Model Profile - Postal Express

I built this one for the EMRR Box O' Parts contest from 2009. HERE

In the contest you were sent a box of spare parts and had to build a flyable rocket from them. The box I was sent had a wide variety of parts!

The parts were sent in a USPS Priority box. The USPS logo and name were peeled off and glued to the finished model.





From the back end you can see the Popsicle sticks used for coolant vanes around the motor mount tube.
Toothpicks went into the leading edge of the rudder.

A balsa nose cone and body tube were split and glued on both sides of the rudder.
Some of the spare parts included guns from the Estes Star Wars X-Wing Fighter. One broke off after the first flight. (lower right)

On the far right is a candy dispenser with two small nose cones glued to the front.
A plastic dome was used for a rear adapter.
More vanes went around that and along the middle tubing joining to the front straight adapter. The middle tube isn't centered but sits toward the top of the two outer tubes.

The nose cone was a favorite element, it looked like it came from the inside core of a string spool.
While I could have had it sit straight off the tube, it was angled down like the nose of the old SST.
The angled down nose cone didn't effect vertical flight.

The model has flown a few times with D12-3 engines. It's stable but certainly needs more power. Max altitude is only 300'.
I tried to go for extra points by producing instructions for the build. HERE
It was good practice. I had just got the CorelDraw software.