Drag Racing: Noisy heaven for superdetail fans

Details, details! Making sure your model is packed with detail – accurate detail – is a sure-fire way to get your model really noticed, and maybe winning a few competition prizes.

For truck and dragster fans, few things beat a day out at a dragmeet. The great thing about drag racing, compared to (say) Formula 1, is that you can usually walk right up to the vehicles, and also to the guys and gals fettling them.

For modellers, this means that you can snap away with your digicam to get accurate reference shots pretty much as close as you like. And this means that you have the information needed for those show winners. Plus of course, it’s a great day out! The shots here were taken at the UK’s Santa Pod raceway, which is an ace venue. You can visit Santa Pod’s website here.

A word of warning though – drag racing is LOUD, and it’s not difficult to damage your ears. You’ll get reminders of this over the PA system, so please don’t ignore the warnings to use ear defenders. These are always on sale, but in fact, I’ve found that for me, the neatest ear defenders are a pair of iPod headphones. That’s the in-ear sort, that go right into your ear canals and cut out most ambient noise. Mine are the German Sennheiser brand, which also give brain-meltingly good audio quality when you use 'em for music.