Astro Baby Rocket Tips

Astro Baby (on TRF) is building her second rocket kit, the Estes Long Tom.
Astro Baby's first name is Mel, short for Melanie.
Bear in mind, this is her second rocket build. I was amazed at the things she wrote about. These are simple but very smart ideas that an experienced builder could learn from.

Here's some tips from her build:

Tip 1: "Now on the first build I was naive enough to think the template would be the be all and end all of accuracy. It isn't as it's out by a small amount which ended up causing some real headaches when the fins on the 2nd stage had to align with the fins on the booster.

The Estes instructions get you to mark the tubes separately but experience is a good teacher so this time around I joined the tubes together (booster and sustainer tubes) with the tube coupler and marked both tubes while they were coupled."

My comment:
Anyone who ever built the old two-stage Estes Beta could understand the fin alignment problems. Those fins sat directly on top of and fit together. The re-issued Semroc Shrike has the same type of upper and lower fin alignment.


Tip 2: "I always keep all the build waste during assembly which was a life saver on build 1 of this kit as keeping the carrier for the rings allowed me to create a replacement ring from balsa when it was needed."

My comment:
Smart idea to keep the leftover laser cut piece to use as a template to make more rings later on.


Tip 3: "Heres one of the rings being fitted to the engine tube using the card template to ensure the ring is square to the tube."

My comment:
We've all had centering rings with a loose fit on the engine mount tube. Wrapping a rectangular piece of cardstock around the engine mount tube gives you a straight reference line around the tube to set the rings against.

Thanks Mel - Keep the great ideas coming!