The Return of the Zonker!

Years ago I took on the rather thankless task of converting a wrapping paper tube into a body tube. I say it was thankless because it took a whole lot of filling and sanding and filling and sanding and filling and....well, you get the idea. When it was done I married it to a plastic fin can that I happened to have, and a nose cone that happened to fit. After a bit of yellow and black paint and some homemade decals, the Screaming Yellow Zonker was born!

I flew her a few times over the years, but then came the fateful day when I stepped on her in my rocket room. You can read about it here:

http://shroudlines.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-death-of-zonker.html?m=1

 I figured that was it. I wasn't going to mess with that stupid tube any more!

However, my heart softened a bit this week, and I realized that it really wouldn't be too tough to fix her...so here we go!

Here is where I cut out the crimped section. I used that section to make a coupler and glue the (about two inches shorter) body tube back together. I then applied the DAP Plastic Wood...

Here is the part of the cut out section that I didn't use. The screw has nothing to do with anything. It just happened to be there...

As you can see, I now had the Screaming Yellow Zer....

So I masked off the part of the logo I wanted to keep and slapped on some more yellow paint. Interestingly enough, not all yellow paint is created equal and the new paint is a shade darker than the old paint. I think it's good enough, though...

Now I had the Screaming Yellow. Huh. Obviously, a new decal would be needed...

So I printed one up on my trusty printer. By the way, I always use Testors decal paper because I can get it at Hobby Lobby. I print out a sheet of paper with the logo on it, and then tape a piece of the decal paper over it and run it through again. That way I use less decal paper...

The tape can be used to secure it to a handy surface for clear coating.

And there she is! The slightly shorter Screaming Yellow Zonker!

So there you have it! All in all it took about thirty minutes total working time. I'm glad to have her flyable again!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

The Return of the Viper!

The Estes Colonial Viper is a classic kit that inspired a classic upscale by Morerockets.com. I built the upscale a while back and shared it on this blog.

The Viper was a beautiful bird, and even won "Best in show" at the DARS classic that year (the prize was the Sirius Eradicator, which I also built and featured on this blog). Unfortunately, there is more to the story.

If you fly, you sometimes crash, and this was the fate of my Viper. On a hard landing, she received some fin damage, some laser cannon damage, and a whole lot of decal damage. 

Now, fixing fins (and even laser canons) is not too tough, but those decals...there was a problem. I was determined to fix her though, so I contacted Dan at Morerockets.com about replacement decals. As it turns out they were very reasonable and he shipped them out right away. When I opened them I was excited to find that he had even included a few extra! If I crash again, I'm covered! Thanks, Dan!

Therefore here are the pics from my Viper rebirth...

After sanding, I put her on my painting stand...

She painted up nicely. It took about four coats.

On my (very messy) work table. I used my original Estes Viper as a guide on where to place the decals.

The decals were very high quality and very easy to work with. A lot of waterslide decals tend to be very thin, but these were thicker and went on easily even if you have "fumble fingers!"

They also went on faster than I would have thought...

Before I knew it, I was finished! Here are both of my Vipers side by side. The big one will fly again...I might not fly the little one...

So, just like that, the Viper was back in my fleet! Hopefully I'll be able to fly her soon! 

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

CHAD Post...

Anyone who's been around rocketry for a while knows that CHAD stands for "CHeap And Dirty." The post I had planned for this week fell through, so I thought I'd just share sonething I found while moving my rocket stuff. Here ya go...

Yup, it's the certificate for a record my team set way back in 1989 (almost 1990, actually). 15 and a half minutes isn't too bad. We had to recover it out of someone's back yard. Pretty cool, though.

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!