Wow, what a great system! We got our hands on the new Team Tekin RS Pro / Redline Brushless system, and it hauls! If you are in the market for a new system, you are going to want to head over to the RC Reviews section or click here to read the full Team Tekin RS Pro Redline Brushless Review!

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Novak has just released their new Kinetic Racing Brushed/Brushless ESC and it’s available as a system with one of their 10 Ballistic Brushless motors (from 3.T to 21.5T).

This new ESC offers a ton of options, easily programmed using Novak’s NovaLink PC Interface, including Dynamic Motor Timing and digital current control. The Ballistic Brushless motors boast an easy to adjust timing assembly along with interchangeable wound stator construction.

Visit Novak’s site for all the details.

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Dynamite has burst onto the brushless scene with a complete set of motors and ESC’s for 1/18 and 1/10 vehicles. The 1/18 motors range from 7000kv up to a whopping 9700kv, and the 1/10 scale motors come in a 3300kv wind (perfect for all you short course truck fans) though 6800kv. ESC’s and motors are available seperately, and an external programming card is available and works with either system.

Click here to view individual specs and prices

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It looks like Kyosho wants in on the 1/8 electric scene and they are going to enter with guns and brushless motors ablaze. The Inferno VE Readyset is outfitted with Team Orion’s Vortex brushless system and the chassis has been redesigned from the ground up to be a RTR brushless beast. Not to mention, props go to Kyosho for including a body that actually looks good!!

Look for the Inferno VE Readyset to be available in October.

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News from Futaba is that they have a few new products coming soon. The first is the MC950CR - Brushless ESC. It has an aluminum case and heat sink with removable fan, large solder posts, and is fully adjustable through your transmitter!

Next up are the Futaba Brushless Servo’s! The have been proven to outlast brushed servo’s 5 to 1, deliver 30% faster response time, and they have 16 different types that cover just about every aspect of RC! Flying to Driving!

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HPI has come out with a super charged brushless motor for their Savage Flux truck.  Get more RPM and more top speed with the Flux Tork 2650. The Flux Tork 2650 features massive machined cooling fins to help keep it cool when you’re driving all-out.  With a 5mm motor shaft it can fit the upcoming optional pinion gears so you can get even more top speed for those insane runs, or gear it down a bit for increased acceleration on the track.

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Just got word that Caster Racing USA is jumping into the 1/18th scale brushless market with two new vehicles. One buggy, and one truck. They are 4wd, brushless, and RTR!
We’ll post up any more details as they arrive.

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My name is Nick and I have been involved in R/C cars for 20 years now. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I’m a die-hard electric off-road fan. From 1989-1999 I raced 1/10 electric off-road with the occasional nitro. From 1999-2003 I attended college and didn’t have time for r/c cars so I could concentrate on school. As soon as I graduated, I was back into racing. I’m not much of a basher. I am more of a racer. My background in engineering drives me to make unique and interesting designs. I designed my “X2” speed run car completely on CAD and then built it using an RC10L4 as the backbone. For the past 3 years have been working on speed run cars. I have 4 cars that I am currently working on to try and hit some insane speeds. The 1/8 brushless off-road class is also something I will be getting into. The brushless revolution has finally come to R/C cars and it’s a welcome change that our community needed. I’ll be posting here at Big Squid bringing you news on the latest r/c products and news from the world of rc speed run cars.

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New from New from Schumacher USA is the Speed Passion 1/8th Scale Brushless Racing System. It’s designed for 8th scale buggies and truggies! The “Hybrid Drive” technology allows for a smooth start from a dead stop. The full system comes with a backlit handheld programming box! (That I like!) It can handle up to 4s, and the prices are right! Retail is only $249 for the whole system. The kits are shipping now.

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New from Team Associated is the LRP Vector X-12 brushless motor. Their new design has the entire motor only needed 4 screws. This allows access to replace the rotor if needed while leaving the motor in the vehicle!
Fully adjustable and replaceable, the Vector X-12’s PreciSensor systems allows precision sensor positioning for more power, torque, throttle response and efficiency. In other words, this is a hard core racer engine. That’s some serious fine tuning there. If comes in everything from 3.0 turn to 8.5.

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We just got word from Schumacher USA that Marc Rheinard won the IFMAR A-Mains with a Speed Passion Competition 2 Series 4t motor. That’s a pretty big win for those guys! Congrats!

Final Overall results
1. Marc Rheinard Speed Passion
2. Ronald Volker
3. Masami Hirosaka
4. Atsushi Hara
5. Elliott Harper
6. Viktor Wilck Speed Passion
7. Andy Moore
8. Hayato Matsuzaki
9. Meen Vejrak
10. Jilles Groskamp Speed Passion

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Team Novak has just issued a press release about the new Brushless in a Box HV Pro 6.5 conversion kits. The kit comes with the HV 6.5 brushless motor, steel pintion gear, motor heat sink, two battery boxes, ESC cooling fan, motor cooling fan, antenna mount, hardware kit and instructions.

They now have a ton of kits available, and I’m guessing there will be one for the now popular Hot Bodies D8. We’ll have to wait and see, but till then, here is the current list!

#3100 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: Associated RC8
#3101 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: CEN Matrix
#3102 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: Hot Bodies Lightning2 Evo
#3103 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: Kyosho Inferno
#3104 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: Mugen MBX5
#3105 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: OFNA 9.5 Ultra
#3106 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: OFNA Hyper 8
#3107 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: OFNA Hyper 7
#3108 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: X-RAY XB8
#3109 HV Pro 6.5 System / Conversion Kit Combo: Losi 8ight.

Make sure to check out the NEW Product Forum for the full press release and details!

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Stop the presses! Looks like all those Worlds Fastest RC Car speed records and RC Drag Racing times are going to be broken in the near future!

Castle Creations has just posted a page talking about their new 9000 kv Mamba Max Motor! You read that correctly, 9000 kv! The other kicker? It’s $99! Wow. I can’t wait to get one of these in the King Squid RC Dragster! Heck.. imagine this puppy in a Traxxas Slash!

Check out the official Castle Creations page Right Here!

We will do our best to get our hands on one of these things and start testing, so stay tuned!

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Reedy has just released their Micro Brushless System, perfect for 1:18 scale vehicles.
This system will be sensor-less and come with a few different size KV Motors…..This will surly help in the Micro Industry putting yet another quality brushless system out there to compete with the other big hitters with micro systems.

Until Next Time,
MICROMAN

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Anybody else tired of blue colored anodized parts? Goodness knows I am. What made one-off works parts look so trick a decade ago, is standard equipment on every Chinese knock-off entering America. Ever notice the first hundred times you listened to “Come On Eilene” by Dexys Midnight Runners was ok, but the 101st time you wanted to stick a hot soldering iron into your eardrums? Same can be said for blue anodizing. Please, please industry, put this one to rest, it’s not 1998 anymore.

Which brings me to the new X-Ray T2‘ 009 touring cars. Plenty of anodizing on these remote control works of art, but it’s hard to describe the color other than “trick”. Seems Juraj Hudy is sick of blue as well, and decided to set the new standard on what high-end looks like now days. Props to him, props to X-ray.

So when is an American high end chassis manufacture going to pop up? There is lots of American talent around, and a need from the racing crowd for an elite/luxury race oriented chassis company. Maybe pull Gary Owens back into the scene for sales, Mike Ogle back out of the midwest for marketing, and grab a couple 20 something “wet behind the ears” engineering rc gear-heads for some “fresh to the industry” race platforms? Just say’n, there is a niche for uber trick race cars that weren’t engineered overseas and built in China.

And yes, I have to go there- the Novak press release. For those of you that didn’t see it this week, I’ll boil it down for you. If you run their motors above 175 degrees F, they will not warranty them. Now, for long time hobbyist, I doubt they expect any piece of electronics to have any real warranty to start with, as they’ve been taught over the years that nearly anything rc comes with a 50/50 warranty. Meaning the item is warrantied for 50 feet out of the store, or for 50 seconds from time of purchase, whichever is longer.

Now personally, I have a lot of respect for Bob Novak, not only for his leading edge electronics over the years, but mainly because he was the first “mainstream” electronic manufacture to jump into the brushless game. He jumped in head first, while all the other main-streamers wouldn’t touch the “new” technology. It took balls to do that, props to him.

So why issue a press release on not warrantying the motors? Can any good come out of it? That “term” of the warranty is probably already in the manual. So why issue what is essentially a negative press release?

Seems the guys at Novak are having some problems, problems with consumers using their motor with speedo’s that do not use a motor temp sensor, and consumers disabling the temp sensor on their Novak controllers. Why would a consumer want to do that? I blame ROAR, at least for the second scenario.

Brushless motors are a huge advancement in technology over brushed. It’s not really a fair fight. Yet, the brain surgeons at ROAR think it’s a good idea to include brushless motors in “stock” classes. The “stock” classes have been a deep belly laugh joke for nearly two decades now. Established as a way of keeping costs down, a class for beginning racers, and a way to “even out” the power output for racers, it’s nothing more than time and money intensive now days. And while a few noobs might race stock, it’s filled with far more 20 year experts than 2 week noobs.

So brushless motors hit the scene. ROAR, our most beloved of sanctioning bodies come up with the great idea that brushless “needs” to be allowed in stock racing. At first, they imply that 13.5 brushless winds is “equal” to a stock 27 turn brushed motor. Local racers gear the crap out of their 13.5’s and easily pwn every brushed motor on the track. Then ROAR decides that 17.5 brushless winds is “equal” to stock. Then racers are forced to gear even higher to make their ultra low kv brushless motors out-yank the brushed counterparts. Absolutely insane gear ratios must be used to get the 17.5’s up to speed with the brushed motors, such tall gearing that racers have to disable the temp sensor to have enough speed (even if it does end up ruining the motor). If you know anything about electrics, gearing anything to the moon is going to cause the motors to run really, really, really hot. Way hotter than 175 degrees, and easily hot enough to de-mag the rotor and ruin it. I equate what ROAR has done here to this- cars are much faster than horses, yet, there is no place on the planet where you take the tires off a car to slow it down to race “head to head” against a horse. Brushless is simply that much more advanced than brushed.

Can we face some facts here? The stock class isn’t doing what it was intended to do anymore. Old school hard-core racers will bitch and complain if it’s eliminated (let’s just clean house and ditch 19 turn as well), but at some point the sport must evolve if it is to grow. Use new rules/classes to highlight the good points of brushless like longer run times and nearly no maintenance. Done properly, even those hard, old school farts will have more fun than ever racing. Don’t force people to gear their under kv’ed brushless motors to death competing in an obsolete class, which in turn will keep Bob and the rest of the boys in orange from having to deal with needless warranty issues.

To change subjects- there was some interest in the blurb from Caster Racing about their new 8th scale brushless buggy, so the BigSquidRC test and head cheese at BSRC are going to try and work with the guys at Caster to show the world how well, and at what price point, an 8th scale brushless buggy can work. Can a good working BL buggy be done for under $800, $500, or less? Stay tuned in the coming weeks for the full test.

That’s it for this week, thanks for reading, support your LHS’s and tracks, and of course, forget your daily dose of BigSquidRC.

Your Cub Reporter

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Where is the 8th scale brushless revolution? Has that “trend of the day” already been surpassed?

The technology has been available to make this work for at least a year now, but there are only two non-conversion 8th scale electric buggies out on the market right now, the Caster EX-1R, and the Losi Eight-E. It’s been more than 2 years that all the internet forum fanatics have been screaming at the top of their lungs that each new 8th scale released should have been electric. Some industry insiders are still amazed that as each major trade show passes, there aren’t larger amounts of new 8th scales BL’s being shown. So what’s the freak’n hold up?

Some “in the know” say it’s strictly price point. Let’s look at the Horizon/Losi Eight E. Most hobby shops are selling it for $829. To actually get it on the road, it’ll take another $200 for a battery, at least $50 for a charger, and add another $150 dollars for a transmitter, receiver, and steering servo. That brings the total up to over $1200. This price is not Horizon’s attempt to rob every rc enthusiast in America, it’s simply a fair price for the technology needed to do a proper 8th scale electric buggy.

Others in the industry say the technology is not quite there yet. The Castle Monster speedo is now on a third revision to fix gremlins, while Novak’s HV Pro has also shown more issues than it’s 10th scale baby brothers. Both companies have relatively rock solid 18th and 10th scale systems, but it seems that all that extra weight, rotating mass, and current draw of 8th scale requires a large leap in technology. Lithium based batteries are also seeing problems when used in the big rigs. Vented/puffed cells, burnt tabs, and low cycle life is more the norm than the exception when used in 8th scalers. This is no small problem, as the typical 8th scale set-up requires at least $200 worth of cells to achieve decent performance.

My opinion? Probably a bit of both of the above, plus the fact that 8th scale buggies and truggies are nearly track specific. They are awesome at getting around a bombed out dirt track, but aren’t the preferred bashing weapon. This really leads to a limited crowd to sell to. Take that limited crowd and see if they are willing to cut the check for over a grand to get in, and that limits the field even more so.

It seems the people that really want to see 8th scale electric succeed are the guys that love electric, and drive weekly on bombed out 8th scale dirt tracks. If the industry can come out with a more 10th scale size/weighted vehicle that can get around easily on these tracks, yet can use 10th scale type BL/Li-po systems (and price point!), then that’s where the real cash will start rolling in.

On a different note, the head Squid here is looking for a Cub Report sponsor. It seems the 3 readers I have must re-read my babbling thousands of times a week. So if you are a manufacture and are looking for a good value for your advertising bucks, email Brian at Bigsquidrc dot com and jump on board. No, it won’t save your company from being blasted if you decided to start selling junky equipment, but it will go a long ways towards your brands name recognition (at least for 3 readers).

Also, if you are a manufacture, shoot Brian products for revue. You’ll be given a good honest review, and with the view numbers BigSquidRC is getting these days, you’ll get your product in front of a more core audience than any typical print rag. The reviews here really seem to matter! Most google searches bring up BSRC reviews first!

Till next week, support your LHS, your local track, and read your BigSquid every single day.

Your Cub Reporter

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The good folks over at Team Novak have just sent off a press release talking about the new Havoc Sport Sensored Brushless System. The press release was huge, and I’ll try and post the hole thing in the NEW Product Forum. Some important details, it should be a good fit for the Traxxas Slash, HPI E-Firestorm, Kyosho Lazer ZX-5, and just about any other 1/10th scale electric. They claim speeds over 40mph in the Slash, and I’m sure that will perk up a few readers out there.
It’s setup to be very customizable and easy to use with Li-Po cutoff options, reverse disabling, and even a throttle curve.

Check out the NEW Product Forum or Team Novak site for more information!

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We just got word from our buddy Scooter over at Scooter Motor Works that he’s got a new ESC/Motor combo in the works. It’s a brushless setup called the Nemesis. My favorite part, it comes with the hand held programmer, so you don’t have to go lugging a laptop around. He mentioned a price point that seemed very reasonable. There are more details posted over at the official Scooter Motor Works site. Go check it out. I think he will be taking pre-orders soon. Make sure to tell Scooter, Big Squid RC sent ya there!

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Wow. I just got a letter from from Scooter telling me he has left
Team Tekin! Scooter has been the face of Tekin for years now, and it’s always great to talk with him at the iHobby shows. If you ever get the chance to meet him in person you will see he is one of the most passionate people about RC you could ever know.

Scooter has started his own thing called Scooter Motor Works. There isn’t much there on the site yet, but it sounds like he will have everything from Li-PO’s to new brushless esc’s! We will make sure to bring you all the future announcements from there.

We wish both Scooter and Team Tekin the best of luck in the future, I’m sure both will come out just fine.

Since we are talking about Scooter, check out our footage of him from last years i-hobby show, it’s probably the last time anyone will see him in front of a Tekin sign!

High Res version here:
Big Squid RC iHobby 07 - Meet Team Tekin!. Please ‘right click, save as’ for best viewing.

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Futaba has just released a whole ton of good new servos. Too many to list all the details here, but I will post the full press release in the NEW Product Forum. The one pictured to the left is the BLS452 Brushless High-Torque Car Servo. It has dual bearings, metal gears, and is ready to be put in just about anything electric or nitro you own. They also have some super light new micro servos, as well as brushless Heli servos that are 30% faster then standard digital servos! Speed = Good. Check out the Futaba or NEW Product Forum for more details.

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