by btaylor » Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:16 am
Well, I got my first taste of digital racing this weekend. Very interesting to say the least! I had been following Nor Cal Mike's progress on his Scaley conversion cars, and the Six car at once capability that Scalextrics has to offer. I am a Hardcore Carrera Fan, but the idea of chipping my Vintage F1 Cars left me with the Scaley chip and remote mounted sensor being the only option. That coupled with the ability to run digital or analog on the same layout, made me choose the Scalextrics set up.
So, was my first experience fun? Yes, I have to say it was!. Being a most time lone wolf racer had me kind of excited about the pacer cars or ghost cars as they are called, and I was not disappointed with this feature. The cars can be set to randomly change lanes, and the speed at which the pacer cars travel can be set individually. So after a mind numbing trip through the set up booklet, I was up and running multiple cars, with me being in control of one of them. Weaving through the other cars to get to the pit lane proved to be harder than I expected, and I was often blocked by a pacer car when passing the pit lane. This set came with a pit lane challenge game, that has you being the first car to turn out three pit lights wins the race. That being said, the pacer cars can also enter the pits randomly, and turn out the lights in that cars lane. Needless to say, my first digital "race" was won by the damn computer! I was blocked often enough, and missed the green light to enter the pits often enough, that a ghost car actually beat me by one light.
In the end, I was left with visions of my vintage F1 cars winding through my soon to be road course, and being able to see more than one or two at a time in action will be fun I think.
I am not big on electronic technology, and digital anything is way over my head, but I have to admit, this kind of slot racing is definitely worth looking into if you have thought about it at all. There are a few programs out there, that allow for a bunch of add on pit stop functions that should make this even more elaborate.
I will post my experiences with this new fangled technology as I gain more insight as to its function.
Bob