Tank Club Questions/ Starting a Club

[MrChef]

Hi Guys, I'm thinking of putting a tank club together in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.

To start-

I'm curious how far the average member travels for IR Club Battles?

I'm curious how newer clubs get started. I haven't seen many if any RC enthusiasts near me geographically online I've been watching DavidN's excellent progress though and it's got me thinking. The 2 local hobby shops to me are both Mom & Pop. Both carry, sell and service RC buggies and cars but Neither have RC tanks. I've explained about them to both owners but they didn't sound that interested. I haven't yet made the effort to show them, that'll be my next step.

Did you guys meet online or did you visit club sites? Frag is just an amazing club and facility and organization.

Where do you usually meet? A public place? Park or private property?

I'll have other questions for club members who can help. So thanks in advance.

Chef

[RichJohnson]

I run the San Diego group.

We have a lot of tank owners here in SoCal and some drive 1-2 hours for a battle day.

You need a place with parking, restrooms, and good dirt to drive in. Also where park service people won’t give you crap about doing it if your in a park.

Private property offers the ability to store props onsite as well as landscape and terraform a field to suit your liking, while a site in public like a park offers recruitment.
Davids group appears to be not as much a club as he owns all the tanks and the field props and sets it all up. It’s more of a hosted event.
San Diego, LATank, Frag, DAK Texas Armor are all clubs.

I held my first meeting with 3 of us in a park and ride at Miramar college and we played in the dirt next to the parking lot. It’s a protected wildlife field now….

You need to find people with tanks.
Facebook is very big with tank groups now. Also RCU inverse and Rctankwarefare though they are mostly Europe.
If you’re going to host it you need to find a place near enough to you to make it accessible. But also enough of a draw to bring interested people so not secluded.

You can try advertising at those shops but may not do any good if they don’t sell tanks. Our local shop sells henglong and taigen tanks.
search for people in your area online and form a community and then look for a place to gather.

[Rubicon99]

Hi Guys, I'm thinking of putting a tank club together in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.

To start-

I'm curious how far the average member travels for IR Club Battles?

I'm curious how newer clubs get started. I haven't seen many if any RC enthusiasts near me geographically online I've been watching DavidN's excellent progress though and it's got me thinking. The 2 local hobby shops to me are both Mom & Pop. Both carry, sell and service RC buggies and cars but Neither have RC tanks. I've explained about them to both owners but they didn't sound that interested. I haven't yet made the effort to show them, that'll be my next step.

Did you guys meet online or did you visit club sites? Frag is just an amazing club and facility and organization.

Where do you usually meet? A public place? Park or private property?

I'll have other questions for club members who can help. So thanks in advance.

Chef

How far will club members drive? That all depends on the demographics and frwy accessibility of the area. Here in Ca you either drive 60-100 miles one way or don't play. Most members at the two older clubs LA and San Diego have to drive a considerable distance but both "fields" have easy frwy access and weather is rarely a concern.

Getting a club started is the complicated question. Cast a wide net because it's not so much modelers or WW2 history buffs that will come it tends to be younger "video war gamers" and RC monster truck types. This mean a tendency towards more modern tanks.

The mom and pop hobby store is wise not caring rc tanks because they can't compete with online prices. They only have so much flexibility in available stock funds and have to put that into what are proven items that "turn over" fast. That's not generally RC tanks especially if they have no experience in what it takes to sell them.

Most clubs meet at public locations and some at private homes/properties. LA Tanks meets at a tank museum, San Diego at a public recreation area and Irvine tanks at a public park. Others like DAK in AZ meet at a private home.

Don't expect to start off big. Expect it to take a long of time and A LOT of effort.

[tank_me]

And it takes continuous effort or people lose interest. I used to drive from Austin to outside Houston (about 1.5 hours to battle), but now that most of the battles are even closer to Houston I haven't been able to make the 2+ hour one way drive.

[MrChef]

Thanks for the response guys.

OK effort I can totally understand. Losing interest these days happens in a split second. Age demographic I hadn't even considered but it makes sense that the WW2 guys would likely be older and a minority, and the younger crowd would be more for speed and action and modern tanks. My closest hobby shop has an indoor and an outdoor track for their buggies and runs races every Sunday.

I live on 3.5 acres of country land and have thought of building a battlefield but I'm not keen on inviting complete strangers to my private home. I do have a large rural state park within spitting distance (literally is part of my property line) that has activity areas away from my home and is literally 1 exit away off a busy parkway so that's good news.

Ok heres a question. Based on what I got from DavidN's previous post and similar interest in a Modern Tank, the Abrams would be the best bet to get to minimally mod and show off at the hobby shop with the buggy crowd? I was thinking of a different tank next but that just means I'll need 2...

What is usually a day that people meet and battle? Likely Weekend I'd assume but more Saturday or Sunday or no difference?

Thanks again,

Chef

[tank_me]

Our club used to alternate Saturdays and Sundays as there were folks that could attend one day, but not the other. Sundays can be a church day for some.

[Rubicon99]

Thanks for the response guys.

OK effort I can totally understand. Losing interest these days happens in a split second. Age demographic I hadn't even considered but it makes sense that the WW2 guys would likely be older and a minority, and the younger crowd would be more for speed and action and modern tanks. My closest hobby shop has an indoor and an outdoor track for their buggies and runs races every Sunday.

I live on 3.5 acres of country land and have thought of building a battlefield but I'm not keen on inviting complete strangers to my private home. I do have a large rural state park within spitting distance (literally is part of my property line) that has activity areas away from my home and is literally 1 exit away off a busy parkway so that's good news.

Ok heres a question. Based on what I got from DavidN's previous post and similar interest in a Modern Tank, the Abrams would be the best bet to get to minimally mod and show off at the hobby shop with the buggy crowd? I was thinking of a different tank next but that just means I'll need 2...

What is usually a day that people meet and battle? Likely Weekend I'd assume but more Saturday or Sunday or no difference?

Thanks again,

Chef

Abrams do make good demo tanks. They are large, modern and with the right mix of modification can be made into quite the show stopper. I use my Abrams tanks for demos all the time, but rarely use it to IR battle.

Air time with Abrams tanks during demos. Jumping a tank is always a show stopper.

[DavidN]

Too much to answer. I don't know how to respond :-)

1/2 a year ago, I thought of opening my own club in Orange County. The I found out that there was already the Irvine Tank Club in OC. I did not want to divide all members if I started a new one. I approached the president of the Irvine Club and asked if he had future plan to continue, since I did not see much activity. He told me to take over and run it. I drove around OC to look for a park for my battlefield. It must be near the parking lot, near the restroom, and plenty of shades. Initially I set out 30 tanks of mines for the club to use. This is to attract potential players to be interested in RC tank battle. To fill in my battle field, I made houses, flags and bunkers; I bought trees; I borrowed extra buildings and trees from the LA Tank Clubs. I had my club members prepared signs, designed flyers and posters. We all come 1 hour early to set up the battlefield. We learned new ways to run after each event.

The club originally had 5 active members. We communicated continuously to set up for the next event. Our intention was to promote RC tank battle in OC. Our mojo was that we are the "BEGINNER FRIENDLY RC TANK CLUB" . We thought that in order to attract new members, we had to have less rules so players could have fun. So we used only 2 main rules: 6 seconds in between shots and stay 2 feet from each other. We only played with Heng Long tanks so new players could afford to get into the hobby and be our members. We created event announcement on Facebook and had people signed up in advance in order to play. we keep the log with information of all players at our event.

At the event, we were in joy when we saw fathers and sons playing together instead of playing video games at home. Mothers was happy to their children and their husbands having great bonding time together at an outdoor atmosphere. We had grand parents, parents, young girls and boys playing together with happy faces.

We were invited by the City of Stanton to have our tank battle in their Central park last month. After seeing the way we battle, they might put our activity as a program in their big event for their community annually. Next month, the City of Santa Ana will provide us a free booth to promote our hobby. This is to get the city on familiarizing our games. We are also at the stage of more new players are interested and buying tanks on their own to play. We have 12 members who bring their own tanks to the event now. We also have private sponsor who donated $ and tanks to our club. I will gradually withdraw my tanks one by one out of the club's tank fleet and we will use the donated tanks for guests to play.

For the tanks, I tend to stay away from modern tanks as people might relate those tanks to the present war. The modern tanks are also too big with long barrels. They are quite bulky for my new members to maneuver. The WWII tanks were cheaper in prices. They are smaller, easier to handle and to maintain. I only play the German tanks when I have my event in my Huntington Beach park. When the recreational department from the city invite me to have my event at their park, I will only bring WWII American and Russian tanks with blue and red flags on top.

Our big brothers' LA Tank Club usually run the 2nd Saturday of each month. So we decided that we run our event the 4th weekend of the month. We most likely do 2 Saturdays and 1 Sunday quarterly so all members can get a chance to come.

[MrChef]

DavidN thank you for your response.

You're right, where to begin. So much to think about,organize and do. I did take Rich Johnson's suggestion and joined several Facebook RC tank groups including your Irvine Group David, if for nothing to get more out into the RC tank community and get ideas.

I think at this point I will plan to get an Abrams and do a demo at the local RC/hobby shop because I just don't know where to look for other people interested, but I can't imagine there aren't any since I'm in a pretty populated area of NY.

[DavidN]

DavidN thank you for your response.

You're right, where to begin. So much to think about,organize and do. I did take Rich Johnson's suggestion and joined several Facebook RC tank groups including your Irvine Group David, if for nothing to get more out into the RC tank community and get ideas.

I think at this point I will plan to get an Abrams and do a demo at the local RC/hobby shop because I just don't know where to look for other people interested, but I can't imagine there aren't any since I'm in a pretty populated area of NY.

Just try to keep moving forward. Do whatever you can. When I first joined the Irvine RC Tank Club on FB about 6 months ago, it had only around 160 members. It now has 260 members. I live in Orange County. The population is at 3 millions. If I could get 30 players out of the numbers of people in my county, I will be happy :-)

[RichJohnson]

My question is why are you still using the Irvine tank club name when you are not in Irvine, your group meets in Orange County central cities.
Eric started that group name because he wanted to try to get people to come battle at a park near him but it really wasn’t suitable for driving tanks and battling. Then he more or less left the tank hobby for airsoft sporting.
it’s your group but I would suggest you rebrand it to your local.

[DavidN]

Thank you for your suggestion. Irvine is still in OC :-) And the name is not important to me at this moment. I might plan to look into this name change as the members in the club grow a bit more.

[Rubicon99]

Thank you for your suggestion. Irvine is still in OC :-) And the name is not important to me at this moment. I might plan to look into this name change as the members in the club grow a bit more.

It's already branded and you would only cause confusion by changing it now. Irvine is also the more affluent part of the OC so it says "successful" to the OC folks.

Personally myself growing up in HB I would prefer HB in the name but Irvine is working so keep at it IMO.