Years back I bought and assembled the Estes Astron Streak. It was an early BT-20 Mosquito. With a C6-7 you could reach altitudes of 2,0000 feet! Or so they claimed. Who knows, you'd never see it again anyway.
The Streak instructions said you could hollow out the nose cone and get an extra 20 feet altitude!Split the nose cone and hollow it out. My nose cone split didn't end up down the middle!
On the upcoming Odd'l Rockets F-104 Starfighter kit I'll supply nose cone halves that glue inside the front of the intakes. Here's how I'll prep them for the kit.
I scored the outside of the nose cone to get a clean split, right down the middle.
The base is scored first, maybe 1/8" in.
The shoulder is next.
With my knife blade extended I continue up the side, aiming towards the center tip.
The nose cone is turned over and the 1/8" scoring ends through the tip.
I remember building the Astron Streak! I think I got it free with my order. I opted for the competition version, so I hollowed out the nose cone and chose the "tongue depressor" shaped fins. I remember laboriously shaping them into a tear drop shaped cross section, with the trailing edge coming to a razor thin edge. My first and last launch was on a C6-7, just for the hell of it. We lost sight of it going up , but caught sight again coming down. But when the ejection charge went off it disappeared. Probably blown to smithereens. Not even a piece to be found. But that was a real blast. Ah, memories.
ReplyDeleteP.S. So Chris, I take it that you'll be prepping the hard stuff on this kit? But some of us builders like a few challenges. Like the Starship Excalibur kit or the Saturnian Design of the Month, where you had to split and sand to fit the nose cones by yourself. Or the ultimate challenge, the Hydra 7. Cheers!
DeleteHi BAR,
DeleteYeah, I've lost a few Streaks too.
I will be splitting and sanding the nose cones to the body contour for the kit. Unless you've had experience splitting nose cones it can be a iffy operation.
On the Streak you were hollowing out a nose cone. You didn't need a perfect centered split. On the F-104 they have to be equal halves. There will be other challenges in the kit.