What is Bashing? Hobby Letter #16/21

The Unbearable Lightness of Bashing

EuroRC Hobby Letter

Greetings everyone! Spring and early summer are prime time for outdoor hobbies like RC. There is plenty of light available but the weeds have not yet grown very high. Remember that feeling when you are pulling out those tangled weeds from your driveshafts? Especially for crawlers this time is the prime time. Today we are not having a nice chill Sunday cruising. Today we are about to bash until it hurts!

What is bashing?

For us who live and breathe RC the answer is clear. To put it short, when someone is bashing (and we are not now in Twitter) it simply means that someone is enjoying their RC with pure fun instead of racing in their mind. In the sport of bashing you push your RC to the limit. You drive too fast and too furious. You make crazy big jumps and don't really care about landing. You are just having fun! And when something breaks you better break it good! Destroying your vehicle is a merit and all the carnage is shared in Facebook groups with pride!

Back in the days of the dinosaurs RC-cars were mostly designed racing in mind. Materials were brittle, stuff was expensive and nobody really "bashed" their cars as they were not exactly designed that in mind. Like.. Who would be so insane that would break their 1000$ toy just for fun?! Faster cars were also usually fuel powered and understandably no-one still today do not really want to break those type of toys.

Times have changed and yesterday was not better! Racing cars are still designed performance - not nuclear cluster bombing - in mind. Modern technologies have opened new horizons for our hobby. We have new polymer plastics that are super durable. Development in electronic side has given us unbelievable powerful speed controllers and batteries. These rise the power-to-weight ratio of our little plastic toys to totally new heights. Your RC car is more powerful than first aeroplanes. Just add wings, no?

The Sparks

Bashers today are always powered by electronics and like mentioned, powers used are pretty insane. Modern ESCs handle high voltages of over 22 volts with 150 amps of continuous current through powerful brushless motor to all four wheels without even really heating up. Combined to the relatively small size of your vehicle these stunning, over 2kW of powers throw your little RC easily to speeds of 100km/h and over in a bat of an eye.

Brushless motors are worry-free and fully metallic powertrain is designed to humbly accept these huge power peaks that you require from your controller. Servos today easily hold continuous weights of over 20 kg without a sweat. These days the amount of power is no longer an issue and when comparing these cars you should focus in to other areas like maneuverability and durability.

Is there any point in this madness?

Definitely yes! Having fun is exactly the hot spot of bashing and having fun always makes sense! Great powers naturally come with great responsibility. When people ask me which one is better, Arrma or Team Corally my answer is always the same: With both of these it is no problem at all to break your ankle and spend rest of the summer with plaster cast in your feet if you are not careful!

Hottest names in bashing today are these two along the good old Traxxas. Their T-Maxx and E-Maxx can be kept some kind of grandmother of bashing culture we have today. Honestly speaking, some type of limits breaking driving has always been part of our culture. Today it is just more extreme than ever!

Here is some of today's best bashing trucks available. Bash out till you drop out and remember to get your spares from us because you are going to need them!

Team Corally Kronos XTR

Fresh and just released, Kronos XTR offers something new for bashing field. Being engineered to go fast and to be maneuvered also in those speeds, this top-of-the shelf Extreme Racing Truck is equipped with Team Corallys most durable tuning and option parts but comes without any electronics installed. These are left for you to choose and if you are about to build the meanest, the most powerful and most extreme truck ever out there Kronos XTR is your gun to hire.

For a speed freak like you, our team recommends some "a bit more" powerful electronics like Revoc II ESC combined to brushless Dynotorq 815 motor. If this is bit on the extreme side for you we understand, great powers are not for everyone to possess. Hobbywing 1/8 Brushless Combo make a great budget option for all other bigger bashers and buggies out there!

Team Corally 1/8 RTR Buggies and Stunt trucks

Just connect your battery and off we go! Ready-to-Run series from Team Corally can be roughly divided to race capable buggies and short- or long wheelbased bashing trucks. In these cars you can see the long experience in competition field that Corally has.

These cars are super fast yet easy to maneuver but stop quick and controllable when required. Magic of these modern day warriors hides in excellent chassis geometry with anti-roll bars but also in very very mean and evil spirited set of electronics!

Arrma Felony 1/7 6S BLX Street Bash Muscle Car

Bashing is not only jumping at the local sand pit. You can have fun at the asphalt too and when we are about to really go fast then we do it with style! Large, 1/7 scaled Felony is incredible machine that easily catches up the speed of over 120kmh out-of-the-box. Felony is also equipped with a functional disc brake!

It should be clear for everyone that this type of muscle car cannot be given to hands of unexperienced.

Traxxas X-Maxx 1/5 8S

Bow down in front of the King you peasant! This bulky, mountain sized monster truck X-Maxx enjoys a cult-level of fame among the bashing crowd. In our small country of Finland this truck was seen even in the news last fall when crazy folks we definately do not know tested if a highway speed camera can be triggered with RC truck. Well, appears that yes it can! Now that they've done it you don't have to.

If you are looking for the most powerful, most rugged and tough RC truck in the market the answer is pretty clear. And when you happen to end up belly up, this modern marvel turns itself back to the wheels!

Technical and complex hobby like Radio Controlled Cars can be sometimes pretty uptight. Fandom among some brands is strong and especially in social media the fight is sometimes on the loud side.

But hear me out! It is very OK to enjoy and have fun with RC too! Rise of more relaxed culture of RC driving what we call bashing is answer for this call! Remember in these times of hate and pain that it is very OK to have fun sometimes, too! Life is better when you enjoy a bit of it!

Early summer greetings from Tervakoski, Finland!

Heikki / EuroRC