Active Brake or Active Braking is another brake adjustment available on the RS SPEC, RS GEN3, RSX Pro, RS Pro BE and RS Pro 1S. Active Brake lets you set a strong brake pulse when quickly snapping to full trigger brakes. Normal application of the brakes will not trigger this setting. The default is OFF and the higher the setting, the stronger the Active Brakes will be.

We found this to be very beneficial at the end of the straightaway when the motor is at a very high RPM and it can also help with jumping, like needing to bring the nose of the car down quickly. It can only be adjusted with the HotWire, so plugging in or connecting via Bluetooth is necessary to adjust this setting.

Brake strength adjusts the amount of trigger brake the ESC will apply to the motor. There are 1-13 steps available using the onboard QuickTune system, with each step being about 8% brake strength. You can also fine tune the brake strength via the HotWire at a higher resolution of adjustment, with 0-100% steps available.

Brakes are extremely important and you need to adjust them appropriately. Track surface, moisture content, tires and car will all come into play when setting brakes. Typically a good brake strength is going to be 80% or less. I find myself setting even as far down as 55% at times, which really helps me not over brake and carry more speed.

Drag Brake – Drag Brake also known as coast brake or auto brake is braking power applied by the ESC anytime the ESC sees a valid neutral signal from the transmitter. The higher the value, the more drag brake is applied. You can adjust Drag Brake with the onboard QuickTune LED and button setup or via the HotWire. Onboard you have 0-13 steps of Drag Brake and through the HotWire you have 0-100.

You can also set up the Aux Drag Brake and adjust 1-10 steps of Drag Brake using a spare channel and three position switch on your radio. Very handy for Rock Crawling!

We’ve gone nitro! I decided to finally after two and a half decades get into the fuel-burning side of RC. I have always liked nitro and watching the nitro mains is exciting for sure, dare I say a little more so than watching triple A Electric mains. Both are fun, both are exhilarating in their own unique ways but I can definitely see how the sound and strategy of racing with pit stops attracts gear heads. Being a gear head myself since I was a toddler, I think I’ll fit right in with this nitro business.