QUOTE (miveson @ Aug 13 2010, 04:50 AM)
Still waiting for mine from US, 10 days now - hopefully it will arrive today....
Well mine took six days door to door. Got to be happy with that.
As for first impressions of the PB itself. (from an admitted slot-car novice). Well after about three sessions of using it, I'm comfortable enough to use some of the key features without too many dramas. I must say it's far harder to get a grip of the menu system than I thought it would be.
Programing Pace cars took a few goes to get right. I had to leave it and come back to it because it was getting on my goat at one stage. The instruction booklet could be longer in my opinion. It's a bit flimsy in its explanations and assumes a bit of prior knowledge.
For example; I must have pressed the left and right arrows simultaneously a dozen times before i realised i was doing it wrong. If Both arrows are side by side in the book it just means you can press either one, and not both at once, as I thought. (although thats not always true either, when you reset the default settings it requires the pressing of buttons simultaneously).
I'm guessing someone versed with the old 6 car PB or PB pro, would take to it like a duck to water, but for newbys like me it was down-right painful.
I did learn something whilst playing around with the pace cars. Program them into separate I.D's or when your racing them they will beat you every time. Two cars using one Id will clock up the laps pretty damm fast.
Another thing I learnt was that at certain times (not in every mode) you can use the enter button to grid the cars up prior to a race. So to race all your pace cars, fist assign ID's to each one. let them do some warm ups then hit the enter button to set grid. All the power is stopped, you can pick up all the pace cars and set them up. Grid your own car. then press the start button. The count down will commence and off you go.
I'm running my F1 cars as pace cars and an Australian standard V8 super-car as my own car and racing them. The F1's only need about 15% power to go around my track and be challenging to pass. Beats doing timed laps by yourself thats for sure. I set both cars to random lane changes and off I go. This function alone makes the PB worth it for me.
I think its the first time I've really got the digital system working enough to impress me.
P.S. One button car programming!! To do this (In certain modes) you must press and hold down the ENTER button on the PB until the little LED on the dash goes green. Then you put your car on the track and press the BRAKE on your controller. Or in some other modes, you can enter the menu by pressing the appropriate PROGRAMING ARROW buttons a few times to bring up the right menu. Then you press the BRAKE button or hit the excelerator to make the car go. This is all good, except for one little detail..... It takes more than one button to do ONE BUTTON PROGRAMMING!
Aug 7 2010, 10:33 AM
.................Simply fantastic review Miveson. 
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