Slave to a Hobby :P

BEFORE YOU READ: (subtle self-advertising)

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Sunday, February 18

I have spent yet more money on my project. 

10 dollars, to be exact, for new differentials. 

The new upgrade comes with metal gears.

Wuzz that mean? Buckle up, Me and Ben are at the S.S. Blogger helm again, and this time, we are telling you about our hobby.
First, look at this.

This is what we are slaves mechanics to.
It's a Chinese import RC car.
Here's a basic crash course on the RC hobby.
It's simply an obsession with fast scale model cars, and upgrading them.
Me and Ben have kinda discovered we like love extremely treasure seeing little cars flying off jumps, and then having to repair them.

Here's a backstory:
We moved into Al Zeina more than a half a year ago, and we were really bored, 'cuz our stuff hadn't arrived yet from shipping. So naturally, being kids with a bunch of offroad literally a minute's walk from our apartment block, we looked for something really cool to do outside. Then, while researching, we stumbled upon this web retailer called Souq. Souq is the Amazon of the UAE, but while scrolling through outdoor toys, we stumbled upon a page of RC cars.
Lemme stop for a minute. Hobby grade RC is expensive everywhere unless you're willing to risk quality. But we don't reaaallly think all that much when we've got an idea in our heads, so, when we discovered Asia was the land of cheap RC, we set our minds to pick some up. Bennett ordered the red SUV in the pics, but the car above that came later. My first car... well, I kinda got ripped off. The site said 20-30 MPH, but my first car, a yellow buggy, did about an eighth of that (I gave it to Greta later). So, instead of giving up on RC, while Ben's truck spun donuts around mine, I started thinking about what car to get next. Two months later and soon to be 80 bucks poorer, I ordered a new RC. That's the one you see in the top pic. That's basically my main car now. But our RC addiction didn't stop there. Later on, we acquired an RC rock crawler, which we tried and failed to destroy (a stunt for our Youtube), and a cheap RC helicopter, which unfortunately doesn't really work that great.
So, yeah. That's how we got into this beautiful mess.

Now I'll talk about the cars, and, having to repair them.
First is my RC buggy, which I have christened "Jeff".
It's a WLTOYS 12428, a 4WD offroad buggy.
It hits 25-30 MPH when not broken, and makes a super high pitched whine at full speed.
Unfortunately, it breaks a lot.
The first time I broke it, I was driving through grass, and the car's back end flew up into the air and made a chunkachunkachunka sound. When I looked under the car, there was only half of the rear driveshaft. This was fixed by rejoining the rest of it, which I had to hunt around for, and stuffing it in its joint along with liberally applied duct tape. Surprisingly, this held up for about a month. Then the episode repeated itself, except now the whole rear axle self-destructed as well. You might think it strange, but I'm actually really happy about this car. The reason for that is because I've had no electrical problems so far even though I drove it through seawater. This is a godsend because those are the only really pricey parts to replace. And when I need to replace a part, it either means going to our local (which means an hour away in UAE speak) Chinese warehouse and haggling with dudes, or ordering online, which means better prices, but waiting half a month to find out if and when it arrives.

Then there's Ben's car. Unlike my car, we don't try to upgrade it or anything.
It's a Feiyue FY-02.
This one is our tough little dude who refuses to break, but when he does, it's spectacular and frightening. It's an SUV, and it hits between 15 and 20 miles an hour.
The first time we broke this thing, it was my fault, and on its maiden voyage too. (I know, terrible brother and all that.) The moment Ben let me drive it, I accidentally smacked it into a light post at full throttle. This was a slight problem. The front rocker arm on the right departed, for lack of better words, to a better place in the RC heaven, and I left Ben with a three-wheeled RC car. Luckily, we found a replacement part (See our Dragon Mart post.) But yesterday, we were driving it, and Ben accidentally dove it headfirst into the Gulf. It got out under its own power, but then started pouring smoke and smelling really bad, indicating that the truck was not waterproof. An inspection later revealed that everything was fine except the ESC (electronic speed controller/receiver) which had melted itself, and, being an electronic part, cost 15 bucks to replace.

Lastly, there's the rock crawler and the helicopter.
I'm not spending much time on these because they're toys, not hobby grade.
We tried to kill the rock crawler by throwing it in the ocean, driving it in a splash pad,  and throwing it across the park, but it still runs!
The heli doesn't work.
'Nuff said.

Now... time to talk about our Youtube Channel! (promotion mode engaged)

We started Super Cheap RC back when my car first arrived, and we've been making videos about cheap RC cars since then.
I'll leave some links to our site and our channel:
Channel, click if you didn't click the top one already
Our website
We've gotten over 1.5K watch minutes, and we get an average of 4 hours of content view a day.
Not great, but not too bad for a fledgling channel.
I use a slightly bootlegged version of Windows Movie Maker to compile and add glitz to our videos. (don't look at me that way Microsoft, you don't have it anymore)
We'd appreciate a like or comment or subscribe (wink wink nudge nudge)
Or just check them out, it's a gift anyway, and we love that.

So... yea. Started with a cheap, crappy yellow buggy and ballooned to a Youtube channel and about 300 to 400 dollars in this hobby. We are already planning to pick up some Revell model kits and make them RC monsters. And now we're kinda slaves.
Thanks for reading my rambling, sayonara Blogger!
EDIT: Now we have over 9,000 watch minutes as of 3/19/18 :DDDDDDDDD