Honest Check-In!

Well, my Estes Maxi Honest John rebuild/ upgrade must be the slowest project ever (we're on about twenty something years now), but I did make a little progress this weekend! You see, this weekend was rainy and dark...perfect building weather! So, I jumped in!

But before I get into what I got done, I have to give a HUGE shout out to Gregory Henderson and Chas Russell for their help! You see, I had some of the old parts to the HoJo, but some where lost and gone forever. Namely, the launch shoe fiddly bits. So, I put a call out on the NAR Facebook page, and Chas sent me actual pictures of the real parts (on the honest-to-gosh missile!) and Gregory snail-mailed me copies of the original instruction sheets, templates for the parts, and even instructions on how to make the "motor bands" (which I had completely forgotten about). Wow! Thanks again so much guys!

Now on to the build! The first thing I had to do was to replace the ballast on my shop light. No kidding. It was dead. Actually, I found that I could replace the whole light for fifteen bucks less than just replacing the ballast, so...

Brand new shop light!

Next, I dug into those fiddly bits! I had plenty of scrap balsa and basswood around to make them from, so I took Gregory's templates and got to work...

The all-important templates!

The parts are coming together!

Ok, a bit of explanation on this one- the shoulder on the Estes Maxi Honest John nose is short...only about one inch. That's not much stability for a honkin' big cone! Therefore, I used a bit of scrap BT-80 (slit so the diameter was less) and extended the shoulder about three inches. I used wood glue to stiffen the tube and to help the masking tape stick. The nose is much less wobbly now!

Not perfect...but not bad, either...

Epoxied on the model!

Dramatic angle!

So there you go! Next, I'll put on the launch lugs, make and install the engine band, paint, apply my Stickershock decals and BAM! we're done!

More on that soon!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

Checking In With Something That Could Be Checked Out...

Well, life has gotten rather "nutsy coo-coo" lately, and STB has gotten the short end of the stick. However, I thought I'd do a quick check in with everybody by sharing something from my collection that I really like. It's my Fourth Edition Handbook of Model Rocketry from 1976!

Now, it's really not all that rare but it's fun anyway. My mom was librarian at Garland High School for quite a while and gave me this copy when they retired it. Sometimes I wonder how many kids checked it out and dreamed about rockets in the 70s. Let's take a look, shall we?

The cover, which featured contest flying. It was big back then. Really big. Now...not so much.

The title page shows that the first edition was published in 1965...It was updated very quickly to this 4th edition.

One of the coolest ideas ever was featured in the "payloads" section. I actually had a Camroc about the same time this book came out. I took exactly one picture with it (of DP&Ws Flying Boxcar) that I gave to the owner, Woody.

This is called "math." We used to use it instead of altimeters and sim programs. 

At the far right of this picture we have the massive F100! FSI knew how to do "cool."

Speaking of "cool," let's get downright cold! These rockets (originally from Vashon) were fantastic! And then the government said we couldn't have them any more....

So there you have it! There are a lot more neat things in there, but you'll have to find a copy and look for yourself. Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

Honest Fins

Over 25 years ago I built an Estes Maxi Honest John. High power was beginning to really "take off" (pun intended), so I used my 29mm motor mount from an NCR Phantom 2600 (that met a less than glorious end) and uprated my HoJo. Unfortunately, I didn't "uprate" the most fragile part of the model...the vacuformed fins! The results were fairly predictable.

Now, over the years I have pondered about how to rebuild my injured model so that it can actually fly as intended. I have thought about solid carved bass wood (I'm not that good), thicker plastic (I never found what I was looking for), or built up fins using ply (I couldn't decide what thickness). Finally, this summer, I decided to go ahead and tackle the project. "Built up ply" won because it seemed to be the least crazy option. So I headed off to Hobby Town and plunked down some cash on a sheet of 1/16 inch ply. It was on.

I will now share exactly how I worked out these fins (mainly as I went along). To help with the descriptions, I have pictures of every step of the process! So hang on...here we go!

Fortunately, I had bits of the old thin plastic fins. These served as a template for the new fins. I used some card stock for the guide...

The traced fin...before being cut out.

...and after! The two sections were needed due to the fin's destinctive cross section.

Remember the 1/16 inch ply I was talking about? Here it is with the fins laid out. I was able to butt them up against each other and still use my Dremel cutting tool to cut them out because they are slightly oversized due to tracing them from the original.

16 pieces all ready to go! At this point they were fairly rough. I actually numbered each section so that each fin was "married." This meant I knew which parts went with each other so that slight differences could be accounted for.

The epoxy begins to fly! I put a 1/8 inch ply stick in between the two halves to get the cross section right...

...because I had an interesting idea on how to do the through the wall construction. First, I cut out the sections marked with a rectangle...

...then I cut out these interesting looking internal spars from 1/8 inch ply...

...thusly...

...and then epoxied them in like this. The spars not only hold the fins steady, but give them structural strength. 

The 1/8 inch sticks used to form the fin cross section while gluing them were therefore removed before the fins were glued to the model.

A little F&F to make things neater. At this point I could no longer read my 1,2,3,4 markings on the fins, so I lined them up in order. Each fin was specific to a position on the model.

A little epoxy on the spars and the fins are in place!

Next came the epoxy fillets. These are structural as well as for looks. The whole assembly is pretty darn strong...

When the fillets dried, I test fitted the body tube and nose cone. Not too bad, if I say so myself!

So there you go! The Maxi Honest John now has sturdy fins!

Now I need to complete the rest of the build. Don't worry, I'll share it right here!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

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!

The Forgotten Tale of Long Tall Sally

It's amazing what you find when you shuffle your rocket room around. I am in the process of moving most of my stuff from a front bedroom to my new workspace in the a/c cooled garage. The bedroom will become a music room, but I'll leave that for another post.

Anyway, I was moving the last of some rockets off of a shelf, when I spotted a rocket in the corner that I had completely forgotten about. It was my attempt at an F Superroc model...the Long Tall Sally.

The rocket is big. Really big. She stands well over twelve and a half feet tall. She also has a 29mm motor mount (I was planning on using a "baby F," but wanted the flexibility of using 24 or 29mm motors.) My "go to" contest fins were trapazoids, and the LTS has 'em.

The secret behind LTS is that she is two Estes Mean Machines put together. These are the later editions with the "vacuum cleaner hose" joints that allow you to break her into three parts, while making very strong connections. Here are some pictures...

The vacuum cleaner hose joints....Just slip the parts together and twist!

With great length comes great shoulder stability. The shoulder goes from the yellow glue to my fingers.

Here's the crazy part...Ok, a lot of it is the crazy part...

"Custom" Logo (there are two along the length of the rocket) brought to you by Sharpie markers.

And this is the reason she breaks into three parts (plus the recovery section separation point). Picture by my beautiful wife Laurie.

So, you might be asking yourself how did such a lightly built, horribly, stupidly long rocket do? The answer is...It didn't.

The contest was cancelled.

The rocket was broken into its individual parts and leaned behind a shelf in the corner, having never flown. Years passed. One...two.....three.....six.....etc.... Poor Sally was completely forgotten.

Maybe I'll fly her one day, now that I found her, but maybe not. The wind would have to be completely dead and everything would have to go perfectly... It might not be worth it. Still, if I did, it would be spectacular, no matter what!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!