Reviews

Helion has seen tons of success providing us with its very capable models at an unbe- lievable price point. After driving the Dominus short course truck which was released a couple of years ago, I was sure that the Invictus 10MT would provide a great driving experience once I had the privilege of taking the wheel.

Rewind the clock 27 years and you will find me, a 13-year-old boy sitting at my parent’s dining room table, experiencing the thrill and challenge of building my first ever RC car, the Tamiya Blackfoot. Fast forward to the present, and now I find myself sitting at my own dining room table building the latest kit from Tamiya, the Aqroshot.

O.S. Engines is best known for their nitro power plants for all sorts of RC vehicles. From planes to helis and especially cars and trucks, the engine manufacturer is well-known for the reliability and power of the mills they produce.

RC Driver Reviews 3 awesome products: Pit Lamp, Portable Bluetooth Speaker, Astle Sidewinder Esc Cage

The Slash has seen quite a few years of service, with Traxxas introducing something new with each release. It’s progressed from a pretty basic 2WD Short Course truck to something with 4WD, a Low-CG chassis, waterproof electronics, stickier tires and even a rockin’ sound system.

It goes without saying that the people over at LRP know a thing or two about designing high quality speed controls, motors, chargers and other electronics. In fact, their electronics have collected about a dozen world titles and have been in vehicles that have cruised to victory way back at the 1995 IFMAR World Championships and most recently, at the 2013 IFMAR World Championship.

While most of us in the RC surface world are used to pistol grip transmitters, twin stick transmitters will always have their place in the hobby. Already popular in the RC boating segment, twin sticks are indispensable in both high end rock crawling and scale applications.

In the RC Driver offices we’re often asked by enthusiasts and even manufacturers what we think the next big thing is or if we could request one new vehicle from any company, what would it be? Well for over two years now, we’ve been wishing there was a large scale crawler offering.

Without a doubt Tamiya has a huge following in the RC world. They’ve helped introduce this hobby to so many people over the years and if you ask any RCer to rattle off a few names of popular Tamiya kits or a list of Tamiya kits they would like to have, the Bruiser or Mountaineer would most likely be on the list.

Developing a new car brand is not an easy thing to do nowadays, but one company seems to be having an easy time gaining respect in the racing community and that company is SWorkz. SWorkz has been around for several years with quality products and designs and they have signed World Champion driver, Atsushi Hara to wheel their extensive line of race vehicles.

When we got the 1/10-scale Axial Yeti in the office, everyone associated with the magazine wanted to review it. While I really wanted to give it a go, I had heard that something ‘big’ was on the horizon, so I decided to withdraw my request and see what Axial was up to.

For years now, Stadium Trucks have taken a back seat to the monstrous short course fad. While basically the same platform, many prefer the closed body type of the short course truck and the ability to rub fenders on the track without the fear of tangling tires. That is slowly changing, however, with the Stadium Truck class becoming more prominent at both the local and National level.

The new Team Durango kits are making their way hobby shop shelves and we grabbed one of the first DESC10 short course truck kits available to see what these new platforms are all about. All eyes are certainly on Team Durango right now as they’ve taken a new approach for an RC racing company by primarily focusing on the “club racer”

Serpent has really been on the move, really on the move to be exact. They have been pumping out race ready machines in all popular racing classes and then backing up their competition vehicles with ready-to-run machines so that casual racers and bashers, too, can enjoy competition quality and design in a package that’s easy to take from the box to the play site.

Short course racing’s spot in the competition world is solid, requiring companies to build top-of-the-line trucks for those who want to win. Team Losi Racing is without a doubt one of those companies that is continually striving to produce better competition machines for their followers.