HUNCOTE VIPERS MODEL CAR CLUB CELEBRATES 35 YEARS OF RACING
On 27th March 2025 Huncote Vipers Model Car Club will be celebrating 35 years of racing.
The club was formed by David Quemby along with Charles and Paul Dunkley, Rob Norwell and Colin Watts.
The first meeting was held in the school hall of Huncote Primary School in Leicestershireon Tuesday 27th March 1990.
The main aim of the club was to promote the sport of radio control model car racing, providing a safe environment for youngsters to use their cars and a place for them to learn how to tune and maintain them. The club still maintains this aim & has club cars that can be used by anyone wanting to try the sport.
The original track was laid out on a carpet base with old esculator handrail being used to mark out the track.
Lap timing at that time was done using a manual pushbutton counting system.
In the early days there were up to 40 members & most of the cars were 1:10th scale buggies.
The club is affiliated to the British Radio Car Association which is the governing body of the sport in this country.
Over the years the types of cars being raced have gone through a number of phases from four wheel drive 1:10th scale saloon cars, 1:12th scale GT12 & LMP’s to the latest phase which is the Battcave mini’s.
The electronics have also changed over the years with motors changing from brushed to brushless, batteries changing from NiCad’s to NiMH’s then to LiPo’s.
The radio transmitters also changed from predominatley sticks to wheel type & the frequencies used from 27MHz to 40MHz & now 2.4GHz.
The clubs system for lap timing also changed from the original mechanical system to using handout transponders & computer software to the now dedicated personnal transponders with results being displayed live on a website.
Club membership has changed quite a bit from the early 40 members dropping down to mid teens around 2010. Numbers picked up to low 20’s in 2013 before dropping down to around 10 members just before covid stopped play.
The club took a while to recover once we were allowed to start racing again & this year we have around 17 members so far.
The club still meets on a Tuesday night during term time (6:30pm to 10pm) & once the adjacent Community Centre hall became available the club hired that as well as a pit area.
Racing is still done on a carpet based track with the track marking been done using drainpipe tubing. The circuit is changed once a month to allow drivers time to test different car set-ups.
One of the clubs founder members, Rob Norwell, left the club in the 90’s & rejoined the club over 10 years ago & is now a regular member again.
The club can be found online at our website www.vipersrc.co.uk or our Facebook page under Huncote Vipers Model Car Club.
Race results are published on the rc-results.com under Huncote Vipers MCC.
John Richardson