Saturday, August 30, 2014

Estes Guardian Build, Part 1, Parts

I've never built an Estes Guardian.
Somewhere in the Ebay buys I ended up with two.

Both kits had white tubes.
You can see the bent tube on the right. I have some extra BT-55 and will cut a new one.

The 50/55 adapter is the same one used for the  Bullpup kit tail cone.
The shock cord is too short, only 18" long.
One kit has balsa fins, the other laser cut Tung wood.
All other parts are standard.


This bent tube had small spirals. The second kit had a very rough BT-55 with wide spirals, the worst I've ever seen in an Estes kit.
The parachute is 12", yellow and black in the "spiderweb" pattern.
The shock cord is too short, only 18" long.
While the face card shows a very colorful model, you are only given a white nameplate decal that fades into blue.




The paint pattern is a very tough mask. I doubt few builders have tried to do it.
I'll tackle it using a combination of paint and trim Monokote.
The face card picture looks like Estes used trim Monokote on the blue fin centers.

4 comments:

  1. The mask actually wasn't too bad. I did it a few years ago. I used old formula krylon and it took just a couple hours.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Chris,
      For me, the mask seemed like a lot of work. The trim Monokote ended up being a lot of work!

      Delete
  2. I didn't follow the paint scheme. I went with silver tubes, red nc, transition and bottom fins, and black upper and main fins. It's a nice looking design.

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  3. I actually didn't end up with the recommended paint pattern.
    The instructions say to use light gray and medium grays but the face card showed white on the upper body. I went with aluminum, black and white.
    I just wanted to match the face card fins on this one.

    ReplyDelete