NOT A HOBBY BUT A SPORT. RC MOTORSPORTS TO BE EXACT
After approaching 50 years competing in Radio Controlled Boat Racing, a race location that had been with the organization for even longer was to host the 50th National Championships. After 50 years of uninterrupted competition and use I, Roger Hooks, Jr. found out that there was still challenges to secure the facility for the event. I was extremely disappointed to hear that after all these years of repeated use year round that we had such difficulty securing the location. I then thought that after 50 years we should have a location that we could call our own so we didn’t have to meet the same issues time and time again across the country.
I eventually found out that this happens around the world. I also learned that this is not the case with only R/C Boats, but Cars and Planes as well. Radio controlled cars and planes have been around for decades and boat for more than a century. With the R/C Hobby market size being valued at approximately 6.2 billion USD in 2023 and projected to reach around 10.8 billion USD by 2032, more and more enthusiasts enjoy the radio control activities for both leisure enjoyment and competition.
A mentor of mine, by the name of Jim Wilson once said. In a hobby you don’t keep score. In a sport you do. For that reason, I no longer see it as a hobby but as a sport. Since the sport includes vehicles I see it as motorsports, therefore I view it as Radio Controlled Motorsports. With land conservationist and wildlife preserves, land to enjoy Radio Controlled Motorsports is becoming hard to come by. And with R/C organizations operating with minimal membership fees, money to secure anything permanent is next to impossible. This is true for Car, Plane, Boat and every other kind of individual radio controlled motorsport club, team or organization. So my thought was what if we can bring everyone together in one place for year round 24 hour access with an entry or membership could we sustain such a place. I thought it still might be questionable so I used my 50 years of experience in attending and participating in local and national R/C boat racing events across the country to create every accommodation and attraction that’s relative to the R/C experience with the sole purpose of attracting a sum of both R/C enthusiast and non-R/C enthusiast that would sustain a full R/C facility year round.
The facility would have a hotel, camping, fishing, sail boarding, a spa, wedding garden and shopping to appeal to most anyone at anytime all year creating a sustainable revenue solvent destination that could pull local visitors on a daily basis and out of town visitors as often as once week for local area visitors, and once a month for state wide visitors depending on how near they lived. With all of those considerations in mind the Gran Prix Radio Controlled Motorsports Amusement Park was born.
