Before the cold weather set in the Roper Mountain Science Center hosted a open house with "The Wheel" as a theme. They had a small drive-in, some Lego Robotics, a speech from the inventor of the Tweel as well as a couple of other vendors. They invited the hobby department at The Great Escape to come out and give a demo of some of our R/C cars so of course we said would would be happy to. This event was open to anyone but was geared to younger kids, the boy scouts and girl scouts so they could learn about the wheel and how it was and is used today.

We setup a small canopy, a couple of tables, a tv to play some videos of other R/C cars and several cars to demo. We brought a Traxxas Slash 4x4 VXL on a 4000mAh 3s LiPo, a RedCat Rockslide, a couple of Electrix Circuts, Traxxas T-Maxx and a RC18MT to show off and play with. As the kids started to pile in the oooos and ahhhs started as they watched us drive up and down the road with the circuts. Soon the questions started, "How much do they cost?" "How fast do they go?" and finally "Can I drive it?". Seeing as how the rockslide was mine I charged the battery and let the kids have at it. Its a large 1/8 scale rock crawler that isn't exactly fast and very very hard to break so its perfect for kids to drive.

When the battery died on the rockslide all the kids started to watch us drive the circuts back and forth on the road. Seeing as how we were given these tucks to demo were we chasing each other down and running each other over. Soon we had the Slash 4x4 doing full throttle passes and had everyone's attention. And the one thing I learned that day is that the slash is one very fast truck on a 3s. It my only go 50mph but it launches like a rocket and doesn't stop until it has done a couple of 360s with you holding the breaks praying that you don't hit anything. Then we pulled out the ramps and started to jump the trucks to keep the kids attention. Apparently we were doing exactly that too well as I had several parents as me to stop playing with the trucks as they wanted the kids to check out the rest of the open house. So we would take a break, charge batteries and answer questions before starting that same routine all over again.

At the end of the day almost everyone left with a smile on their face. We all had fun with this little demo and I would jump at the chance to do it again.

Adam Sherrick
The Great Escape Greenville

Video link of some of the fun we had.
Roper Mountain Science Center Demo Day