Wrapping up my project, this week I have just sat back and enjoyed my track. With this project coming to an end, and my track being done, I have chose to just shred up the track, and just have a little fun on it racing with my brother.
The track that I have totally redone from what it was before is now a dirt slingin', high jumpin', and dust flyin' thing of greatness. The only thing I could possibly do to make the track better, or please me more is get some black pipe to go around it. Overall, I am very happy with the work I have done to my track. It started out as just a little something to play on and mess around with. It had a couple turns and some small jumps, but now I'd say that it's pretty professional for doing it all by hand. Now it has been extended and also I've added the sloped turns and bigger jumps. Now you might be thinking well what have you even learned from this, well I've learned a couple things, one I learned how to build a pretty good track out of basically nothing, and two I've learned how to structure things and some simple grading skills that could be useful in the future if I end up working in the family company. So, this week, like I said, I've just taken the time to enjoy my track. This project has really taught me that if you put your mind to something then you can do it if you really want to. I personally never thought that my track would be any where near as good as it is now. I'd like to give thanks to myself and the Lord for giving me the strength to get this track finished with all the mishaps that have popped up during the process.
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This week for my genius hour project I made some upgrades on the trails and some slight improvements to the overall track. As we all know it’s fall so that means leaves, and a lot of them. So, what I’ve constantly had to do is blow off the track and trails befor I use them or work on them, and that’s been a pain. Yes I understand it’s just leaves but there in the way and the leaf blower blows away all the loose dirt which leads to a slicker track.
So, this week, like I said, I’ve helped out the trails and touched up in the track. With the trails being in the woods, and Dad cutting down trees all around the trails have gotten a little messed up. So, I fixed them. First I had to blow them off and then I realized that Dad has destroyed one of them entirely so I just forgot about that one. The other trail was a little messed up but nothing too bad. So I blew it off and went to work. I needed to rake out the dirt some to level out some places and add some dirt to other places. That was basically all for the trails this week and there probably done too. Now, for the track what I did was, I blew it off and touched up on the turns that I had to redo, and I raked out that area too, to see if I could get some of the looser dirt on to the slopes. Also, I put a little more dirt on the jumps and took out the whoops section. I took the whoops out, because they just weren’t working out so well. They would mess up the path and usually make the truck start to hop side to side and then loose traction and spin out or, wreck and go tumbling. So, I just took them out. So, I’d say this week has been pretty successful, and hopefully this will be the last work that I have to do to the track. I would really like to get some black pipe to go around it to give it more of a barrier, but I’m probably not goning to get that done, because that stuff ain’t too cheap. This week for my project its been all repair. Unfortunatly my Dad has been clearing out some trees that happened to be beside my track. He messed up the far side little straight and the 2 turns that are there with it. So, I had to fix them to back how they were before.
So what I've done is level out the back part of the track where it got messed up and rebuilt the sloped turns. leveling out the ground was the easy part, all I had to do was take a rake and get all the loose dirt back flat. Also I tried to get the ground the get somewhat hard again. So I packed the dirt down to the best I could. Then came the hard part, rebuilding the sloped turns. You see before I had a big dirt pile there so all I had to do was just dig up a piece with the skid loader, but this time I had to make it without anything behind it for support, and on a slight hill. What I had to do was first, pile up some dirt so that I would have a start to the slope. Then, I had to make some kind of support behind it so that it wouldn't just wash away.So, I got the shovel and dug up some dirt behind the turn to where it was kinda like a little trench behind it. The dirt I dug up for that I threw onto the slope and packed it down real good so it would stiffen up. This week for my Genius Hour project I did like I said last week and halfway made a couple trails that lead to the track. The trails start at the bottom of the hill and lead up to various palaces at the track. Right now I have 2 main trails that I will branch off and have little side trails too.
The trails that I made are for the most part all up hill if you start from the bottom of the hill. I have ran the truck down them a couple times to make sure that they will be okay, and they are rideable but they will need a little more work for them to be really good. To make the trails I've just raked them out so that its just dirt so your not running on leaves. Something i need to do is put somewhat of a bank to the turns in the trails so you don't go flying off them when you ride on them. Also they could use some filling in, in some places so its a little more even and level. You see on level ground you can go at higher speeds and you wanna be fast or it ain't fun. So for this week I know i haven't done too much but the little bit I've done has been pretty decent. I hope t have the trails completed by next week, and then hopefully have all the finishing touches done on the track and be completely done with everything. This week for my genius hour I have cleaned up the track and added a little more dirt to the banks and jumps. I did this because of the rain that we have had lately has washed the down a little bit and also because they wear down after you run your RC on it a lot.
With the additional dirt added I will be able to hit the turns better and get the higher jumps back . Dispite the fact that I just had to put a new motor in my Traxxas, I really haven't came along any failures or mess ups this week. Something I came along this week was I could potentially expand my track farther down into the wood and maybe even creating trails through the woods. If I follow though with this idea I would have to rake out the trails and maybe even adding some dirt to certain places so that it would make it easier on the truck. That way there is less of a chance of breaking anything. This would most likely work but I feel like it would work better if i had a monster truck or crawler RC truck but mine is a short course truck. For those of you that don't know what that is, a short course truck is one that is built for a track like a motorcross track. In conclusion, I've had a pretty productive week with my project. I am hoping to live up to this idea that I had about the trails in the woods that lead up to the track. I think it would be good because it'll give me another thing to work on and play on. So I'll get back to y'all when I figure out what I'm going to do. This week for my genius hour project I have watched a couple videos on RC tracks trying to get a couple more ideas. Something i thought of is building a racers stand and possibly getting some kind of lighting to put up around the track.
From what I've seen, other peoples tracks are in smaller areas and normally not as big. But something I've seen that I really like is the use of sand around the track and the stands that the racers drive from. I plan on making a stand on the back side of the backside straight. I would like to make it have a tin roof that slants down the back but that isn't a must. It would also be nice if i had a generator out there that would power lights. Once again these are just icing on the cake not the necessities. So yea basically this week has just been a research and planning week. In conclusion, this week has been kinda a week off just without physical work just planning. This week for my Genus Hour project I have made a added another jump around the backside straight. Also I have sloped out another turn that leads to the backside straight.
So, putting this other jump around the backside straight will 1 make this section more fun and 2, make the exit turn easier to hit good because the truck wont be going as fast before the turn. I believe this will better the track cause you will have more control going into the turn making it easier to accelerate in and out of the turn. In slopping out the turn leading to the backside straight, I believe that it will improve the track by being able to hit the turn at full speed. Being able to hit the turn at full speed will give u the extra boost to hit the jump after the turn at higher speeds. Which will put you in a better place in the straight so you will have a little place to build up some speed before the next turn so you dont have to build up all your speed in the corner. So in conclusion, I think that this week has been a pretty good week overall. I think I am coming along very good with my project as my track is already a lot better then it was originally. Next week i hope to prefect the backside straight and make sure that where I put this jump was a good place for it. Also to make sure it all flows together. So, this week for my genius hour project I've added a small whoops section in the track. For those of you that don't know what that is, its a series of small jumps that you basically just skim right over.
In the process of making the whoops I realized that in my track there wasn't really a good place to put them because of the turns. So i came up with the solution of making a part in the track a split track. What i did was I made the whoops on one side of this straightaway and made a barrier at the and of that would double as a sloped turn. So really i could say this was a win win because i wasnt origionally going to slope out this turn because it doubled as a straight in the track. This week for my genius hour project what I did was I re did the jumps in the track. I also dug out another one of the turns in it.
First, I had to dig out the turn so I would have the dirt available to redo the jumps. Some of the troubles I had were this turn I dug out was in between 2 trees. So I started out digging about 6” deep and then realized there were some very big roots that would be basically impossible to get out of the ground without digging up the tree. So then I started to dig a little shallower so I didn't have to work around all the roots. After I got this turn dug out and sloped I used the dirt that I didn't use for the slope to redo the one of the jumps. So overall this week has been petty successful week This week for my Genuis Hour project I dug out one of the turns in the track. I also piled up dirt around the edge of the turn so tht the turn would be sloped.
Digging out this area of the track was a tad difficult because this particular turn goes around a tree stump. So, I had to dig up some roots in the process. Digging up roots isn’t the easiest thing to do if u don’t have anything but a shovel to get them up with. But anyway, I plan on digging out the rest of the track in the weeks to come so that I will be able to got faster on the track because I will have something to hold me in the turns. Sloping the turns is what’s going to hold me in. You see if you hit a turn thts flat you will have to slow down some before getting into the turn. But with the sloped turns all you have to do it hit the slope and it’ll take u all the way through the turn even at full speed. In conclusion, this week has been pretty successful considering I didn’t have any access to the skid loader. I had to use the shovel for this part. In the future I hope to be able to use the skid loader to dig out the track. One, because the work will go a whole lot faster and two, because it levels out the ground better then just me and the shovel. That’s all I got for this week be back next week. |
Austin stroudTrack Attack
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