AC2Car
Before I move on to the Travelin' Big D, let me first show you my experimental diversion with AC2car since it happened at the same time as Lost Coast Raceway.I was intrigued by lane changing and having cars being able to occupy the same space. I looked at digital but saw it as spendy, not standardized, and when it got down to it, I loved my board tracks. AC2car came to my attention because: 1) it is based around wood. 2) with a diode installed, any brand car could be run on it. 3) it was just another kind of analoge track so I could wrap my baby boomer brain around it. I didn't care for the bushels full of parallel slots required with all of the cross overs and dead spots associated with dead spots with orthodox AC2car so I decided to keep this one a simple 2 lane, 2 car only track. I wanted to try an oval which meant the track would have to be fairly fast to be realistic. There would be no hair pins where the cars slow enough to make the hard turn ins to corners that make an AC2car guide able to get across all of those rows of slots without hanging up. 2 lanes would allow simple exits and mergers. I came up with a slot arrangement that looks like this.
There were four individual lane changer actuators (LCA's) on this little 3X6 ft track. The LCA's were set up so that under default the cars would follow the preferred line colored in red. To make a pass, a challenger would have to toggle their lane changer to enter one of the blue lines.
To actuate the LCA's, each driver had a control box containing two double throw, single pole momentary switches. Each switch operated one LCA and the switches were laid out in the same geographical order as the LCA's in the track. To follow the red line, the driver had to do absolutely nothing. It was only when he wanted to make a pass that the switches came into the equation.
Here are some random pics of the construction.
[IMG]http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll148/Me_an_my_pics/AC2car/TadpoleConductorWiring1_zps24db757a.
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I still have this track stored in the back corner of my slot attic. It was a fun experiment. The track worked very well but it was way too small for all of the action that was going on. It worked great for playing by myself because I could set up a ghost car with a rubber band on a controller. The ghost followed the red line and I had to weave in an out of to make passes via the blue lines. The system could be simplified by eliminating all of the toggle switches. since the only time that you need to toggle is during a pass and in that case the other car is right in front of you, you could have all four of the LCA's fire simultaneously by one switch without accidentally diverting the other car since it isn't near the other LCA's anyway. I over thunk myself on that one which is something that I am prone to do sometimes.
I came up with another design that would allow 4 cars without cross overs but I don't know if I will ever get around to it. It works in exactly the same way as the two lane track. I just added another outer pair of lines. It would still have the same unequal length issue as a conventional oval. But that could be solved with simple lane rotation of between heats.
I may do a wood digital hybrid too some day. Carrera chips are abundant enough now that I could pick them up and install them in almost any car nearly as easy as installing a diode.
