Yes, you read that correctly. It's the yellow jacket's fault. 

There was an incident including myself, 2 small dogs, and a ton of little black and yellow demonic flying insect things known as yellow jackets that resulted in enough trauma to spend thousands of dollars and create the RC channel on YouTube now known as LETS TRY IT RC. 

The incident in question happened not long after I moved into my new house. The wife and kids were out of town with the mother-in-law, and they were going to be gone for another few days. I finally had a day off of work, and there was a lot to do in the new house. I spent most of the day unpacking. Daisy, my sweet little Boston Terrier, and Delilah, a small chihuahua rescue that the wife surprised me with about 13 years before (you know, the battered shelter dog that's just too cute and pitiful to say no to? Yeah, that one), well, they stayed at home with me. So, After a few hours of unboxing, It was break time. The dogs needed to be walked and I wanted a smoke. So, I leashed them up and we went outside so they could do their business. I took advantage of the time outside to enjoy the new yard, the woods out back, and the beautiful creek that separates my property from my neighbor's property. 

I had unpacked a lot and felt accomplished. I didn't think anything would be able ruin the day, until, when we were walking along the creek, I looked down and saw that my dogs were covered in something yellow.... And so was I. I had a layer of yellow jackets that covered me from my ankles down! Fuck, fuck, fuck... what do I do? What are they doing? They had just gathered on my feet and my dog's behinds. Well, at least they hadn't stung us... yet. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds in real time, I started to panic because I knew it was just a matter of time before we got stung by hundreds of these little terrorizers and I had no idea what to do. Should I run? Should I walk as calmly as possible to the house to get the Raid? Do we even have any Raid? Will Raid even do anything to yellow jackets? I started to panic even more now... and contemplated jumping into the damn creek with the dogs?! Fuck. There were more coming. By this point, it looked like my dogs were wearing a diaper made out of yellow jackets. 

I knew I had to act, so I dropped the leashes, swatted the shit out of the poor dog's behinds to knock off as many of the bastards as I could, and yelled "RUNNNNNN!" at the top of my lungs. I  took off with the Daisy and Delilah following me up the back deck stairs and into the house.

All three of us got stung. It sucked, but we survived. For the next couple of weeks, I stayed far away from the location of the incident. It was torture and straight up bullshit. The creek was one of the reasons that I bought the house... and I was kept out of my own yard. There was no way I was going to let this happen. Hell no! 

So, I made a plan. I had seen some cool videos online of these really cool RC trucks that would go anywhere. They were going over rocks, up on curbs, you name it. That's exactly what I needed, so I was going to buy the biggest RC truck that I could find... at Wal-Mart. The plan was to drive it (from as far away from the war-zone as possible, of course), attach a Go Pro to it, see where they had their nest or hive or layer or whatever, then attack them with gasoline and send them back to the depths of Hell from which they came. It was a solid plan. 

The selection at Wal-Mart was larger than I thought it would be, and I found a bad ass looking Dodge Ram that resembled my daily driver. It was black, same body style, and was pretty similar with the exception of the huge wheels that this RC had that my truck doesn't have. It was perfect! 

I installed the freshly charged battery, slapped some AA's into the remote control and powered it on. Of course I had to try it out in the house and chase the dog's around real quick. I ran it in the living room and was surprised by how quick it was. This is gonna be awesome. I duct taped the Go Pro onto the roof, took it outside, and sent it off. I couldn't wait to see where these bastards lived. I was gonna fuck them up. The truck made it 5 feet, then got stuck. It only made it 5 feet. It got stuck on grass... fucking grass. 

Why didn't it work? Because it was a toy grade RC. But, what did those guys in the cool videos that I had seen use to go out onto those crazy terrains? Answer: they didn't use anything that could be purchased at Wal-Mart.

That's when I started doing research. I found some really cool YouTube channels, with some really cool people that were super helpful and entertaining, Also, they had really cool trucks. I learned quickly that none of them were purchased at any big box store. I needed something called a hobby grade RC. 

Here is a list of the first four guys that I subscribed to after I got hooked on watching RC videos on YouTube, and I highly recommend checking them out (except Kevin Talbot because he got really annoying with all of his fabricated drama)

By the time I ordered my first hobby grade RC, the yellow jackets had been long gone. I never saw them again. Since I had already gone down the rabbit hole of RC videos, I decided I still wanted one. After all, you never know when those spawns directly from Satan that mask themselves as little yellow jackets would come back again. 

So, when the pandemic hit, and I needed something to occupy my mind, I decided that a scale RC YouTube channel would become my Covid hobby. I had been doing a lot of video editing for work, and I really wanted to learn how to create YouTube videos, I pulled the trigger on a RedCat Gen 7 Pro based on a recommendation from RC Review. I really appreciated the comparisons that he was doing, and I felt that the Gen 7 Pro would be good enough to do what I wanted to do, and it wasn't a huge investment that was going to break the bank just in case I didn't like the hobby. But before it even arrived there was a killer sale on the GEN 8 that I preferred (RC Review seemed very impressed with the value that the International Scout II offered), so I ordered that one too. A few days later they showed up and I recorded the first episode on the GEN 7 Pro. I would have done a comparison, but I couldn't drive the GEN 8 right away because it didn't come with a battery or charger like the Gen 7 Pro did. The first video was awkward and cringey, but I'm glad I did it, and I'm even more glad at how much I've grown since that cringey video got uploaded a long time ago.