For the latter half of our indoor season, I have been running a Destiny DTY-10 touring car in 17.5 blinky, and I have to say that I have been very impressed. If you haven’t seen the car, the main selling point for me was that it was PURPLE!!! Yes, a throwback to the HPI Pro 4 that I loved back in the day. But seriously, it is a well-built car with many updates from the previous Destiny RS3.0. The drivetrain was improved with a better differential and higher-quality parts. Another neat feature was the ability to change the front caster from 4 degrees to 5 by loosening 4 screws and moving the bulkhead caps backward or forward. The rear also allowed for some adjustment, and this became a go-to change for me simply because it was easy to do. I ended up running 5 degrees of caster in front and the shorter caster wheelbase on the rear indoors. The only downside of the car, here in the UK, is a lack of support/parts, but this may be because the car is new. I ended up ordering spares from Tonisport, and with quick UK delivery, this worked for me.
The future…
Looking ahead to outdoors and into next indoor season, I am trying to be consistent and run the same car, as I have seen the benefits of running a car for more than two meetings! In time, with this decision, Schumacher rolled out their new FT9 Frontie, which is my preferred class indoors. Therefore, I have taken the decision to run the Schumacher Mi9 outdoors and then move to the FT9 for indoors. Yes my challenge is to run one manufacturer for a year!
Several factors pointed me towards Schumacher.
I wanted a manufacturer that had both Frontie and touring cars, so this narrowed the list down to Schumacher, RCMaker, Xray, Yokomo, and Awesomatix, with ARC as an outside choice. While I love the quality of Xray, the fact that I knew I would have the latest model for less than a year (as they roll out the ’26 models at the end of the year) put me off. I like to have the latest model to follow team driver setups. Awesomatix, while they are technical marvels, I have struggled with setup changes in the past. ARC was ruled out as well, since the UK distributor was not even showing the new ARC A10MF-26 Frontie in stock, and they have not had the carbon ARC touring car in stock for a while. That made me nervous about availability. I have already had the RCMaker touring car and Frontie this year, and while I did enjoy them, it’s a car I may revisit in the future when the design and support from team drivers have settled down a bit more. The same with Yokomo – I am a fan, and indeed, my go-to shop, MB Models, is the distributor for Yokomo cars in the UK, but some of Yokomo’s recent decisions to reduce team drivers and their overall direction makes me a bit nervous. This is another one to revisit when things have settled down.
That left Schumacher. They have both touring car and Frontie. They are a UK company, so parts availability from MB Models or Schumacher itself is good. There are lots of UK drivers running the car, so there’s plenty of support, and of course, Michal Orlowski has been making his mark at many of last year’s big events, including TITC and ETS, with the Mi9.ff course Michal Orlowski has been making his mark at a lot of this last years big events including TITC and ETS with the Mi9.
Other parts that I will be running… Links will mainly take you to MB Models
Speedo – Elceram Oxide Speedo (speedo with a screen, graphs and all!).
Servo – SRT BH8015 HV BL Servo.
Batteries – Zombie 6200 Send-It batteries.
Motor – Zombie 17.5.
Charger – Muchmore Hybrid Phantom Duo.
So the Mi9 has been ordered and is on it’s way, I am aiming to do a build review of the Mi9 and later the FT9 here on the site so watch out for that.
As always many thanks to MB Models for all their support…
