so ive been throwing together a small track in my backyard, nothing fancy, just some pvc pipe gates and a couple of those foam pool noodle poles. the space is roughly 30 by 20 meters which i know isnt huge but i want to make it actually challenging rather than just flying in circles.

right now i have the gates spaced about 8 meters apart on the straightaway sections and like 5 meters on the tighter chicane part i built near the fence. been flying it on a 5inch and it feels kind of easy? like i can hit the whole lap without really pushing. not sure if i should tighten the gates more or add elevation changes. someone mentioned offset gates but i havent tried that yet.

anyone built something similar in a small yard and found a layout that actually makes you work for it

5 meters between gates on a chicane is honestly pretty roomy even for a 5inch. when i was running our club's practice track we dropped the tight sections down to like 3 to 3.5 meters and that's where it gets spicy because you're committing to the roll before you can even see the exit properly. the elevation stuff helps a lot too ? even a 30cm rise on a gate forces you to think about your throttle management instead of just pinning it.

also if you have any trees or structures nearby, routing the course so you have to fly past something close gives a psychological tightness that makes even wide gates feel sketchy. our best lap sections were always the ones where you were technically fine on space but it felt like you were threading a needle.

offset gates are genuinely worth trying, changed how our local track felt completely. basically you stagger them left right left right so you can't just tunnel vision straight through, forces actual directional changes. we built a simple version out of irrigation pipe and it held up way better than i expected in crashes too