Just thinking out loud

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

When the Big 2 came out with .15-.18 boats then .32's and other odd sizes, I wondered, why didn't they shoot for already existing classes? Would have it been so hard to go to .12's instead of .18's? There is already an ABS class on the IMPBA books which to my knowledge has never been used. Instead of using an existing clas the sanctioning bodies had to create more.

Other classes are dying off in some districts while thriving in others. Where do we see (IMPBA) C and E classes run any more with maybe the exception of the Internat's and record trials? Those who raced the RTR class this year at Hobart weren't exactly wet behind the ears newbie racers but people if I mentioned their names in here most would know.

Actually, this thread would be better suited for the RTR or General boating forum. As interesting as it is and can be this just seems like the wrong place to have it.

If the Moderator wants to move it I am fine with that. I did however, want to make sure the manufacturers heard the thoughts from the community on this but first qualifying my own position with deductive reasoning. The main point is that I know we are always given the reason that the Big 2 don't invest in Race boats because the market is too small... but I know first hand that even the best marketing research, analysis and projection in far more significan industries (meaning bigger more critical risk) is all to often trumped by a couple of the right guys that simply want to do it.

As far as getting places to run... sometimes it takes work to make that happen. It's just a matter of how much work you want to put into it. It took me about 18 months to get through all of the red tape needed to host a nationals on the shores of a water slide park with a lot of naysaying from the city, the the amusement park and even my fellow boaters but I it happened... and that was a lake that didn't allow motor boats of any kind. We got R/C boats and three Gas Powered retreive boats. On the flip side... we lost a practice pond that we had been running at for about 50 years due to some imbalance in the habitat. Well it took 2 years of inquiries but it looks like we will get that back. If your a leisure guy boats will never be as convenient as dropping your car in the back yard or floating your eflyer across the local open field unless you have a swimming pool and a Zig Zig Racer. But if you are a guy that competes, whether it be cars, boats, or planes those all require designated areas that also require someone's efforts to maintain. Whether it be the purchase, lease or borrow of land to build an offroad track, the coordination of closing a parking lot to lay down an onroad track, or the air space and liability of maintaining a flying field... Water is no different.. and no less or no more work to get it and maintain it.

Maybe an idea would be too... that the manufacturer could include a list of every known lake that a boater "COULD" run. Not just the racing orgnizations but practice/testing/free run locations. Maybe even post add that to their websites where people can go and post places that people could run their boats. That would be helfpul as well.

 

[Grimracer]

Roger and Ron,

When the likes of Jerry Dunlap and myself are involved in designing RC baots (Horizon Miss Bud, Miss Vegas, UL-1 and the like) for the mass hobby market and we still do, to this day, "adjust the product"

ya gota know.. it goes Way deeper then just the size of the power plant and what the nat orgs are doing..

Just be open to that.. for now.

Thanks

Grim

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Roger and Ron,

When the likes of Jerry Dunlap and myself are involved in designing RC baots (Horizon Miss Bud, Miss Vegas, UL-1 and the like) for the mass hobby market and we still do, to this day, "adjust the product"

ya gota know.. it goes Way deeper then just the size of the power plant and what the nat orgs are doing..

Just be open to that.. for now.

Thanks

Grim

Yah... I am sure there is a lot I don't know about the market as I am not previleged to know of sales numbers, where there good and where they're not so good... who's buying, why, for how long etc... etc... I also don't know your cost constraints, like materials, equipment, scope of manufacturing, assembly, warehousing, logistics etc... etc... So like I said.. I am just thinking out loud with the information that I do have and can deduce from my own marketing and product development experience. I envy you guys that get to do these things for R/C boats for a living. It's real cool by itself just to come up with an idea, manufacturer it sell it and see people buy it for the same reasons that you beleived that they would. Only people who have done it know the feeling that I am talking about.

I can recall an ad audit I ran (performance of advertisements) on one of the pubs I did a media buy in and the survey report came back stating that 600 people stated they purchased the project as a result of seeing the ad. Knowing that the average sale was $1500, I knew that even with a 5% error factor (which is high) that the ad produced at lest 855,000 in revenue that month. Things like that is just cool to know that your research, analysis, intuition, creativity and strategy produced that kind of results.

Anyway, I just thought I would share my ideas and point of view. Maybe you guys have thought of them already and dismissed them. My hope though is that maybe there is some angle I introduced that you didn't take into consideration or some reasoning that clicked to more directly promote and attempt to grow the most active sector of the boating.

Here is a question maybe the guys overseas or Al Hobbs or Andy can answer this. Do they have RTR Miss Vegas/Miss Bud type classes at the World Champs. I have heard that some countries send boaters to the World Champs as they make a living off of racing boats. Is this true. I also hear that R/C boating is treated more as a sportsman activity like hunting or fishing versus a hobby. Have thes guys accepted the RTR style boats into their schedules?

 

[lohring]

I see a constant evolution in racing over the last 20 years. In our area the trend has been toward running the RTR boats. First people race the boats as sold. Then they start modifying. Finally the equipment in the hulls turns up in custom race boats. The two best examples have been the Miss Vegas and the UL-1. The Vegas started as an out of the box class. Then the local Sport 40 builders got boats and changed things. Now we have the Vegas Duce as a result. Several JAE riggers are being powered by the Duce engine.

The UL-1 also started as an introductory electric class. We even specified the stock prop. When the speeds got greater than the hull could handle, people started putting the equipment in rigger and outboard hulls. The P spec classes were born. Old nitro designs like the Villan, reborn as the VS-1, became P spec outboards. Horizon's new electric outboard finally has a complete outboard package. I predict it will be run on lots of different 3.5 size outboard hulls. Someday we may even see outboard hydros return.

It's all about running what people want to run. A gas Rio has been showing up at our club races and it does well against the Lazers. It just took a few motor modifications and some prop work. All the above boats represent a trend toward easier to race boats. You don't need to be able to build everything to start having fun. However, a little work and you have a good boat. Mass production has made low cost equipment available to everyone. It's the same as the K&B low cost engine days, but with different stuff. Our club has developed classes to match what people have rather than the other way around. Eventually a very few of these people will race at the national level.

Lohring Miller

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

Hey Lohring,

How are you? Hope to see you again at our 2011 Grand Prix.

Yah... I see what you saying. Actually, I had looked to take a similar approach with the return of our old practice pond. Since boats are much faster than the days when we used to hold races at this pond I thought it would be better suited for an RTR crowd. So I was looking to promote our old club the Marine Modelers as mostly an RTR club here in the Silicon Valley on the west coast to better cater to what the Hobby shops are carrying in their store. From there I thought that for those people that our intersted the hobby aspect of the sport could be rekindled as new comers could learn from more seasoned boaters could take the same stock off the shelf boat and make run much faster just by proper tuning then even faster with incremental upgrades. Then if people really caught the bug they could opt to go district racing or national racing if they so desired. So I am actually looking to work both ends. Push the RTRs where the big manufacturers are and Push the big manufacturers where the RFRs are (Ready For Racers) are.

That's good to hear about the Rio but I thought that came with an engine that was too big for most gas classes?

 

[Andy Brown]

I think limiting the number of classes that is run is a good idea. That doesn't mean an organization must delete the class. Just that if it's not popular don't even offer it at a race

I'd say if the class can't draw 10 boats don't even run it....even at the Nationals. This will make racing a lot more fun for the racers and financially justifiable for the clubs. If certain classes like mono is not popular in an area, but there are several that want to run, then just offer Open mono if 10 of them will show up.

This would improve several things about going racing.

#1. More competition in a class and a real satisfaction for the top finishers.

#2. Less classes to run means more rounds can be run. More racing = More fun. Less waiting time until the racers next heat = More fun.

#3. Nice trophies can be afforded.

#4. Several other benefits could be added to this list.

Another thought that would help turn out more racers would be to host "Short two day events".

Open water could start on Saturday @ 8am. Racing start @ Noon. Racing resume Sunday @ 8am and finish early afternoon on Sunday.

This would eliminate a Friday night motel cost and time off work to travel to and from a race. Those with say a 5 hour travel time could leave the house early Sat. morning and be at the lake in time for an 11am drivers meeting.....and even participate in open water if they want to get on the road earlier.

This type of race would draw more racers than a one day club race. If the race entries get too high just raise the class entry minimums to eliminate the weaker classes.

With the economy the way it is this make very good sense. There are many full size racing events that pull off big races in one or two days, yet we as r/c boaters must invest 3 or 4 days just to attend a race with a good quantity of contestants in each respective class.

 

[Roger Hooks Jr.]

I think limiting the number of classes that is run is a good idea. That doesn't mean an organization must delete the class. Just that if it's not popular don't even offer it at a race

I'd say if the class can't draw 10 boats don't even run it....even at the Nationals. This will make racing a lot more fun for the racers and financially justifiable for the clubs. If certain classes like mono is not popular in an area, but there are several that want to run, then just offer Open mono if 10 of them will show up.

This would improve several things about going racing.

#1. More competition in a class and a real satisfaction for the top finishers.

#2. Less classes to run means more rounds can be run. More racing = More fun. Less waiting time until the racers next heat = More fun.

#3. Nice trophies can be afforded.

#4. Several other benefits could be added to this list.

Another thought that would help turn out more racers would be to host "Short two day events".

Open water could start on Saturday @ 8am. Racing start @ Noon. Racing resume Sunday @ 8am and finish early afternoon on Sunday.

This would eliminate a Friday night motel cost and time off work to travel to and from a race. Those with say a 5 hour travel time could leave the house early Sat. morning and be at the lake in time for an 11am drivers meeting.....and even participate in open water if they want to get on the road earlier.

This type of race would draw more racers than a one day club race. If the race entries get too high just raise the class entry minimums to eliminate the weaker classes.

With the economy the way it is this make very good sense. There are many full size racing events that pull off big races in one or two days, yet we as r/c boaters must invest 3 or 4 days just to attend a race with a good quantity of contestants in each respective class.

Yah.... Back in the day there was only 20, 40, and 60 mono in our area ond saturday with Maybe sport 40 I, then 20 , 40, 60 and 30cc Hydro. That was it for regional events. Scales, and outboard guys ran on their own event days. Then we started to combining everyone on one race weekend.... I suppose this was done with the thinking that it would encourage more racers to come out but instead it diluted the classes and in many cases made it even easier for top performers to dominate a class, heat after heat, race after race, year after year.

So I see these points but this thread is more about what could big manufacturers could do to further promote R/C boats. You know I am pushing this same topic with Traxxas on their own community message board as they have released a pretty electric 4s/6s deep vee mono capapble of 50 mph as they say with just a battery upgrade. I am asking them why they don't provide it in nitro as well. It's a good 36" long, about the right size for a .40 mono. I believe they understand the formula as they sponsor full size short track truck racing and then sell the R/C version of the same truck. It would be cool to have a manufacturer promoting at full size race events just to push the R/C boating hobby. This would surely increase awareness and probably gain a few hobbyist I am sure. For those many people that can't afford the full size deal they can get the same adrenaline pumping feeling from smaller size version of what they saw on the water front. Back in 2004 I was trying to help a friend of mine launch is online Hobby Store. It eventually failed but we engaged in a very interesting excercise. To help jump start his site I had him go to the San Deigo Thunderboat race and get a booth. In that booth we displayed much of what his store would carry including R/C boats. I persuaded Horizon Hobby to give us a ProBoat Bud to raffle off to attract people to the booth. We also had Dave Villwock sign the boat and come over and take pictures at our booth to also attract a crowd. To get the boat people had to give us their contact info including email address to get get an entry into the raffle which was free other than that. In one weekend, we gathered 672 entries. All of which would have to go to his website to check for the winner. Once the winner was announced the rest received 15% discount on their first purchase if they knew the name of the promotional model that we used at the event who was very friendly, introducing herself to all that came by. That effort produced 75 repeat customers. The deal with Horizon was that I would share the leads with them as well for giving us the boat to raffle off for free. I heard rumor the year or two following, that they ProBoat were the headline sponsor of the same San Diego Thunderboat event.

Don't know if they had the follow-through to make such an effort profitable but I can't help to think that it came from our little effort in an corner booth. Just a sample of what I think could happen when the big guys promote this stuff to Gen-Pop. (the general population) or at least related motorsport events as well as producing RTRs that can easily be upgraded to higher performing crafts that have race classes availabile to it so that a guy getting jazzed about it after seeing it for the first time could go out to his hobbyshop and get the maybe a tuned down version of what got him excited in the first place. Then when we went to the same pond the guys would be familiar with his equipment and know what to do to help him get on his way. Allowing the new user to be embraced by the community as a newcomer much easier than giving him something that some veterans may turn those nose up at. And maybe you would say these guys should not be so upity but we already know this is the case so why go against it? I would think you would build the product to cater to the conditions of the market. But back tracking a bit I understand that Racers were not the target... but they are however a barrier to entry when considering the growth of your target consumer. If he buys something that allows him to be quickly embraced by the community versus buying something that he is looked down upon which circumstance is he most likely going to continue buying and which circumstance might he get discourage and opt for a buggy instead because after all I can buy the same car as the A main guys have off the shelf. It may need to be re-geared, it may need better tires, it may need a better powerplant but at least that A-main guy is more likely to give me a helping hand because I am running the same thing he is. Don't drag this point out by the way. It's just the reality of it. The point is why create product that may put a guy in that situation in the first place when experience tells us that situation exist.

Like I said...

Just thoughts.