SKYRC digital height gauge review

I can never resist a gadget to pop in the pit bag, but I was not particularly excited when the SkyRC digital height gauge was announced.  Yes it looked fancy, but I had my ever reliable height gauge so why would I need one of these.. 

Then I started to think, classic man maths were employed and I started to find reasons to get this new gadget. yes it's pretty easy to read the height of my Carbon decked race cars, but any Tamiya racer will tell you that it's quite an ordeal to take the ride height of a Tamiya TT02, TA08 etc.. 

So I promptly picked one up to give it a go.. 

The unit comes in it's own plastic storage case, alongside a metal calibration gauge. It takes a AAA battery that is already included in the box. 

There are three buttons. On / Off (And it will automatically shut down after a short while). 

The unit feels pretty good in the hand, its got a decent weight to it and the shape is easy to grip and slide around on your pitboard. 

The first thing I did was to check it on the calibration gauge.

The minimum height is 2mm (The thickness of the metal arm). I checked this by placing the block down over the arm, 

Then sliding the arm into the two other positions checked that it was accurate at 10 and 20 mm. 

Upon using them I have found them to be very exact and when tested against my trusty normal ride height gauge they provide accurate measurements. 

However.. when you use a standard gauge you are usually measuring the side of the chassis plate.. This is theoretically fine as the carbon / Aluminium plate is mainly straight.. however for some Tub chassis.. such as the TT02 / TA08 it is much harder to gauge. (Pun intended). 

Here is one of the advantages of the SKYRC height gauge.. I makes things much easier when playing with ride heights on these cars.

Another thing that has been a revelation is that this gauge is constantly giving you the ride height in real-time. This makes quickly tweaking the height of the car much easier.. A simple twist of the shocks to raise or lower the car and you can see the height changing in front of your eyes. 

The height gauge itself can go up to 38mm which should cover most classes of car from 1/24 all the way up to 1/8 scale buggies.  

So, do you need one of these? Personally, I really like it. I have a wide range of race cars, and this gauge has proved useful on all of them. The display is bright, clear, and very easy to read.

One of my favourite features is being able to adjust the shocks while watching the ride height update in real time. It takes all the guesswork out of the process and makes fine-tuning much quicker. It also makes checking the ride height on my TT-02 incredibly simple, which is is great... especially when you see what I've been working on ;)