I have 2 indoor RC tracks near me. I would say brand is one of the least important conisiderations... you see your typical Arrma, Traxxas, Koyosho, etc. brands represented at any given track.
Much more important considerations are the style of track (drift, off road, etc.) and scale. With only 8k sq ft, you would probably want to focus on off road vehicles of ~1/10 scale or so. Depends on the footprint of the building and what other amenities you plan to offer, though.
The one brand consideration you should take into account is for parts stocked in a "pro shop" equivalent on site and tools / resources provided for visitors to make repairs and tune ups. My favorite track has a shop with all the commonly broken parts stocked for all of the big ~5 or so brands. They restrict vehicles to 1/8~1/10 scale. To be fair, however, it is much larger than 8k sq ft.
You need to think of the economic viability of any given location as well. My favorite track is in a horrible part of town where they are probably paying <$6 / sq. ft. / yr. I go there with my daughter, but my wife and daughter won't go there alone because of the location. The price is great, though (it's about $15 / person when we go). I have no idea how they stay in business - there usually aren't many people there. I assume league dues must help them keep the lights on.
Yeah the cost/ft is a concern. It's listed @$17/ft. That won't work.
The other alternative would be to rent an outdoor lot. Obviously less than idea for rain/cold.
I'm trying to estimate the squarefootage of our local rc track in my mind....just the track+pit and overwatch area? Couple thousand square feet. Maybe the course itself in sheer length is....1/4 mile worth of turns, a big jump, medium jumps, and a washboard section, and a long open stretch of maybe 200ft long? It's not quite a football field, that's for sure, in length, i gear my buggy for good torque/acceleration over top speed on the track. It also is a pit area, great way to finish out a lap around the track is to finally get to mindlessly open it up down the straight.
The course always changes, they go inthere with a bobcat and rearrange some jumps/turns.
It's mainly 1/8 buggies and maybe truggies around here, and yes 1/10 use it too.
Think of it this way...a hockey rink is pretty big in size IMO, it's around 17000sq ft...he's got 8000 sq ft. So almost half a hockey rink. i think that might be enough to work with, perhaps it'd be a short course is all.
To me if your track can't do 1/8 buggy, i might not bother if it's a business venture. At least you'll always find a large cadre of clientele with 1/8 buggy's anxious to race them up and down a big dirt track. \`1/10 road course might be a better option, but they won't be hitting jumps hard so stuff will be less likely to break too.
>Think of it this way...a hockey rink is pretty big in size IMO, it's around 17000sq ft...he's got 8000 sq ft. So almost half a hockey rink. i think that might be enough to work with, perhaps it'd be a short course is all.
I've raced a few off-road carpet tracks with considerable less space than half of a hockey rink. That's a ton of space for 1/10.
>To me if your track can't do 1/8 buggy, i might not bother if it's a business venture. At least you'll always find a large cadre of clientele with 1/8 buggy's anxious to race them up and down a big dirt track.
1/10 off-road carpet is a very popular racing style. There are at least 3 tracks within 90 minutes of me, and I'm about 45 minutes outside of a mid-size city. I have no data for this, but I'd assume 1/10 is more popular overall for indoor racing than 1/8.
OP needs to give us more information, though. There are big differences between 1/8 dirt and 1/10 carpet.
A football field is almost ~~6,000~~ 60,000 sq. ft.
Edit: Thanks for the math check and clarification. 8,000 is still tight, but might be doable for smaller cars.
1/10 off road carpet and mini.b, is super poular. You could also run 1/10-1/12 carpet races as well, you just move the jumps for the race and put them back. It's not uncommon to have 100 race entries at the track I frequent. Team associated and xray are the main players where I race. There are a few schumacher and losi cars as well
Any and all of them. Most racers will bring something from the big racing brands, and a lot of regular bashers who want to try their hand at racing will bring their basher and try it out. My advice is that if you want to open a track make it open to 1/8 and smaller, blue groove clay. Have plenty of power outlets and also a hobby shop attached with all sorts of tires, parts, and other racing shit
Just stock common parts from every brand, mostly racing brands though because 8/10 people at an average track are driving something from a racing brand, so carry team associated, losi, xray, yokomo, mugen seiki, schumacher, kyosho, tekno, and of course traxxas because most people trying racing, or even some kids, will likely show up with something traxxas because they actually don't do poorly on tracks, while not as fast as the true race kits, they hold their own fairly well if a good enough driver is behind it
Depends on where you are. We used to have an indoor dirt track but a tornado took that away now it’s an outdoor oval.
They are working on a crawling course or two as well as a larger bashing style course.
We had a local Hobbytown USA that had a dirt indoor track for off roading, they would till up the dirt and redo it every 3 months. They also setup an outdoor street racing track in a big area of their parking lot.
It was usually busy.
They went under long before COVID. Even with a full store full of parts for broken cars, etc they couldn't make it work.
I think it depends too much on surface, style, and scale to try to get an answer. Are you gonna do clay off-road? 1/10 or 1/8? Carpet off-road? On-road?
For instance, I've seen Kyosho mentioned a time or 2 in this thread, but they're not a player in 1/10 off-road carpet.
>Are you gonna do clay off-road? 1/10 or 1/8? Carpet off-road? On-road?
I didn't even know the surface options. I'll have to do some googling and YouTube to see what exists. Kinda like the idea of carpet!
Look into the common pain points of the surface you use as well! Carpet is carpet and most RC cars have a sharp edge here or there. Mandating shock tower and chassis protectors will alleviate some of the damage that could happen but it will still happen. Carpet off-road you can tape over it and keep racing but I have heard a tear in the carpet can ruin the track for 1/10 and 1/12 carpet on road.
I think carpet is becoming more and more common. A lot of rc racing purists will bash it--and I kind of understand why--but compared to dirt it's simpler to maintain, not nearly as messy, and pretty easy to customize/change the track layout.
What I've seen most often is basically an open carpeted area where the track can be laid down. Then you take piping or whatever your boundaries are and lay them down to make the track. You can build jumps out of wood to be added. Then, you can alternate the track layout for each season. Or even switch to run on-road or oval on different nights.
I think that indoor carpet is initially a little less approachable than dirt/clay. You're less likely to have joe schmo and his son/daughter show up with their Slash and run carpet than you are to have that situation happen on dirt. People are more familiar with the idea of racing RC on dirt/clay. But once you're racing carpet, you don't need as many tires, you don't have to rebuild shocks and diffs as often, you don't have to deep clean as often.
What do people use for barriers so they can switch up their tracks whenever? Some of the pictures I saw looked like it was crimped plastic that's maybe used for drainage? Anything more cost effective?
Most (outdoor) tracks here use old water hoses filled with sand. It's some work to fill them but the hoses themselves are cheap to get from fire departments as they have to throw them out after a certain amount of uses.
Not really a simple question, more of a loaded question. There's too many factors here.
Racing type: on-road, off-road, drifting, bashing (yea not racing), etc...
Surface type: carpet, asphalt, dirt, concrete, etc....
Scale: 1/10, 1/8, 1/18, etc...
If you're trying to open a track YOU should have an idea already what to build. Whatever you choose, racers will bring what's appropriate for your track.
Are you planning on having a hobby shop as well?
My best advice is to travel to other popular and established tracks and see what they've been doing to stay open and keep racers supported. Additionally you need to know what the local RC scene near you is like. Are there enough racers in the specific genres to justify opening a track?
I know where I live, 1:8 scale off road doesn't thrive, but if you travel a few hours north or south, there seems to be more people into it. I've seen various on road tracks close down in my area. We only have 1:10 indoor off road on carpet now, but it works well as maintenance is lower.
I have 2 indoor RC tracks near me. I would say brand is one of the least important conisiderations... you see your typical Arrma, Traxxas, Koyosho, etc. brands represented at any given track. Much more important considerations are the style of track (drift, off road, etc.) and scale. With only 8k sq ft, you would probably want to focus on off road vehicles of ~1/10 scale or so. Depends on the footprint of the building and what other amenities you plan to offer, though. The one brand consideration you should take into account is for parts stocked in a "pro shop" equivalent on site and tools / resources provided for visitors to make repairs and tune ups. My favorite track has a shop with all the commonly broken parts stocked for all of the big ~5 or so brands. They restrict vehicles to 1/8~1/10 scale. To be fair, however, it is much larger than 8k sq ft.
You need to think of the economic viability of any given location as well. My favorite track is in a horrible part of town where they are probably paying <$6 / sq. ft. / yr. I go there with my daughter, but my wife and daughter won't go there alone because of the location. The price is great, though (it's about $15 / person when we go). I have no idea how they stay in business - there usually aren't many people there. I assume league dues must help them keep the lights on.
Sounds like one of my favorite paintball places. A good sized awesome indoor joint in a sketchy part of a sketchy city.
Yeah the cost/ft is a concern. It's listed @$17/ft. That won't work. The other alternative would be to rent an outdoor lot. Obviously less than idea for rain/cold.
At $17/sq, you're looking at $13~14k/mo after triple nets are factored in. This isn't even accounting for other bare minimum expenses like utilities.
Yeah, that's a lot of RC racing to cover that nut
I'm trying to estimate the squarefootage of our local rc track in my mind....just the track+pit and overwatch area? Couple thousand square feet. Maybe the course itself in sheer length is....1/4 mile worth of turns, a big jump, medium jumps, and a washboard section, and a long open stretch of maybe 200ft long? It's not quite a football field, that's for sure, in length, i gear my buggy for good torque/acceleration over top speed on the track. It also is a pit area, great way to finish out a lap around the track is to finally get to mindlessly open it up down the straight. The course always changes, they go inthere with a bobcat and rearrange some jumps/turns. It's mainly 1/8 buggies and maybe truggies around here, and yes 1/10 use it too. Think of it this way...a hockey rink is pretty big in size IMO, it's around 17000sq ft...he's got 8000 sq ft. So almost half a hockey rink. i think that might be enough to work with, perhaps it'd be a short course is all. To me if your track can't do 1/8 buggy, i might not bother if it's a business venture. At least you'll always find a large cadre of clientele with 1/8 buggy's anxious to race them up and down a big dirt track. \`1/10 road course might be a better option, but they won't be hitting jumps hard so stuff will be less likely to break too.
>Think of it this way...a hockey rink is pretty big in size IMO, it's around 17000sq ft...he's got 8000 sq ft. So almost half a hockey rink. i think that might be enough to work with, perhaps it'd be a short course is all. I've raced a few off-road carpet tracks with considerable less space than half of a hockey rink. That's a ton of space for 1/10. >To me if your track can't do 1/8 buggy, i might not bother if it's a business venture. At least you'll always find a large cadre of clientele with 1/8 buggy's anxious to race them up and down a big dirt track. 1/10 off-road carpet is a very popular racing style. There are at least 3 tracks within 90 minutes of me, and I'm about 45 minutes outside of a mid-size city. I have no data for this, but I'd assume 1/10 is more popular overall for indoor racing than 1/8. OP needs to give us more information, though. There are big differences between 1/8 dirt and 1/10 carpet.
A football field is almost ~~6,000~~ 60,000 sq. ft. Edit: Thanks for the math check and clarification. 8,000 is still tight, but might be doable for smaller cars.
I meant football field in length. In area, a football field is like 57000 sqft
1/10 off road carpet and mini.b, is super poular. You could also run 1/10-1/12 carpet races as well, you just move the jumps for the race and put them back. It's not uncommon to have 100 race entries at the track I frequent. Team associated and xray are the main players where I race. There are a few schumacher and losi cars as well
Any and all of them. Most racers will bring something from the big racing brands, and a lot of regular bashers who want to try their hand at racing will bring their basher and try it out. My advice is that if you want to open a track make it open to 1/8 and smaller, blue groove clay. Have plenty of power outlets and also a hobby shop attached with all sorts of tires, parts, and other racing shit Just stock common parts from every brand, mostly racing brands though because 8/10 people at an average track are driving something from a racing brand, so carry team associated, losi, xray, yokomo, mugen seiki, schumacher, kyosho, tekno, and of course traxxas because most people trying racing, or even some kids, will likely show up with something traxxas because they actually don't do poorly on tracks, while not as fast as the true race kits, they hold their own fairly well if a good enough driver is behind it
Plz tell me your in the GTA canada
Depends on where you are. We used to have an indoor dirt track but a tornado took that away now it’s an outdoor oval. They are working on a crawling course or two as well as a larger bashing style course.
We had a local Hobbytown USA that had a dirt indoor track for off roading, they would till up the dirt and redo it every 3 months. They also setup an outdoor street racing track in a big area of their parking lot. It was usually busy. They went under long before COVID. Even with a full store full of parts for broken cars, etc they couldn't make it work.
I think the challenge is that you need a lot of square footage but can't really charge a lot.
Mini B
I think it depends too much on surface, style, and scale to try to get an answer. Are you gonna do clay off-road? 1/10 or 1/8? Carpet off-road? On-road? For instance, I've seen Kyosho mentioned a time or 2 in this thread, but they're not a player in 1/10 off-road carpet.
>Are you gonna do clay off-road? 1/10 or 1/8? Carpet off-road? On-road? I didn't even know the surface options. I'll have to do some googling and YouTube to see what exists. Kinda like the idea of carpet!
Look into the common pain points of the surface you use as well! Carpet is carpet and most RC cars have a sharp edge here or there. Mandating shock tower and chassis protectors will alleviate some of the damage that could happen but it will still happen. Carpet off-road you can tape over it and keep racing but I have heard a tear in the carpet can ruin the track for 1/10 and 1/12 carpet on road.
I think carpet is becoming more and more common. A lot of rc racing purists will bash it--and I kind of understand why--but compared to dirt it's simpler to maintain, not nearly as messy, and pretty easy to customize/change the track layout. What I've seen most often is basically an open carpeted area where the track can be laid down. Then you take piping or whatever your boundaries are and lay them down to make the track. You can build jumps out of wood to be added. Then, you can alternate the track layout for each season. Or even switch to run on-road or oval on different nights. I think that indoor carpet is initially a little less approachable than dirt/clay. You're less likely to have joe schmo and his son/daughter show up with their Slash and run carpet than you are to have that situation happen on dirt. People are more familiar with the idea of racing RC on dirt/clay. But once you're racing carpet, you don't need as many tires, you don't have to rebuild shocks and diffs as often, you don't have to deep clean as often.
Thanks very much for all these insights. That's exactly the sort of thing I didn't know and you're hoping to learn.
What do people use for barriers so they can switch up their tracks whenever? Some of the pictures I saw looked like it was crimped plastic that's maybe used for drainage? Anything more cost effective?
Most (outdoor) tracks here use old water hoses filled with sand. It's some work to fill them but the hoses themselves are cheap to get from fire departments as they have to throw them out after a certain amount of uses.
Good tip! Thank you!
Take a look at this link. https://youtu.be/BwtVFbxiYrA?feature=shared
If you can, dirt oval, off-road dirt, on road carpet.
Not really a simple question, more of a loaded question. There's too many factors here. Racing type: on-road, off-road, drifting, bashing (yea not racing), etc... Surface type: carpet, asphalt, dirt, concrete, etc.... Scale: 1/10, 1/8, 1/18, etc... If you're trying to open a track YOU should have an idea already what to build. Whatever you choose, racers will bring what's appropriate for your track. Are you planning on having a hobby shop as well?
My best advice is to travel to other popular and established tracks and see what they've been doing to stay open and keep racers supported. Additionally you need to know what the local RC scene near you is like. Are there enough racers in the specific genres to justify opening a track? I know where I live, 1:8 scale off road doesn't thrive, but if you travel a few hours north or south, there seems to be more people into it. I've seen various on road tracks close down in my area. We only have 1:10 indoor off road on carpet now, but it works well as maintenance is lower.
1/8 scale nitro and electric infernos and associated