The Return of the RDC

Remember this? A number of people have been asking me if I was ever going to finish it. My honest answer: probably not. The reason: the mechanism was an old 103, and I wanted more reliable performance from my T Gauge RDC.



Then along came the Hanku 9000 and the Kiha 40, both of which are based on Eishindo's second-generation mechanism. Alas, the Hanku was shorter than the 103, and the Kiha was longer. And so I figured that pretty much killed my RDC project.



You see, Chris Schmuck designed this particular flavor of RDC shell to exactly fit a 103 mechanism. If you thought a real RDC was longer, you're right—in fact, they're considerably longer. Chris had even etched the original to the correct length, and I stretched a 103 chassis to fit (below, top). But it wouldn't stay on the rails: increasing the chassis length also increases its minimum operating radius.



Recently, however, I've been tinkering with a new project, and I had all of my project boxes sitting out on my workbench. As I was cleaning off the bench for the night, just for the heck of it I popped a Kiha chassis into the unfinished RDC shell. To my surprise, it looked perfectly fine (above, bottom). And so, with that little quasi-accident, the RDC project has been rebooted. Stay tuned for a new chapter.