and he got two big foots, for my brother and I. We loved them, back then monster trucks were like wow, they still are today. We used to take them everywhere and god did they see some off-road.
Electric took you so far and had it’s limits unlike today. The 90s were all about nitro and I started getting interested again. It was the time of the Thunder tiger, Traxxas Revo and HPI Savage. HPI back then was like bigger than Traxxas, can you imagine.
I remember it like it was yesterday at the local trade fair back in 2003, it was an HPI Nitro Savage, 19 years ago, wow how time flies. The seller Matthew, still with RCs today, was dropping it from a height showing how tough it was and how well it takes the landings. I was sold straight away. Talked about RCs for like half an hour, two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, nitro engines and everything in between. I ended up getting the HPI Savage Nitro truck, the one you see below.
Well started using it stock and god, we had a good time, ran it all over Malta. BMX tracks, public parks, green areas, football pitches, literally everywhere. So many hours of no footage, god, digital cameras were early days back then, mobile cameras were like zero, YouTube heheh not yet…
At the BMX track is were we caused most havoc. That Savage flew easily 3 to 4 meters in the air, back flips, double back flips, bent the chassis like seven times, blew the gas tank three times, snapped the exhaust pipe clean off twice, engine get loose and god knows what else. My friends and I upgraded to aluminum exhausts and gas tanks and so much more. It was quite reliable for a nitro truck. It was well tuned and used to start straight away, engine was solid and gave out good power.
With studies and work and life in general, I drifted away from RCs for a good while. It was not just that, nitro had become a bit of a problem. The noise used to bother everyone, around the university grounds and some other good spots police used to stop us after noise complaints and slowly slowly we started loosing interest.
In the meantime, electronics started getting way way better, digital speed controllers or ESCs, LIPO batteries giving out much more power, brushless motors revving faster than ever before but most of all, things started getting cheaper and cheaper.
I got attracted to the WL Toys brand. They made good RCs with a cheap price tag, ready to run including battery and charger and decided to get one and try it out. Obviously it got back the memories, months later I had 3 of them and started upgrading them, tuning and so on. I got so good at it that I started fixing WL Toys and later started getting some models and selling them locally.
The next phase can only be described in one word, a word that is at the back of my thoughts everywhere I go…
“ARRMA” !
Well, I am an Arrma fan, I must say, love everything about them. My first Arrma was the 3S Typhon, its the best all rounder on any terrain, you can race, drift, off-road, bash, hit the skate parks… it does it all. Then it was the Arrma Infraction on 6S, god the power on road was like unfelt, forget any nitro engine, the infraction is difficult to describe, you have to see it for yourself. Stock it leaves skid marks on the road and the scale is just right. Over the last few years I got more Arrma models, some Traxxas ones and Losi, Axial and ZD Racing as well as sold some not to have too many.
Recently there’s been a boost in the hobby, some say it’s due to covid but who knows. What I know is that somehow, we crazy RC fanatics found each other one day and started bashing together and took off immediately. We setup RC BISS, a group of now friends all passionate hobbyists. We meet, talk, drive and most of all have so much fun doing it.
Over the months I had gathered a ton of footage and at some point I thought, well shouldn’t I share it, maybe others get interested in joining? I did that with the EVO RC YouTube channel and it took off. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPJnQjBGRc-Msbs7sGhStMQ Well it took off mostly in the US and some other countries, not many viewers in Malta, maybe 10%. The idea of this website came to me naturally, I wanted people who are interested in the hobby to find this info at their fingertips and find the communities straight away.
