...with radio controlled construction equipment. Crazy Canadians

Quote :

"Radio-controlled cars and trucks truly are a labor of love. An expensive hobby no matter which way you slice it, the costs get exponentially higher the more scale accurate you try to make your machines. And when you're talking R/C construction equipment, we'd wager that hundreds of dollars quickly turn into thousands of dollars. Now that we've established that R/C machinery is an expensive hobby, let's talk about its impact as a time-sucking activity. After all, not only must you completely assemble and perfect your radio-controlled creations, you're certainly going to get them out to play with them. Or, if you're a particular Joe from Saskatchewan, you're going to do real-life work with them. According to a massive 50-plus-page thread on scale4x4rc.org, every morning Joe gets to work by loading his scale R/C excavator onto the back of a specially made R/C semi truck, then pilots the not-so-heavy equipment into his basement construction site. And by every morning, we mean every morning since June of 2005. Now that's dedication to the hobby. At the end of each day, all the newly excavated dirt and rubble is driven up a spiraling ramp and out the basement window. Fortunately, Joe has documented his small-scale R/C basement construction project, so we can all gawk and gander at a full suite of photographs and videos showing how it's all been done. Check out the attached image gallery and the videos after the break to see for yourself. We see only one problem... this leaves no way to eventually win the heart of a girl. "

link to article and videos.

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/02/14/canadian-takes-over-seven-years-to-dig-out-basement-using-r-c-co/

2/15/2012 1:48:42 PM

he ain't hurting anybody, let the man dig his dirt hole

2/15/2012 1:49:59 PM

Oh I think it's pretty cool. 7 years worth though? lol, that's dedication.

2/15/2012 1:52:37 PM

see, this would have been a good article to post in my new News of the Day thread....

message_topic.aspx?topic=624013

2/15/2012 1:56:00 PM

Sorry Minka

2/15/2012 1:57:20 PM

Is this guy a lottery winner or something? Or at least retired?

2/15/2012 1:57:55 PM

can anyone find an interview?

^

Quote :

"Great replies everyone, thank you! Ole, I should be able to drag it out for a few more yrs yet, several cubic yards to go from the south wall and then there's 20 inches to take from the floor. Jim511, most every video states who made the model, be it Wedico or Stahl or Tamiya. The only model built completely from scratch is the bottom dumper B train with some parts taken from the Tamiya flatbed trl kits. My excavators are eight yrs old, they were alot cheaper then than they are now, but then the model excavators of today are alot more detailed with better working parts. My next track hoe will be a Wedico & it's "rumored" to be a Caterpillar 345. SebringMGB, I never did any talking or script in the vids. There is a purpose to all this maddness and it has been ask & answered a few times before, so I'll just copy & paste from another forum. And yes, I try to do as much as I can with the scale equipment. Early August of 02 it rained 8" in 7 days and I had forgot to replace the eave extension on the NE corner of the house after cutting my grass the wk or so before. Alot of moisture soaked up in the NE corner of the basement & a month or so later a big chunk of the dirt wall fell off & was strewn acoss the floor, partially blocking the entry way into my water well. I got started in this radio controlled heavy commercial hobby in the Spring of 97 with a Tamiya King Hauler & flatbed trl. By the time of this "cave in" in 02 I had aquired a bulldozer & trackhoe rc models from Germany & worked away at cleaning up this mess with them during the winter months when things are slow on the farm. I trucked the dirt to another corner of the basement, out of the way. I found it to be great entertainment & after getting all of it cleared away.... well.... then there was just another mess in the other corner of the basement. LOL I had to do something with it & I also thought I'd better crib the walls with wood to prevent any future cave-ins that could affect the foundation. While I was at it, I thought I'd make the area down there a little larger too by trimming back the dirt walls a couple of feet & when it's finnished a couple of yrs from now, then I'll pour a cement floor too. It's been a great hobby thus far, dreaming up - building all sorts of different minature equipment from kits or from scratch for this "mining" project. If it wasn't for this mining project I probably would have lost of interest in this hobby by now b/c once the models are built - the novelty of how they work & perform would wear off with no task to be accomplished them. I have a yellow dump trk (Tamiya Mammoth) and I trucked dirt out of the basement, approx 2 cu yds the summer of 05, up a wooden ramp 16" wide, most of that dirt being what had originally fell off the wall to begin this excavation. The summer of 06 I built a 4" belt conveyor & moved out over twice that amount. And so far I've only accomplished mining the east wall. The south wall (longer part of the house) has nearly twice the material to be mined away. I won't be finnishing this "project" anytime soon. If you wish to know about each model in the fleet, I have a thread on the Garden with over 800 pics and lots of script of what I have been doing for the last four yrs in the basement. Hauling Dirt out of my Basement Some ppl have commented recently that it has taken them over 4hrs to get through it all"

http://www.scale4x4rc.org/forums/showthread.php?s=55bc9786d614149e0f3ea0dbc825757a&t=25724

2/15/2012 1:59:39 PM

the excavators and loaders are roughly $5k apiece.

2/15/2012 3:42:54 PM

proving further that there ain't dick to do in Saskatchewan

[Edited on February 15, 2012 at 3:44 PM. Reason : ]

2/15/2012 3:44:35 PM

Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

2/15/2012 3:44:46 PM

Pretty cool, but I bet the guys looks back at this later and realizes what a monumental waste of time it was.









Kinda like anyone here over a few thousand posts.

2/15/2012 3:45:53 PM

Quote :

"Is this guy a lottery winner or something? Or at least retired?"

well, we can certainly conclude he is a virgin.

2/15/2012 3:50:08 PM

YES! we can watc this thing dig for 15 minutes!

2/15/2012 3:59:30 PM

i read this as "man stores 7 years' excrement in basement"

2/15/2012 4:15:43 PM

^ I probably would have read the article if it was that.

2/15/2012 4:32:39 PM

shoulda made an R/C demo team and some R/C explosives and just blasted his way through that shit, then excavate the waste.

2/15/2012 4:49:06 PM

Quote :

"Some ppl have commented recently that it has taken them over 4hrs to get through it all"

By definition a hobby is going to waste some time, but damn I gotta have variety. This is like Train Sims for Canadians.

2/15/2012 4:52:04 PM

Too bad this guy has no friends.

A great prank for them to do while he was gone one day would be too fill all that back in with dirt.

2/15/2012 5:49:04 PM

hahaha, I feel pretty confident in my guess that he has some psychological issues...antisocial, slightly autistic, who knows, I'm no psychologist...but this cat ain't wired quite right.

2/15/2012 6:06:45 PM

$100 says he is burying bodies down there.


Whether or not they are real bodies, or dolls, nobody knows.

2/15/2012 6:10:15 PM

I'd rather just build a Lambo...
http://jalopnik.com/5065896/hand+made-lamborghini-built-in-basement-finally-sees-light-of-day

2/15/2012 6:54:13 PM

probably could've bought a real excavator with the money he's sunk in that.

2/15/2012 7:02:26 PM

THAT IS SO BOSSTASTIC

2/16/2012 12:22:06 AM

hahaha. I laughed for a good five minutes at this story and the videos.

2/16/2012 12:38:41 AM

Quote :

" the guy does have a regular job, this is his hobby and what he enjoys doing in his spare time. If I lived where he does, I'd be doing the same thing, if I hadn't moved away by now."

talk about a basement dweller though - guy could probably have a side business selling RC models?

2/16/2012 2:01:59 AM

holy shit that Countach is awesome!

2/21/2012 11:02:43 AM

im not going to hate on him for having a hobby, but this just seems too boring to enjoy

2/21/2012 12:19:17 PM