HPI Maverick Atom (image: gamepeople.co.uk)
I’ve been playing around with Radio Controlled cars for most of my life. Recently, this has seen something of a resurgence. For me this has been because I’ve wanted to introduce my kids to the hobby. But more generally there seems to be increasing interest in the building, tuning and club racing of these great little vehicles.
I was therefore most excited to try out this little 1/18th HPI Maverick Atom XB (provided by Eclipse Hobbies). Not only was it a proper hobbyist remote control car, but it also performed like vehicles almost twice its size. As I said in my Maverick Atom review:
The Maverick Atom punches well above its weight, and price tag (around USD129). As well as being a lot of fun for hobbyists, they are a great way in dip your toe in the world of proper R/C racing. As a bridge between the toy and hobby markets they are perfectly poised to popularize Radio Controlled pursuits with a much wider audience.
This proved to be true the very next day when my son took the car to his friend’s house. They invented all sorts of jumps and games to play with it, and by the end of the afternoon his friend’s dad was keen to find out where he could get one.
This then got us talking about getting together to race the Radio Controlled cars against each other in the evenings. It is this angle that most impressed me about the Atom – it was small enough to appeal to the kids, but performed well enough to also attract parents who wanted to race them properly.
We have a date set, and I’ll no doubt report back on how we get on with our Atoms – both the kid’s playing as well as the dad’s racing. I think we are going to need some more batteries at this rate.
