From lower left and moving clockwise: Jarrett, Josh, Kent, and Patrick with their rigs at Walnut Creek on Saturday, July 11. Photo by Jarrett Lemke.
The new Locked Up RC website is live, and with it we are making room for more than products and parts. This blog will be a place to share the people, builds, trail days, projects, mistakes, and occasional questionable decisions that make the RC community worth being part of. We are aiming for new posts around the beginning and middle of each month, and a hot Saturday at Walnut Creek felt like the right place to start.
A Fresh Start for the Locked Up RC Blog
The website overhaul has already given Locked Up RC a shiny new home and feel. Now the goal is to keep that new home active with stories that usually end up scattered across Facebook comments, group chats, camera rolls, and conversations on the trail.
Some posts will focus on team-driver builds or events. Others may cover works in progress, trips, lessons learned, things that broke, or the people helping each other behind the scenes. Product news may show up when it belongs in the story, but this is not intended to become a twice-monthly sales pitch wearing a blog-post costume.
The schedule is deliberately flexible to keep the stories organic: look for something new around the beginning and middle of each month!
Saturday at Walnut Creek
On Saturday, July 11, Patrick Norton—Mr. LURC himself—met up with Locked Up RC team driver Jarrett Lemke, our friend Kent, and me at Walnut Creek here in the Austin area.
It was hot, because Texas in July - need I say more? Still, once the trucks were on the rocks and everyone started debating lines, the temperature became slightly easier to ignore but only slightly...
Patrick testing traction, gravity, and the structural integrity of his TRX-4. Photo by Kent Dixson.
The four rigs fit their owners pretty well. Patrick brought his silver Bronco-bodied TRX-4. Jarrett had his blue-and-white Vanquish VS4-10 Half-Cab Origin. Kent brought the red Rockabilly he built himself. I was there with my gunmetal Vanquish Phoenix for its first proper trail run.
Walking the creek with a transmitter in hand is a simple way to spend a Saturday, but it checks nearly every box that keeps us coming back to the hobby: good terrain, distinct builds, mild competition, great conversations, unnecessary line analysis, and enough cameras nearby to document the best decisions—and the worst ones.
Patrick Versus Gravity
Patrick did not appear interested in simply driving his TRX-4 over the easy parts. He spent much of the day finding steeper ledges, awkward approaches, and opportunities to demonstrate what we will generously call masterful stunt work. Even though he had the tiniest tires of any of the group he still demolished plenty of hard lines!
Patrick’s TRX-4 brought home a respectable sample of the Walnut Creek ecosystem. Photo by Jarrett Lemke.
Patrick’s Bronco also collected a respectable amount of creek debris along the way - speed runs through standing, soupy, creek water tend to do that! By the end of the run, the truck looked like a dirty turtle tank - and smelled like one too. The truck kept moving though, which is the part that matters - but that goofball of a scale driver should roll up his windows next time...
Four Trucks, Four Personalities
Kent’s Rockabilly stood out immediately. He built the red rig himself following the Harley Designs Build-a-long for the build, learning to weld in the process! It looked right at home on the exposed limestone and I personally couldn't stop looking at it, such a sweet rig!
Jarrett’s VS4-10 Half-Cab Origin brought a cleaner, classic-truck look to the group. It also gave him something to drive between taking the action photos that made the rest of us look far more organized than we really were. The concentration on the action photos may have been the primary reasons it lost both its front and rear bumpers as the day progressed... Jarrett takes destructive testing too literal sometimes!
Jarrett’s blue-and-white Vanquish VS4-10 Half-Cab Origin working through the rocks. Photo by Jarrett Lemke.
My Vanquish Phoenix had the simplest assignment of the day: complete its first run without creating a new project for me when I got home.
It succeeded.
Nothing came loose, nothing stopped working, and I did not have to carry it back to the vehicle. A completely uneventful first outing may not sound impressive, but anyone who has finished enough builds knows that zero issues is a huge win!
What Comes Next
This first post is a good example of what we want the blog to become. Not every entry needs to be a major event report or a deep technical breakdown. Sometimes the worthwhile story is simply four friends getting outside, bringing four very different trucks, and spending a few hours trying lines in the heat.
Going forward, expect more team-driver updates, builds, trail days, events, behind-the-scenes projects, and the occasional life update from the people around Locked Up RC. The goal is to show more of the community behind the parts and give these stories a place to live beyond a fast-moving social feed.
Tiny trucks and great friends.
Even when it is hot enough to question the entire outing!
