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C7042 general points and frequently asked questions This page highlights the features and answers some questions about the new advanced powerbase. To buy a C7042 click here. The C7042s were available to selected testers and USA customers some months before we got them in the UK; the powerbase has been well received and these early recipients already posted reviews and videos of it on internet forums, so rather than repeat this work, Slotcarcentre is focusing on the instruction manual which is largely a guide to the tower's menu system, telling you in detail which buttons to press and where each one lies in the tree of menu options, but is a bit light on information as to why you might want to press them. Hopefully this will help! Paragraph numbers refer to the sections in the printed user manual. Navigation is quick once you grasp that the powerbase's four arrow keys are taking you along, down, back, and up the menu tree, and of course once a function is selected, they scroll you through the various options for that function.

As you navigate around the menus with the arrow keys, keep an eye on what it says along the bottom of the display. "Edit" means it's expecting you to be changing values for race length etc.; "Sel" means it's waiting for you to finish selecting the item you want, by moving along or down the menu; "Set" means you are choosing an option (e.g. yes/no); "Cali" in the calibration menu (section 3) means it's waiting for you to press the hand throttle, and "Pacr" means you are setting Pace car speed (see section 6 below).

1.0 Race modes The C7042 has some different racing modes displayed at the bottom of the screen, which are available in both analogue and digital formats. PA = practice, just going round and recording fastest lap times; F1 = Formula One style, set number of laps, race for position; ED = Le Mans style time-limited race, winner has most laps completed when time runs out; and PU = pursuit racing, lead car tries to lap following cars to put them out of the race. Scroll to choose mode and set number of laps / time as desired.

2.0-2.2 Dealing with race crashes (track calls) What do you want to happen when someone leaves the track? Decide this before starting the race and set the "YELLO" option accordingly. The yellow flag option can be set to off, half-speed, or pause, and you can set a delay before it activates. 1 or 2 seconds is a good value to use. When set to either half speed or pause, if YOU crash, YOU are responsible for pressing the brake (top) button on your controller. After the delay period (to allow other cars to gain some advantage), power will be reduced to half speed or cut completely while your car is re-slotted. This ensures that cars do not continue circulating and risk breaking another car which may be across the track, whilst still penalising the person who crashed. Press START on the powerbase to commence proper racing again. You may want to think about manually-applied penalties for people who don't raise the yellow flag when they crash, or raise too many yellows in one race; such as lap deduction, pits drive throughs or even exclusion from the race.

2.3 Minimum lap times You can set a minimum lap time on the C7042 powerbase. This is to prevent any possible rogue lap counts, which would normally happen if a car experiences a chip reset and changes its ID, or if a car short-cuts the track (e.g. it crashes near the start of the lap and is put back on near the end of the lap). Set it to about a second quicker than it is physically possible to lap your layout in your fastest car, so if you should end up with two cars circulating with the same ID, only one of them will count a lap. Unlike previous versions of the 6-car powerbase, you can race either way across the powerbase, clockwise or anticlockwise.

3.0 Handset calibration You should do this to iron out any inequalities in throttle travel. If you are using 4 or 6 controllers the chances are one or two may have a slightly stronger spring or more "travel", due to wear or manufacturing differences, maybe not noticeable to the naked eye but may amount to your car being a few bits short of a byte when it comes to top speed, or, creeping at low speed (e.g. when on the grid). Use the button menu shown to tell the powerbase the capabilities of each throttle and equalise the performance of all of them.

4.0-4.4 Start and end of race - power settings Depending on your environment and who is racing, you may want to consider options for power at start and end of race. Do you want power to the track before the start of the race? If set to "no", it stops kids misbehaving and haring off round the track before you've even got everyone on the grid, probably the best option. At the end of the race, half power (slowing down / victory lap) is a nice idea, it tells the driver they have finished the race (if they have been in a close battle they may not have realised how many laps to go), but has not completely stopped their car (which could make them think it had a problem and can also cause post-finish-line pile-ups). What do you want to happen if someone jumps the start countdown? This option will add a penalty time to their race time, so maybe they will cross the line at the end of the race first, but the tower may show them 2nd or 3rd after applying the penalty. Finally the "at end" options, "AFT.LD" is the one that represents modern real life racing - all cars finish the next time they cross the line after the winner. Otherwise you will be there all night waiting for the guy who crashes at every corner and is 20 laps behind!

4.5-4.6 Pace car pit timing If you have set some pace cars to race against, that are set to change lanes, and you have a pit lane in your circuit, you definitely DO NOT want the pace cars to go through the pits as they will just crash into legitimate pit-users at high speed. What values you set depends on where your pit entry is in relation to your powerbase. Most common, like real life tracks, is to have the pit entry shortly before the finish line. So your "PoPit" value needs to be about 1 second less than the lap time they are circulating in (and in that last second of the lap, lane-changing is disabled and thus they will not enter the pit lane). Or, if your pit entry is after your powerbase, disable pace car pitting for the first second or two of a lap using the PrPit value.

5.0 Car ID programming This section just covers car programming using the throttle controllers. To change a car's digital ID from 1 to 6, put the powerbase in "ProG" mode, put just the one car on track that you want to programme, and press the brake (top) button on the throttle you want the car to be controlled by. Don't leave more than one car on track as they will all get programmed with the same ID. If this turns out to be a bit of a pain, buy a second powerbase (or use your old 4 car powerbase) and power it up separately to use it just for setting car IDs.

6.0-6.4 Individual car settings Here you can change characteristics of individual cars or for all cars. As you come down the menu tree the first option you choose is a specific car ID, or "ALL" cars to which your following actions will be applied. The main reason to go in to this menu is if you have someone racing who is a bit wayward and crashes a lot. If you do, use the Pr.SCL to set their power scale to 88, 75 or 50% of what the full power racers have. A couple of minor settings follow; do you want to use the top (brake) button as a brake or not, if so set the BRAKE behaviour to your preference. The "Th-Lo" setting lets you adjust the minimum throttle value to eliminate throttle lag or the amount of time between pressing a controller and the car moving.

Pace cars Then other main feature in this part of the menu allows you to program a car to run at a set speed while you race against it. Pacer cars need to have the throttle unplugged for them to race. When programming the car's speed, make sure the car can just about handle the inside of the tightest bend on your circuit. Maybe put silicon tyres on your pacer cars to give them a bit more of a competitive edge (as they don't have the ability to speed up for straights). The Action Codes (accessed by pressing "START" on the powerbase) mean the following: Gr = "Ghost" car that laps the track and changes lanes randomly but does not count laps; Gc is the same but with constant lane-changing; Ln = a "live" car that laps the track, doesn't change lanes but does count laps; Lr is the same with random lane-changing, and Lc is a live car with constant lane-changing. "Live" cars feature in race results and can win races, "ghost" cars don't.

Within the Pace Car menu item (under "Car") use the left/right arrows to set the speed of each car and scroll up/down to adjust setttings for other cars. Press "START" on the powerbase to scroll through the Gr/Lr etc. options for each car, "Enter" saves the car setting, and exit up out of the pacer menu when all are done. To race against pace cars, hit Enter from the pre-race practice mode to get to "Set Grid", and remove hand controllers from sockets of desired pace cars, then line up the cars on the grid and hit "START" to begin race countdown. You can also set a pace car using a plugged in hand controller, the top button will cycle through all the Ln/Gc options, your pressure on the throttle will increase the car speed, and the bottom throttle button will fix the current car speed as the pace speed. Remember to unplug the throttle when setup is complete to have it run automatically. If you are going to experiment with multiple pace cars, best not to have them all changing lanes as otherwise you will have to keep stopping racing to resolve accidents between them. If they are not changing lanes the worst is that they will end up all nose-to-tail.

7.0-7.3 Analogue or digital mode Set your chosen racing platform here. Digital (DIG'L) is the usual one. but you can also run one-lane analogue with one power supply, or two lane (one-car-per-lane like traditional Scalextric) with two power supplies connected. The "GEAR" setting selects which way to run across the powerbase - with "left" selected, cars start on the left and go to the right, and "right" starts on the right and go left. (Yes the opposite of what you might intuitively think). If only one supply is connected you use the "LANE" setting to choose which lane to use (lane 1 is nearest the powerbase). 1-lane analogue is ideal for lapping in your old analogue cars, trying to beat your best lap times and pondering whether to chip them for digital. When two supplies are connected, two lane analogue will be automatically chosen. When using analogue mode, make sure you have checked the requirements stated here and made sure your lanechangers are all set for straight-on-travel. Remember that all the other nifty powerbase features such as yellow flag settings, false starts and ghost cars are still available in analogue mode, which is something a traditional analogue powerbase does not offer, and reason enough to get a C7042 even if you are not a digital racing fan.

Incidentally are you confused by the line at the bottom of the display in menus that looks like it reads C2-2? - those are not actually Cs but brackets. (2-3) means menu option 2 of 3. If you find anything else in your manual that's not clear and could be clarified on here, please get in touch. If you need help troubleshooting a problem with your C7042 or your layout in more general terms, consult the troubleshooting guide on the panic button on the front page of this web site.

NSCC weekend 2010 The latest version of the C7042 powerbase was used to control all the digital endurance races at the 2010 NSCC/Hornby weekend where teams of 6 racers each took part in a series of hour-long endurance race sessions, recording winning lap totals of over 500 laps and giving every team's fastest laps and gap to the leader all without a hitch. Over such long races, a few serious impacts with cars falling off the table was inevitable and some cars did lose their digital IDs as a result, however we had a second powerbase handy to quickly re-ID cars without interrupting the racing. The event ran very smoothly and feedback was really positive about the racing.

More than two lanes At the moment there is no official solution for counting and timing traffic across more than two lanes. No matter how wide your track becomes around the layout, you must come back to two lanes to pass through the powerbase. A popular solution is to make the pit lane deliberately miss the powerbase, thus more realistically penalising a pit stop by not counting the lap on which you pass through the pit lane. If you would like Scalextric to make a multi-lane solution for digital racing, like they have for analogue, ask them directly at www.scalextric.com.