Clyde Valley Raceway

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Temporary halt in proceedings until I can blag a replacement soldering iron... :o(

While soldering together the "little black box" for the computer control system, the heating element decided to give up the ghost.

Should be back in action this weekend though!

Cheers,

Doug

Thursday, October 04, 2007

'ola!

Hope you enjoyed the last round of pics... If you did, Alan managed to put together a wee treat...


Well impressed with the way that turned out... Thanks Alan!

That was just a wee test run using a variable power supply set at around 3.5V. Good to finally see some of the fruits of your labour!

As you can see, we've painted the slots to differentiate lane colour... After trying some of my 4y/o nephew's squeezy-bottle poster paints on a test piece, we decided that it wasn't going to give us the coverage we needed, so we tried some car spray paints on another offcut. Although it was quite easy to spray too much in one area and get pools and puddles, it was easy enough to wipe up with some kitchen roll or toilet paper if you didn't leave it sitting for too long.

The yellow does look a little pale against the natural MDF, but once the tape is down and the track surface is painted, I reckon it'll be a good contrast. Talking about the surface, I had intended to use a 5l tin of white Sandtex with a couple of 150ml tins of black to grey it down a bit, but I still wasn't happy it would be quite dark enough... My local B&Q (hardware store for all you non-Brits) doesn't stock the fine textured black, so it was the best I could come up with. Until...

Wandering around B&Q again (as one does), I discovered an almost perfect colour... Fine Textured Silver Blue. Looking at the title, you wouldn't think it would be particularly suitable, but if you were to see it, you'd understand. I'll post a pic or two once I get it painted. I quickly collared one of the store assistants and asked if I could swap my white for the blue, even though I didn't have my receipt...

"As long as it was unopened, resellable and scans into the stores inventory system, no problem."

Next day, I turned up with the offending tin and true to their word, out comes a credit note 2 mins later! Well chuffed... That saved me forking out another £15-£18 that I could ill-afford at the end of the month and having to explain it to the missus! Cheers , B&Q!

Anyhoo, that's it for a bit.

Until next time,

Doug