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!