Mmm what is there to say? I was born in 1971 so I am now officially 40 and soon to be over 40! I was born in Melbourne Australia, but spent most of my life until my early 30's living in Rockhampton Queenland. I studied business and computers, though to be honest I realised I hate working in either field and spent most of my early adult life as a musician before focusing on the car audio field as a career. Again and again though I was drawn back to music and when pressed I tend to write "musician" as my profession on official forms. I've spent the past 3 or so years traveling around Australia with my partner and that has given me opportunities to see a great deal of this amazing country and to race at a number of clubs.
I started racing fairly late by most examples, being in my very early 20's, but once I discovered it I jumped in feet first. Like a lot of people in the early 90's I started out with a seriously under-competitive Tamiya kit, but there really wasn't that many options at the time. I think, as far as touring cars go, there was Tamiya, Yokomo and HPI. Nitro tourers didn't yet exist and I had no interest in off-road. The other on-road option was 235mm pan cars. Unfortunately I didn't pick a class and stick with it, chopping and changing trying to find one I felt comfortable in. Picking a FWD Tamiya as my first car probably wasn't the best for this either.
Eventually I settled into 540 pan cars and stuck this out for a while but it was a dieing class and cars and parts were getting harder and harder to get. I was convinced by someone to try 235mm Nitro cars. These were beasts of things and at the time considered one of the hardest classes to race, being insanely powerful and only 2WD. I persevered for a while, and if I am honest now I would say its the class I enjoyed driving the most, but I hadn't reached a point where I understood the difference a good radio and the like could make to driving a car, and as it turned out, these were a dieing class as well.
Next step was Nitro tourers and I was reasonable successful at club level with these, but I never developed the deep love of the little nitro motors that other people seem to. I was also racing a F1 in the Tamiya Cup at the time, and the ease and simplicity of the electric cars won me over and I've never gone back to nitro since. Though this decision led to one of the biggest blunders of my RC career - I swapped my F1 for a Associated TC3! This decision (done because there was no local F1 racing outside of Tamiya Cup) led to a almost decade long devotion to and frustration with 1/10 touring cars.
So for the past 12 years or so I have raced mostly 1/10 touring cars, with a Mini on the side to remind me that, deep down, this is supposed to be fun. I've witnessed the battery wars as we went from Nickel Cadmium, to Nickel Metal Hydride to Lithium Polymer. Watched as brushed motors slowly disappeared from our racing tracks to be replaced by brush-less. Watched with a little confusion as foam tyres ( and all their supposed problems) were replaced by rubber tyres and then control rubber tyres (which, for me, present just as many problems as foam tyres ever did) for events. Argued with people over the virtues and problems of timing boost speed controllers. Became bemused by the banning of those same speed controllers while the rule makers left motor timing open so instead of just buying 1 ESC and getting software for free I have to fork out money every time a new motor comes along that offers something "better". The, finally, started to lose interest as all the touring car manufacturers started producing clones of, essentially, one car, which I feel promotes one particular driving style, and I don't have it.
