Team PhatDad RC Bajacross and BBQ
April 4-5th, 2009 Ramona, California, USA

Words / Story: Travis Brock

Over the past year of my life I have made some huge changes, some good some bad. But of all the choices I made, picking up a Baja 5B might just have been the best one. You see when I bought this R/C car I did something without knowing it, I entered a whole new chapter in my life.

In the past year I have attended over ten Baja related events all of which were just amazing. I have been out to multiple deserts including Glamis, Ocotillo Wells, and Buttercup. I’ve raced in the 1st ever Baja Nationals and have been to too many tracks to count. But the weekend of April 4-5th by far, was the best RC related event I have ever attended. This past weekend Tom of Team Phat Dad RC opened his private testing facility to the members of HPIbajaFORUM.com for a day of pure enjoyment.

The day started out with people rolling in over a couple hours, some time spent catching up with friends we hadn't seen in months, a little car prep, a hair of track prep, and some good ol’ fashioned trash talking thrown in for good measure. I believe it was Joe O'Neill of O'Neill Brothers racing who took the track first to show his dominance and scare us all with the beast he brought out. Soon after it because a free for all, there were close to 40 cars and trucks on and off the track all day getting as much practice in as possible before Tom kicked us off for the Time Attack session of the day.

Once racing got underway, things calmed down a bit due to the Time Attack format. It was nice to be able to run one-on-one with the clock and not worry about Rodney Ketchup taking you out as he blew a corner, or Dave Groon holding it wide and cutting the track like we see every weekend at Milestone (Just kidding guys)! Just making sure you are reading the HPI page report…

As events played out Team Phatdad driver Rodney "I like to be in charge" Ketchum took the win in the buggy class while Team O'Neill Racing's Joe O'Neill Took the win in the truck class with Dave Groon nipping at his heels.

Then, the big air competition... I'm not going to write about it as the pictures can do it much better justice than I can with words. I can say however that Joe O'Neill also won this round when he launched his 27.2cc powered Baja way too high to measure!

This was my best day in a long time, I made some great new friends and got to see some old ones as well.

Dave and Shelly, I wish you were both closer to us here in California as your great people and I wish we could spend more time together.

Tom, your the man!!! Thanks for such a great day.

Everybody else.... until next time!

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