Dave Palacios - West Coast Region

Career Achievements: 

2011 HPI Baja 5B Sportsman National Champion

2021 Proline By The Fire First Place Carnival Theme Build (Bonezy the Clown RC Tricycle)

Personal Mission/Bio:  

My RC addiction all started when I wanted a Radio Shack RC car in the summer of 1987. I begged my dad to get it for me, but he refused and told me if I wanted it, I had to earn the money myself. So, I started saving my allowance and when I finally had enough, I asked him to take me go buy it. But he told me he was too busy. For months I kept asking and asking. Each time, he told me he didn’t have time, or some other excuse. That year for Christmas, I was hoping maybe I’d finally get my RC car, but unfortunately, I didn’t. THEN, a couple months later close to my 13th birthday, he told me to get in the car. When I asked him where we were going, he said to my uncle’s house. To my surprise, we ended up at Silverstar hobbies in Monterey Park CA where they were having parking lot races. We watched for a little bit, but then went inside. That’s where the real surprise was, he proceeded to ask me which one I wanted. Then I saw it, a Tamiya Blackfoot. That’s the RC car I had to have. That February Saturday afternoon in 1988 is the day I became hooked on RC cars.

A few years later, I got into racing my senior year in high school (1991-92) with my first RC race car, a Team Associated RC10 Championship Edition. I raced all through the 1990s in 2WD buggy, 2WD Truck, and 2WD Nitro Truck. Even building my own Team Associated RC10T conversion kit before the RC10GT was released. I also got into Touring Car racing as it became popular in the mid 90s. That’s when, together with a friend of mine, we ran a local parking lot track at Hobby Masters Hobby Shop in Rowland Heights, CA. I had also been working at that hobby shop part time. It was during that time I started working at a newly launched RC magazine called Xtreme RC Cars (1995). It started out being run out of the back of the hobby shop. I did lots of small jobs there but ended up wanting a full-time job. So, a friend of mine got me a job in the warehouse at Team Losi. I worked there for about a year until I decided to go back to school to get my degree in graphic design.

After graduating from graphic design school in 2000, I applied for a job at HPI. I ended up getting offered a job in the warehouse, but literally only worked there for a day. The owner of Xtreme RC Magazine heard I had applied at HPI and offered me a graphic design position. So, I took it and worked at XRC for 11 years. I did more than just graphic design there. I ended up writing reviews, articles, and shoot/edit video. I had been airbrushing since I was a freshman in high school and had learned to paint RC bodies over the years since. So, I was also in charge of the painting column called Custom Works for the magazine. I painted many of the review vehicles. Many of which ended up on the covers of the magazine.

During my time at Xtreme, a coworker and I started running our own RC drifting events under the name RC Driftclub. RC drifting was new and growing fast. We held many events/series all over SoCal. We had the honor of being one of the few RC events allowed to be held at the famous Tamiya RC Raceway. We event had an event at the Auto Club Speedway Time Attack event.

When Xtreme closed in November of 2011, I worked as a freelance graphic designer for the next few years. I worked for many companies during this time such as Art Director for Jiu-Jitsu Magazine and Graphic Designer for Suzuki Motorcycles USA.

In March of 2016, I started work as Senior Graphic Artist at Associated Electrics and have been working there since. I am honored to be able to work with a talented and great group of people. In my time there, I’ve had the pleasure of working on the development of the new brand Element RC and giving the Factory Team brand a new look.

My RC goals this year: 

In 2024, I’d like to get more involved with RC crawling competitions like I did back in the mid 2000s. I’d also like to attend more events throughout the year and meeting more people in the RC hobby. Of course I’d like to improve my RC builds and get the chance to get more people excited about this great hobby of ours.