Scott Swanson
It’s a recent Saturday morning inside Santiam Hobbies, housed in a rather nondescript building at 5340 S. Santiam Hwy. just east of Lebanon.
The parking lot outside contains about 20 vehicles but no one is in sight.
Inside, though, things are humming – literally.
This is competition day for local radio-control – R/C – enthusiasts who have brought their all-wheel-drive vehicles to test them on a newly built rock-crawling course.
Co-owner Cindy Kerby delivers instructions to the the drivers, about two dozen of them, in a back room that also serves as an indoor course during the wintertime. It contains elaborate rockwork and log features. The rules are strict: each driver has drawn a number and will be paired with another as they work their way through the outside course, under close scrutiny of judges. This competition is about finishing clean, not speed. Drivers will need to maneuver their vehicles through gates marked by tennis ball halves.
Hitting a gate or touching one’s vehicle during the drive will result in penalty points.
Santiam Hobbies, owner Matt Kerby said, is a popular point for R/C enthusiasts, who come monthly for rock-crawling competitions that draw as many as 60 entries. The heat on this particular summer Saturday was keeping the numbers down, Kerby said.
“Normally, it’s a long day.”
Nearly all the crawler rigs in this competition have been built by drivers, either from kits or by purchasing a “ready-to-run,” as they call them.
“Team drivers often will buy a “ready-to-run,” tear it apart and built it back up so you know what’s going on,” said Brady Magee, a customer who showed up to watch the competition.
The store is stocked with boxes of miniature tires, bags of electronic connections, gears, springs, small pistons and paint, as well as complete units. A helicopter hangs on a wall and complete crawlers sit on shelves and countertops.
In the corner are bikes and parts for them. A repairman visits twice a week to provide service for local cyclists, Kerby said.
“We’re trying to build that part of the business.”
The R/C portion is going strong, with sales of parts and complete units, and repairs that he does during the week, he said.
Kerby said he briefly had a car 20 years ago, but the batteries lasted “like, five minutes of run time.” He said he quickly lost interest.
But the sport is progressing rapidly, particularly in the last five years he and Magee said.
“It’s just like anything electronic,” said Magee. “There’s a lot of times you can buy something and the latest, greatest thing will be right around the corner. Just like computers. When you buy it, it’s already obsolete.”
Customers come from all walks of life and all age groups, he said.
A bumper sticker on one vehicle in the parking lot read, “Prayer, The World’s Original Wireless Network.” Emblazoned on the tailgate of another was “#crackacoldoneforbutler.”
Some people are techies, some are just the “average Joe.
“Honestly, I’ve seen all walks,” Kerby said. “ Kids, elderly, the whole range. It’s not one certain age group.”
He said one thing true of the participants is that they don’t fit the old popular conception of who R/C enthusiasts were.
“The stigma’s not there as much as it used to be. It used to be that the stigma was a guy 30-something that’s still living in Mom and Dad’s basement.”
Kerby took over ownership of Santiam Hobbies 3½ years ago from his father-in-law, Ed Charlson, who had opened the store four years before that. Kerby had been managing his brother-in-law’s gun store, Straight Shooters Sporting Gods, in downtown Lebanon, and wanted to try something different, he said.
“I knew nothing about R/Cs and that’s funny,” he said. “It’s pretty big and I was actually amazed how many people have R/Cs.
“Even when I was working at the gun shop, people would walk in here and I would go, ‘Hey, I know you.’”
He said the most popular R/C vehicles right now in the local area are crawler and off-road rigs, but drones are not far behind.
“Drones have just exploded. You can get drones just about anywhere right now.”
A recent hit is what enthusiasts call “tiny whoops,” a palm-sized FPV (first person view) camera-equipped chopper that uses goggles the operator wears to see what the camera is seeing.
The choppers generally go for $100 to $200, goggles range from $100 to $600 and the radio controllers run $150 and up.
The hobby can cost as much as an individual wants to put into it, said Magee, who described himself as an “on and off” participant.
“I have $3,500 in mine, just in the crawler itself. Some people do it as a sport and it gets very competitive – off-road, copter, drone. Competition choppers and drones can fly at 70 to 100 mph.”
Santiam Hobbies holds speed events on Friday nights using rock crawlers in timed competitions.
Magee said aircraft are “still the thing” for a lot of older R/C enthusiasts.
“At Weirich (Park), at the soccer field, you’ll see a lot of people out there flying planes all the time.”
Kerby said one of his older customers has really gotten into racing drones.
“He keeps his gear with him all the time and he’ll see a field that’s a public field, nobody around, and he’ll stop and pop it up in the air and do a few.”
Kerby said the difference between buying an R/C machine at a department or sporting goods store versus buying it from a hobby store like his is repairability, more than cost. He said someone interested in getting into R/C could pick up a vehicle at a department store for $50 to $100 or more, about half the cost of a comparable-quality kit vehicle from his store.
“As soon as that thing breaks, you’re throwing it in the trash. Here, you pay $200 to get started in a car, it breaks, you can buy every single little piece and repair it.”
Santiam Hobbies has a 12-person team, headed by Jesse Shanklin of Lebanon, made up of competitors from Lebanon, Sweet Home and Albany, who host competitions at home and travel to those hosted by other hobby stores around Oregon. Shanklin said competitors at the local events come from as far away as southern Oregon and Washington.
Also, he said, “there are a lot of national events, especially in racing world. They hold those worldwide. The professional guys will travel to China.”
ESPN has a televised quad league, he said, and an event in Dubai held a couple of years ago paid a $1 million purse to the winner.
Santiam Hobbies also holds timed speed rock-crawling events on Fridays and Cindy Kerby said they plan to bring back a flat track that her father built, complete with a grandstand-like platform for drivers to operate their vehicles from.
Competitors also tend to invest in the sport, both time and money. Matt Kerby said they generally start with a kit car, which they put together themselves, then add upgrades.
“If you want a faster motor, you put in a faster motor. I know guys who will buy a ready-to-run because they can’t afford to buy a kit with all the electronics because it does end up costing you more than a ready-to-run. So they’ll buy it, they’ll drive it for a little while, then as they’re able to afford it. they’ll start putting upgrades on it
Often, he said, they purchase a ready-to-run, then tear it completely down and rebuild it so they know their vehicle.
Magee said building a car is an exacting process.
“Stuff goes wrong. If a screw is one millimeter too long, it messes everything up or you can put it in the wrong spot.”
Driving is exacting as well, requiring fine motor skills. Rock-crawler competitors are deep in concentration as they maneuver their vehicles over demanding terrain. It can get tricky, trying to keep vehicle on the course without touching gates and without touching operators. When a rig overturns, its driver skillfully flips it back upright by cranking the wheel and gunning the motor.
“It’s eye-hand coordination,” Cindy Kerby said.
Most of the vehicles are equipped with winches, and when a driver has no other options, he will use that option. Most of the competitors on this Saturday are male, although Magee said an increasing number of women have gotten into the sport.
Santiam Hobbies’ customers do more than just buy products. The courses have all been built with customer input and participation. In the competitions, customers serve as course officials and judges – decked out in fluorescent yellow shirts from Cindy Kerby’s other business, Gateway Imports.
Not only is it fun, but it can be a good family activity, said driver James Watkins of Sweet Home, who was at the competition with his teenage son Kyle.
“We started building stuff together,” Watkins said. “We wanted to do stuff on weekends, so that’s what we started doing. I like how family-oriented it is.
“Everything is laid-back. You both put time and effort into something together. Then you come out and see it crawl and see the performance, the results of something you’ve done together. It’s cool.”
Watkins said his older sons Robert, a high school senior, and Brandon also are involved.
“We’re all doing it.”
Kerby said the sport’s lure is contagious.
“I don’t care who it is – as soon as they see one of those cars and they’ve never seen one before, they’re like, “Oh, this thing is just like a real vehicle. They’ve got this, they’ve got that.”