I made an interesting discovery last night. I have been building and tuning some NASCAR rides to run with my Carrera cars, and I have a benchmark set by the RTR cars from Carrera. Now to get to my point here, My track is a sectional plastic Artin track, 6'x16'. it is painted in semi gloss latex paint, and has copper taped rails.
Now this may not be interesting to some, and not even applicable to others, but I live in a sub tropical climate in Georgia. Most of you lucky folks have your layouts in climate controlled areas, but mine are all in an out building that used to be my garage/ workshop.
For the last week, we have had 96% humidity, yup, thats right, 96%! that's the kind of weather that makes doors stick in your house,
windows fog, and you think you need to grow gills to breath.
All that being said, what high humidity does do, is it effects traction on a latex track surface.
The cars I have been building have to run a best of 3.25 lap times to be competitive with the stock Carrera cars.
Since I set them up all the same, that had not been a problem till last night. I set the finished car on the track, turned on the Trackmate system, and let her rip. I noticed from the start that the car was hooking like crazy, and after the fourth lap, the car settled into its median lap time. This is where it got weird.
The car was running sub 3 second lap times, and I wasn't pushing it as hard as it could run yet!
Not thinking about track conditions, I thought maybe I got a hot motor (E-200)?.
So,after a few more laps, I grabbed one of the finished cars that was running the standard 3.25 time average, and let it get warmed up.
Three laps in, I found that this car was also running 2.70's!
So the moral of this long winded story, is that weather condition DO effect track conditions, even in scale racing. The Latex paint will take on enough moisture to become sticky, and your cars will run like the wind, Or, you may start experiencing wheel hop, or other negative behavior that your cars don't normally have.
So, for all the guy's that have garage tracks in non climate controlled areas, don't be surprised if you are particularly fast on race day, if the weather is right!
Bob