A Subaru rally car and a Chevy Corvette screamed toward a tight corner, neck and neck.   

The deep-blue, decaled Subaru slowed so it could make a sharp turn, but the sleek gray-and-yellow Corvette whipped around the outside to take the lead. The two cars occasionally bumped fenders or scraped the outer barriers, though the contact caused little damage — they were, after all, just 1/28th the size of their full-scale counterparts.  

The two radio-controlled (RC) cars were duking it out on a 100-foot track that winds throughout a 23-by-20-foot mat inside The Rally Point, a game and hobby store on Main Street in downtown Kalispell.  

Fourteen-year-old Gunnar Anderson stood beside the track, gripping a controller shaped like a pistol handle. One hand was on the trigger that controlled the speed of his scaled replica of a Subaru WRX STi, while the other was clasped on a wheel attached to the side that managed the steering.  

Anderson works at The Rally Point and enjoys participating and watching the many competitions, ranging from high-speed circuit races to climbing Styrofoam mountains with pickup trucks.   

While he is usually helping out around the shop, Anderson’s eyes were glued to the track. Every minute turn of the steering wheel is calculated to avoid the side barriers, which are easy to hit while zooming around the track.  

Jim Harmon, 53, said the key to cornering is staying tight through the turn and then sweeping wide enough to set up the next one. Thinking two turns ahead is integral for completing the circuit as quickly as possible.  

As he commanded his Chevy Corvette around the track, he explained that the car’s harder tires tend to slide on the foam surface, which is not ideal when the goal is precision and speed.  

Unlike most RC cars found in the toy aisle at department stores, the Kyosho Mini-Z cars used for racing can be customized and fine-tuned to enhance performance.  

“People run specific tires or specific springs for their setup. Whatever they drive best,” Anderson said. 

Anderson and Harmon both upgrade their cars to get their best lap time. Each car is fitted with a transponder that records the time as they pass through the starting gate.  

THE RC community in the Flathead Valley is small, so Anderson is especially excited when competitions bring everyone together.   “I think it’s fun when there’s tons of people because it’s like real racing. You got to get good at cornering and like controlling your speed. It’s just super detailed and it feels real,” Anderson said. 

The first floor of The Rally Point features a racetrack alongside shelves of cards and collectibles. The floor below hosts tables of 3-D printers, dissected RC car parts and a crawler track built by owner Nate Brown. He spent over 100 hours building the ornate structure out of Styrofoam and cardboard. The course is designed to mimic rugged outdoor terrain and is used by RC trucks equipped with suspension systems and oversized tires.  

Unlike faster-paced circuit racing, crawler competitions require slow, precise movements to navigate obstacles like bridges and boulders without falling off or backing up, which results in penalties.   

Harmon owns an array of crawler and racing cars, but his obsession with the hobby began in the early 1980s, when his father built him a Tamiya Grasshopper modeled after a single-seat off-road buggy.  

“You can imagine some little kid, six, seven, eight years old, the anticipation and the excitement watching him build that damn thing,” Harmon said. “It is the car probably responsible for getting the most people into this hobby.” 

Nowadays, tinkering with and racing RC cars offers an escape from the symptoms of post-traumatic stress stemming from his time in the military.  

“They give me something where it just calms my brain. I can focus on something,” Harmon said. “It stops my brain from all the other random stuff that’s going on 24/7.” 

ALSO TURNING to the hobby as a way to cope with past trauma, Brown, an Army veteran and educator, spent nine years as a bomb technician, including time spent embedded with the Special Forces in Afghanistan and protecting former President George W. Bush from bomb threats.   

“I look for things that could kill the President and Vice President,” he said. “If the toilet is going to blow up and take one of them out, it kills me instead. I realized that after I got out of the military that job was to be the guinea pig.”   

The job took a heavy psychological toll. After leaving military, Brown was involved in a car wreck that left him with a brain injury and ongoing mental health challenges. In the aftermath, he needed to find a purpose, “and teaching kids is what that purpose is.”  

Brown has since taught various enrichment classes around the Flathead Valley and started the Avant-Garde Collective, a hands-on learning program for all ages that teaches, art, 3D printing, photography, robotics and other topics. 

Dissecting what makes RC cars tick is part of his curriculum. Brown found it is a great way to entice the youth into mechanics.  “I’m trying to bring it more to the community and the youth. Get them off of their phones and pick up a remote and have some fun with it,” Brown said.   

The hands-on experience working with mechanics teaches kids about patience and trial-and-error, something that Brown said translates to other aspects of life, including working on real cars.  “I’ve had a lot of students come back and say, ‘Oh, I talked to my dad, and he was working on his car, and I was helping him because I know how the shocks work,’” he said.   

Harmon plans to surprise his young grandson with an RC car.  

“I love to see the kids come in and get into it, because I remember how I was so excited,” Harmon said as his grandson drove a miniature blue pickup truck in circles around him.  

While Harmon will build the car for him, he said his grandson will have to learn to maintain it himself.  

“That’s how my dad was,” he chuckled. 

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 406-758-4407 or [email protected]. If you value local journalism, pledge your support at dailyinterlake.com/support.

    Owner Nate Brown races a 1/28th-scale Mercedes AMG-GT3 around the track at The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Gunnar Anderson and Jim Harmon race their respective 1/28th-scale radio control cars, a Subaru WRX STi and a Chevy Corvette C9, at The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Gunnar Anderson controls a radio-controller crawler over an off-road course in the basement of The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    A lineup of 1/24th scale radio-controlled crawlers at The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Jim Harmon performs some maintenance on a 1/10th-scale crawler in the basement of The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Jim Harmon performs some maintenance on a 1/10th-scale crawler in the basement of The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Gunnar Anderson controls a radio-controlled crawler over an off-road course in the basement of The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Owner Nate Brown races a radio-controlled car around one of the tracks at The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider   

    Gunnar Anderson and Jim Harmon race their respective 1/28th-scale radio control cars, a Subaru WRX STi and a Chevy Corvette C9, around the track at The Rally Point in Kalispell on Wednesday, April 15. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
 Casey Kreider