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!

This Goblin Build is a Real Monster!

STICKERSHOCK CAME THROUGH IN RECORD TIME! THIS IS THE UPDATED BLOG ENTRY!

The story thus far: I happened to notice, while building another rocket, that I had most of the stuff I needed to build an LOC 2.63 diameter Goblin upscale! All I would need to do is rip apart an old busted up rocket I got for pretty much nothing at a DARS auction and add some new 1/8 inch ply fins and there ya go!

When we left off, I had ripped the old rocket apart, salvaged the 29mm motor mount, cut the body tube to length, and made the four fins...

We now resume our story...

I decided to use a slightly different approach with this bird. I took inspiration from Scott Cook's huge Der Red Max, which can be taken apart for transport. Although the Goblin won't be able to be taken apart, I built the motor mount to slide into the rear of the body tube after being fully built.

Internal fillets done, waiting on the slots to be cut in the tube...

The rocket that I used for this build was green. As I sanded it to smooth out some spots, I found that it was lighter green under the dark green. The effect looked a whole lot like a pickle.

Ah, there we go! The fin can is now in place. The rear of the tube got a little extra epoxy to hold the areas between the fins down.

For external fillets (and launch lugs) I used wood glue. The real structural fillets are the internal ones (in the C-slot fin guides) so these could just look nice...

A few coats of yellow paint dressed her up nicely...I had the yellow left over from the project that's sitting behind her...

When a Goblin becomes a Mummy. Time for the gloss black!

The black covered like a dream. One coat was all it took...

And on the nose, too! 

A little positive motor retention never hurt anyone.

And all ready for decals!!!

I had to place an order to Stickershock for decals to replace the ancient waterslide set that shattered into a million pieces when it touched water. These came through VERY quickly and went on like a dream! Here are the end results!

I used the original Estes K-55 plans for my decal placement. They have the logos and "goblin" figures angled with the fins...but not exactly following the fin edges. I think I got close...

It's funny, but when I think of this bird, I think of bats all over it. In fact, the original only had four (and two of those were in the Goblin logo). Stickershock gives you tons to have fun with, and I was tempted, but I ended up only adding one extra...

Which would be this little guy. Not on the original. Nope. 

Interestingly enough (at least to me) there are two schools of thought on the placement of the "3" stickers. The original plans featured what I call "the reclining 3." The new Estes kit has "the standing 3." Obviously either way is right, but I went with the vintage vibe...

This is my bass case. I stick random stickers on it because...well, because...

And here we have two generations of Stickershock logos! For the record, my wife likes the new one best. (I do too.)

So after all of that, I finally have my upscale Goblin! I'm glad that I was able to take a crashed piece of junk and turn it into something I can be proud of. By the way, the total cost, even after the emergency decal order, was under twenty bucks! You can't beat that!

Until then, fly 'em fast and high!