Last weekend was our 3rd trip to the biggest r/c racing event anywhere, MOTORAMA! With close to 800 entries on two tracks, Motorama is an intense, brutal, but awesomely fun race weekend. For those that don’t know what Motorama is or haven’t seen our coverage from 2012 or 2013, this is an event with much more than radio control. The event takes place in Harrisburg, PA @ the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and is 2 days (3 for us racers) of everything motorsports. It has two car shows, a motocross arena where they race dirt bikes and ATV’s, Go-Kart tracks, vendor booths, concessions, Robot Conflict competition, Ms. Motorama Pageant, R/C Drifting course, R/C Rock Crawling course, and so much more. Basically anything with a motor is there and over 60,000 people come thru the weekend to check it all out. It’s one of the coolest expo’s I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.

This year was no different. Several members of Team Soup who usually attend this race had to back out last minute, leaving me to brave the atrocious weather on my own. It was basically driving into a blizzard with worsening road conditions the further South I traveled (from Central NY). I left Thursday night so we could get in the doors first thing Friday AM. Our group that stayed in our hotel room was basically coming from 3 directions and we kept track of each other via TXT.

I did feel obligated to the R/C community and my fellow Motorama attendees to come up with a way to communicate similar information (road conditions, etc). I started the Motorama RC Racers Facebook Group for just that reason. It worked well, with various people chiming in on road conditions, track build status updates, and more. It’s awesome when our community bands together over a common interest. I’ve since handed over admin rights to Scotty Ernst, the man behind the show @ Motorama the last few years. He’ll hopefully keep everyone updated over the next year as the plans for the 2015 event develop.

So after the white knuckle ride down to PA, we all rendezvoused at the hotel to get some shuteye for the long weekend ahead. We awoke to clear roads and a balmy 40 degree temperature (summer weather for us CNY folk who have experienced WEEKS of sub-zero temps this winter). We got to the track around 7:30, just in time to wait in line to get in the doors (opened at 8am).

We promptly bum-rushed the doors when they opened to get our pits setup for the weekend. For being as far back in line as we were, I’m very pleased with the spot we had. We weren’t able to setup a booth style pit like we did last year the way tables were configured, plus spectators weren’t really supposed to enter thru the pit area anyways. I was fine with it. Being by myself this year, I was more focused on having a good time than getting super intense coverage and exposure. Below is my pit area. I was alongside fellow New Yorkers, Michael St.Denis and Dylan Zacharias near the front of the pits.

Pro-Line EVO body shined up pretty on the SC10 for the Stock Short Course class.

Being this event is more than just an r/c race, I’m going to cover the event as a whole. It’s worth pointing out how much other stuff goes on at this event other than r/c racing. Virtually everyone I know in the hobby also loves full sized motorsports or cars, so in theory.. everyone should also appreciate the “non-rc” photos in this post. Click thru the page numbers below for full event coverage, starting with the 1/10 Track.