RC Fest 2023 First Round of QUalifying

We are live from Eli Field in Monticello Illinois, host of the 2023 RC fest. This is a celebration of all things radio controlled, from airplanes, drones, helicopters, cars, trucks, and more. In this live stream we are going to share with you views of the race track and sounds is I announce at the event.

RC fest started over in Germany, and has found a home here about 15 mi from the worldwide headquarters of Horizon Hobby. The event has multiple try me areas where fans can come and get their hands on some of the coolest RC products anywhere. People travel from all over the Midwest, and all over the nation, to be a part of this event.

The way the racing works is like this. Anywhere from 7 to 10 cars or trucks will be in a qualifying race. The vehicles are separated by vehicle classification and driver skill level. All of the vehicles on track are what are called 1/8 scale, meaning they are 1/8 the scale of a full size race car. Some of the vehicles run on an alcohol-based nitro methane fuel and internal combustion engines, others run on lithium polymer batteries and electric motors.

Each vehicle is fitted with a device called a transponder which allows our scoring computer to count the laps automatically each time the vehicle crosses a wire buried in the track.
In qualifying, drivers try to complete as many laps in 5 minutes as they can. So for example, if one driver turned 10 laps in 5 minutes and 10 seconds, and another driver turned 10 laps in 5 minutes and 5 seconds, the second driver would be qualified faster as they turned the same amount of lapse but in less time. In qualifying, each vehicle is timed individually. The entire heat race has a master clock which starts counting down the 5 minutes, but each race cars 5 minute time does not start until it crosses the scoring loop for the first time. From then they are considered to be on the clock.

Once qualifying is over, drivers are sorted with other drivers in the same class and same speeds roughly. The slower drivers will be in lower lettered main events, for example if there are 40 total drivers, we will have four main events each made up of 10 drivers. In the end, the fastest 10 drivers in each class will compete against each other for the overall championship of their class at the event. Those races are called the A-mains.

Make sure you check out the entire live stream archive as we will be streaming the first round of qualifying, second round of qualifying, and the main events separately. Scoring results will also be available on The live RC website.