what do you think ?

[bill mossor]

We live between hermine & west newton Pa. & We are building a rock crawling/racing course. I spoke with my son who is a Lawer in the Marines about oping a dummy corperation & leasing our land to the corporation to eleviate us of liability & law suites. We are building a rock corse, we just don't know if we should open it to the public. We weren't going to charge people. We were thinking more of a public RC rock park where people could come & play with their toys for free & RC clubs could hold small event's, comps,& get togethers. I was going to build a out house for a bathroom to start with. I will have to check on need's for a free to the public park. I would consider any money we spend on building the course a donation to the RC rock park & don't plan on recovering it. In the beginning the course is going to be at least 12'wide x 150'+ long [6'comp 6'trail] with enough big rocks to challenge the comp crawlers for hours & if we opened it to the public, it would not be for profit but for the RC community. We will rent a machine to move & place the big rocks & spread the smaller one's . The biggest problem for me is arranging the rock by hand to build the course because of a bad back. If you run the course from the edge of the rocks it could be wheel chair accessable. Should be done april-may 2015. If we opened it to the public will people come ? How many would come consistently ? What do you think ? & Do you live near us ?

 

[OSRC]

We just built one in conjunction with our local hobby shop. Couple of things we learned:

The good:
Putting it local to our LHS has promoted scaling in a huge way. Cannot tell you how many people we've met at the course who ask questions, they go buy one of their own. 3 weeks ago we had 3 new people come out and run with us who've never had a scale rig before. Getting it out there in front of the masses is a great way to promote the hobby.
Gives our club a nice "home base" to operate out of.
Our LHS has seen the serious uptick in the scale scene and has gone crazy stocking parts he never carried before. He asks us what is popular so he has it in stock, and it is working out well for him and us.


The bad:
It costs money, time and effort. Even once it is done, there is a lot to do with upkeep, weeding, and so on. be prepared to spend some time after it is complete keeping it updated.
Open to the public is your choice. We fight with litter, people re-arranging things, and some occasional "kid mischief" we'll call it.
If you open it up and advertise it, you will be liable if some ijit comes over and breaks his ankle and decides to sue.

I would reach out to some owners of clubs or courses listed on this site as well as a few racetrack operators/LHS's that can give you some more ideas about the rigors and requirements of running a publicly open course. It may not be a bad idea to put a course together for a local club, and keep it closed to the public except for a few special events first before taking the next step.