Newbie needing guidance

[JDawg]

Just got into the world of RC with some rock crawlers with my 10 year old son. He started showing me some YouTube videos of construction/city scenes. I fell in love. I would like to start getting into that.

I was trying to find some guidance online about brand and scale but couldn't find too much. I was hoping to find some guidance here for you fine folks that have been in this hobby for a while. I can't be spending thousands of dollars yet, but don't want to go cheap either.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[jerry56]

I haven't been doing it very long myself. You kind of have to decide
A. What you want ie dump truck, loader, excavator ...Tractor and trailer...
B. How much time do you want to put into building something.
C. how much you want to spend.
A fully hydraulic excavator or loader will set you back about $2-3K at least, a Tamiya grand hauler and trailer close to 3K...

I can't afford that right now so I convert Tonka trucks and Bruder toys to RC, it has it's draw backs though the Tonkas are fun but lack detail, the Bruders are a very tough plastic but you can't dig in hard ground with them. But if the soil is loose or sandy they are fine. The Tonkas and Bruders require some time to convert but it keeps the cost down and it's kind of satisfying when you finish one. There is also a line of Chinese toys called Huina or TopRace that run from $50 to 500 ot 600 depending. And they all have their pluses and minuses.

SO bottom line decide what it is you want and the folks on this board will help you sort it out.
There are folks that do a great job of building some of the Bruders for other people, just google Bruder conversions and look for SmallHaul

[frizzen]

Welcome to the board Jdawg!

It's mostly 1/14 to 1/16 scale, with the occasional 1/12 vehicles coming along. 1/10 and 1/18 are pretty noticibly out of scale

First big consideration is which aspect excites you the MOST right now? Trucking, Construction, Farming, Warehouse, Scenery...

Do you want a Kit to start with, Convert something, Scratch build, or buy Custom ARTR?

There are some cheap options, more options that run about what 1/10 crawlers cost, and several that run into 'but i can buy a *real* car for that much'.

For some homework, go look up these channels
- Youtube gold / Loading kings
- Monsterchannel24
- rcplanet
- rc live action

Then go read through the old posts in the Events section here. That should turn up your stoked to 11

I doubt anyone will really be having any big meets the rest of this year, and the small meets like to know people before inviting them over to play. If we get this plague knocked down, hopefully some of the big ones come back early next year.