The Return of the Tomahawk

The year was....uh....a while back. The place was McGregor, Texas. The event was Sport Scale. The rocket was the Estes D Region Tomahawk...slightly modified.

The button was pushed and she screamed into the air for a beautiful E powered flight! ...until she arched over, blew her nose cone, and separated into two distinct pieces. Had she been designed to do that, the flight would have still been beautiful. Alas, she had not. The nose section floated under a bright neon green chute, while the rest of the model (still amazingly stable) took a much faster route to the ground.

The results could have been worse. The nose cone was found, and the impact of the body tube on the only stinking rock in a ten foot area just resulted in four lost fins and a slight body tube crimp. However, what had once been a four finned rocket now only had three laying about the impact zone.

Fast forward several years....

While moving rockets from the front bedroom to my new rocket area in the garage, I found the pieces of the once proud model. On a whim, I posted a question on the NAR Facebook site about getting a fin number four. It seems it is out of production.

However, some of the nicest people you will ever meet are rocket people. Case in point, Scott Pennington from Colorado who had a full set of Estes Tomahawk fins that he was willing to simply mail to me! He had tapered the trailing edges of them (and had done a fantastic job of it) so I would have to use all four of his or taper mine. I gladly accepted the offer! (By the way, that means I have a set of three non-tapered fins that I will mail to anyone that needs them. Pass it along!)

So, here are my pictures from bringing my Estes D-Region Tomahawk back to life!

The crimp. Booooooo! Bad crimp!

The reason for the "incident" is the shock cord on the left. The upgraded cord is on the right. Twice as thick should do it!

Athough Scott's fins came painted, they were scuffed. After cleaning the plastic from the old fin can away from the joints with my Dremel tool, I did a little touch up painting...

The crimp was only cosmetic, so a little wood filler and paint took care of it...

Crimp? What crimp?

The fins drying from one final coat...

For applying the fins, I decided to go with some pretty strong insurance. J-B Weld for plastic seemed to fit the bill.

The fins in their new home!

And there you go! 

By the way, I mentioned that the model was slightly modified. I decided a 29mm mount better fit the spirit of the prototype than the stock 24mm...

So there you go! Thanks to the kindness of a fellow modeler (and the fact that neither of us threw the stuff away) the D-Region Tomahawk will fly again!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

Things Are Getting Sirius....

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim, I posted on the NAR Facebook page that I had decided to finally build my Sirius Eradicator that I won a couple of years back at the DARS Classic. Funny thing about putting things on Facebook like that...it kind of makes you have to follow through. So, since I was on Spring Break this week (I work in an elementary school), I decided to dive in. Here is my pictorial journey of building...The Eradicator!!!

The parts. They were all great quality and well made. If anything went wrong with this build, it would clearly be my fault...

I like to fill all my parts before building. A quick coat of DAP on the fins and rings, and we were on our way!

Ok, not so quick. After sanding everything once, I spot filled as needed and sanded again. Still beats the heck out of old school sanding sealer...

A cool feature of this kit is that it comes with a small piece of threaded tube that screws into the lower centering ring for a motor retainer. This was a nice touch.

The motor mount is fairly typical. I only used epoxy in a couple of places, but this was one of them.

Sirius has you cut your own fin slots. It's actually pretty easy, but I did make a run to Hobby Lobby for new (sharp) exacto blades.

Little tube goes into big tube, then add rings...Got it!

The fins going on makes any project start looking more like a rocket.

Big tube goes into bigger tube, add fiddly-bits and test fit rings. Bingo! I waited until I painted it to actually install the rear rings.

Speaking of painting, here we go! The whole rocket is gloss white at this point. By the way, a cheap music stand really makes a nice rocket stand. Just saying...

The nose and rear rings are gray. I painted them all at once by just sliding the rings onto the base of the nose.

A simple trick for marking a nose cone is to cut a circle in a piece of cardboard and use it as a template.

The instructions call for three inches of the tip of the cone to be black. I went four inches instead, because I liked the way it looks and I'm a rebel. Here it is all masked off.

And here the fins are masked, as well. The area between two of the fins is also painted black.

By the way, I used flat black. I just thought it looked cool.

...and the fin can...

And there she is with all the paint in place!

Then I permanently attatched the rings. I used a stick to apply internal fillets.

Sirius gives you a choice of launch lugs or rail buttons. After much thought I went with the lugs. Why? Mainly because DARS' rails are all on the "away pads." ...and the mid power pads have nice sturdy rods. 

Now came "decal time!" How many decals does this rocket have? Forty... it has forty...I counted.

But it was worth it!

Side two...

Side three...

Side four!

So there you have it! Sirius really did a great job with this kit. I have a G80 that I think might go nicely with it...

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

More Power!!!

There was a post this past week on the NAR Facebook page about the real "need" for D12 motors. Many people sprang to their defense, and quite a few pointed out that for fire and smoke, they're great! At least one person then pointed out that for maximum effect, clustering is the way to go! Therefore, I give you this post.

When Estes (or Quest) designs a rocket, they are usually a little conservative about it. Over stable and "sensibly powered" are the words to the wise. However, just because they are designed that way, doesn't mean they have to stay that way! I present to you three ships from my fleet (one 13mm powered and two 24mm) that were re-designed (by me) to have a bit more smoke and fire... just a bit... So, let's take a look, shall we?

First, we have the Gauchito X Prize rocket. Cute enough, with a 13mm motor...

...however, muliply that number by four and you get some real F&S excitement!

The Rubicon is another X Prize kit. It was designed to take one 24mm motor...

...so let's triple it, shall we? I suppose you could use all seven tubes, but that might be a bit crazy even for me.

Finally, we have the Quest version of a Big Bertha, the Big Betty. Now this one comes stock with one 18mm motor. The easy answer to give her more power would be to swap it with a 24mm mount.

But why do things the easy way? Three 24mm mounts is so much more fun! The tubes don't actually fit, but subtle shrouds blend them into the design nicely.

So there you go! All three of these rockets have flown multiple times, and they are always exciting! Just a note of caution, however. All three of these models have fairly massive amounts of nose weight. Never cluster a design without swing testing it. You probably need more weight in the nose than you think...

So, until next time, fly 'em fast and loud (and clustered!)

Keeping It Together

A while back I decided to upgrade the motor retention on my upscaled Star Trek Starter Set rocket. My original setup was a couple of machine bolts that held a braided steel wire across the motor at two points. The idea was that it would be able to handle all three size motors included with the Kwik Switch system (29mm, 38mm, 54mm).

I had used this system years ago on my Maxi Scamp and it had worked well. Of coarse that was just a 29mm motor. I came up with it then because I had the parts to make it just laying about the house. I always go for the "free" answer if I can.

However, scaling it up didn't work as well as I had hoped. The wires were hard to wrap around the motor and they ended up having too much play in them. In fact, on the second flight (when the STSR streamed in) the motor was ejected out the back on impact, right through the wires. I noticed this when I had hiked all the way back to the range head. Bummer. Chas Russell and John Dyer helped me find the casing, however, so all was not lost (literally).

When I rebuilt the rocket I used the same system because I used the same parts. However, after thinking about it, I decided that a better solution was needed. PML has a HAMR system that is designed for the Kwick Switch mount. I went ahead and bit the bullet and ordered it.

The retainer is basically a 54mm screw on retainer with two washers to adapt it to 29mm and 38mm. My main issue was retrofitting it onto the model. Here is how that's done...

This is the original setup. I was going to have to do some work on it for the new retainer to work. Time to grab the trusty Dremmel!

The first thing I needed to do was to remove the paint and epoxy fillet from the motor mount. The machine bolts were in the way, so out they came! I may put them back later. PML says that the retainer should fit loosly so the epoxy can grab better, which makes sense.

Next, I had to counter-sink the plywood ring around the mount. I had just shy of the 3/8 inch lip the retainer required. A little shaping with my router bit fixed it!

Now it was time for the epoxy. PML says that you need to make sure that the epoxy you use is for high temperatures, since regular construction epoxy softens when it gets hot. Not optimal for anything holding in a hot metal motor casing! I used a JB Weld epoxy specifically designed for use on automotive engines, etc. It had about twice the heat rating of their regular epoxy.

And there she is! This epoxy cures SLOWLY (4 to 6 hours) so I had plently of time to wipe away any stray glue before it set...and to write this blog!

So there you have it! Pretty darn easy, really! Hopefully the Star Trek Starter Rocket will be in the air very soon!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!