The (short) 2018 build list...

It's the end of October and time to put together a build list for the coming year. I have done pretty well this year - the Falcon Commander is done, the Gyroc is in the final coat of primer, and the Centuri Mach 10 is under construction. Should easily have the latter two finished by Christmas, which means I will have completed all 3 models on the 2017 list. It would seem that a short list is best for me, given my rocket ADD - I am too easily sidetracked to handle more. So what about this coming year?

Centuri Javelin in the 1971 Centuri catalog (Click to enlarge).

The first choice, and top of the list, is easy - 1968 marks my 50th year in rocketry, so a clone of my first rocket must be the priority. The Centuri Javelin was released in 1965, sporting a black paint decor with a set of white roll bars. It kept this appearance until 1971, when the catalog art showed a white body with a black nose cone and fins, along with orange roll bars and a Centuri logo. This is my favorite style, and I will fashion my clone in a like manner. Its maiden voyage will be powered by a 1/2 A6-2 motor, just as in my first flight almost 50 years ago. I am really looking forward to this build - which should be easy, btw. The only slightly difficult part will be creating the roll bar decal.

The last appearance of the Estes Starlight in the 1972 catalog (Click to enlarge).

The other two models on the list both made catalog appearances in 1968, but I avoided them in the past because they had too much balsa to finish. The Estes Starlight was designed by Bill See, and sported 4 huge fins with rings - the body tube is lost amidst all that fin area. It had a relatively short run - only available from 1968 to 1972 - but its looks are quite appealing. Appealing, that is, if you can get past the thought of all the filling and sanding you will have to do to get a nice looking model. However, 2018 is the year that I am going to tackle this puppy.

Estes Trident in the 1970 catalog (Click to enlarge).

The last model on the list is the Estes Trident. Designed by Gene Street, the rocket features separate nose and tail sections, joined by three tubes that duct the ejection gases up from the motor into the nose, thereby deploying the parachute. This sleek beauty is also finishing hell, possessing 3 nice size fins and 9 (!) balsa nose cones that require sanding and sealing. As a kid, the Trident scared the heck out of me - it seemed a lot of work to build, too much effort to watch it drift away from the small fields I often flew in back then. But now, older and wiser, with my days of cramming into my models the biggest motor that would fit behind me, I am going to build a Semroc version of this kit. Hopefully I can keep it within the confines of Pegasus field.

And that's the build list as it stands now... 3 models over 12 months. I wonder if I can do it 2 years in a row.

They did what with a Saturn V?

This week's episode of the "Big Bang Theory" featured a model rocketry thread in which Wolowitz resurrects some of his old rockets in anticipation of sharing his past joy in rocketry with his soon-to-be-born son. He and Sheldon build an Estes Saturn V, which they intend on launching out in the boondocks. As usual, things go wrong - after a bit of an argument over whether countdowns should be "L minus..." or "T minus...", the launch button is pressed and the Saturn V explodes, sending pieces everywhere. Very painful for a rocketeer to watch... especially when you consider how much effort goes into building one of those kits.

However, the show did bring another Saturn V launch to mind - one that happened in front of tens of thousands of spectators and that was also nationally televised. Unlike the "Big Bang" launch, this one was eminently successful, and a tribute to the talents and skills of the folks at Estes and the Texas rocketeer who built the Saturn.

And it happened indoors!

So dear friends, sit back, click the image below, and read the story as written by the man himself, Vern Estes.  However, I'll provide a little beginning:

Once upon a time, in late 1969...

This is one of my favorite rocket stories - I find it amazing that

1. They were able to estimate the altitude so precisely using hand calculations (no personal computers or electronic calculators back then)
2. They took the time to manufacture special D motors for the launch, and that they were consistent to within 3% (TARC teams would love this!)
3. Things went off without a hitch, including the pre-show Alpha launches. Murphy must have still been on holiday.

We probably can't do anything like this in the current environment of regulations - which I find kind of sad. I sometimes miss the enthusiasm of the 60's and 70's; we believed we could do anything (and some did)!

And, btw, Wolowitz, it is "T minus..." - "L minus" is used to denote the days before launch, not in the immediate countdown.

This old dog learns a new trick...

Things have been busy this weekend - I have the Centuri Groove Tube painted and ready for decals, my scratch-built Probe-18 is repaired and has a new payload section, the Gyroc clone and eBay rescue Sky Hook are in primer, and I have gathered the parts for the last build on my list, the Centuri Mach 10. I also took a look ahead to the next rocket after that one, a clone of the Estes Marauder cold power convertible. I realized it would need decals, so I spent a few hours today putting together a set for this model, along with the Gyroc. In so doing, I learned a new thing.

Scan of the Marauder decal downloaded from Ye Olde Rocket Plans (Click to enlarge).

One of the great things going for today's rocketeers is that the Internet makes it easy to locate plans, patterns, and decals for old models. However, some of the decal scans are of sets in poor condition - water/liquid stains, scratches, and dirt/gunk being common defects. As a result, a fair amount of time must be spent "cleaning them up" in a graphics program. I use Pixelmator on the Mac - it's simple, with a great easy-to-use tool set; Photoshop and its free equivalent Gimp are way too complicated for my old brain. But today, a question came to me as I was cleaning up the Marauder decal - could I generate the equivalent from scratch in less time?

The roll pattern and stripe was no problem; I could also swipe the Estes logo from another decal in a better condition. However, the common bugaboo is with the letters and numbers - trying to figure out which fonts match those in the original can be quite an undertaking. I spent about an hour scrounging through online collections like dafonts and 1001fonts looking for a match to the UNITED STATES with no luck. Somewhat frustrated, I figured there had to be a better way and googled font matching. This pointed me to a nifty website - Font Squirrel - which had a nifty font matching utility. All you have to do is upload a graphic containing your text, and the site will search through commercial and free fonts seeking a match. Much better than manually searching thousands of fonts font by font! I uploaded the UNITED STATES part of the decal image and Font Squirrel directed me to the free Grammara font. Sure enough, it was a close match. The site did even better with the Marauder name -  the free News of the World Wide Italic produces letters virtually indistinguishable from those in the decal. Finally, I tried the number 5 (had to feed it both 5's as the site choked on just a single letter), and it pointed me to the Days Sans Black font, which is similar - but visibly different from - the decal 5. I could have gotten a nearly exact match by buying one of the commercial fonts for $32, but that price is way too steep for something I will probably use once or twice. Clones are supposed to be cheap, you know.

My reproduction (Click to enlarge).

Anyway, now that I know what to do, I can probably replicate a close facsimile of a decal set fairly quickly. Whether this is faster than cleaning up the decal depends on the condition of the original, but at least I have the option should I feel it is needed. The old dog is now ready to call it an evening, content that he has learned a new skill this weekend.

But first I must watch the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery...

Working through the list...

A few days ago, I finished a clone of the Estes Falcon Commander, which was one of the three items on my 2017 build list. Next up is a clone of the venerable Estes Gyroc, which is also celebrating (along with the Alpha) the 50th anniversary of its release this year. The Gene Street-designed helicopter recovery Gyroc had an unusual start - it did not officially appear as a stand-alone item in the Estes catalogs until 1969; the first availability in 1967 was as a free kit for those placing orders over $5. All you had to do was write "Free Gyroc" on the last line of the order form (see below). It's kinda of interesting that the Gyroc showed up just after a plan called the "Flip Flap" was published in the December 1966 Model Rocket News, as that design incorporates the elastic thread activation of flaps like in the Gyroc. However, it was probably too late to have been a factor in the Gyroc design, and besides, the "Flip Flap" looks clunky by comparison.

1st appearance of the Gyroc in the 1967 Estes catalog (Click to enlarge - still gonna be fuzzy).

Gyroc in the 1969 Estes catalog (Click to enlarge).

Several of the old Estes kits did not come with decals; the Gyroc was one of these, sporting a barbershop pole paint scheme in its 1967 and 1969 catalog spots. The 1970 catalog artwork has it adorned with an unknown streak decal, close (but not quite the same) to the one on the old partial Gyroc in the pic below. The 1971 catalog shows the kit in its "canonical" yellow decor, with decals from the various sources (Beta, D-13 sheet, etc). The Gyroc never had a set of decals included with the kit, so some scrounging was required if you wanted to put them on the model.

Old broken Gyroc with unknown decal (Click to enlarge).

The Gyroc in the 1971 catalog (Click to enlarge).

I have never possessed a Gyroc - always seemed to be too much work (many balsa pieces to cut out precisely) for too little reward. However, Balsa Machining Service is producing a Gyroc kit that features laser-cut parts, thereby eliminating a lot of the fussing and cussing. You have to download a set of the instructions and provide your own decals, but it is a faithful reproduction of the original, down to the elastic thread. This is what I am currently building, and so far it has gone reasonably smoothly. You need to be careful when sealing the thin 1/6" balsa, as the parts can warp if you apply too much water-based sealer - I only had trouble with one wing, and that was fixed by letting it dry under some books. The parts are now finished, and I have started gluing things together - you can see the current state of the build in the pic below. The fins are being held in place by one of the wondrous Qualman Rocketry fin alignment guides, and the model is supported by two of the Estes tube cutting guides (these too are wonderful when working with Estes tubes).

Current state of my Gyroc build (Click to enlarge).

I'm hoping to finish this model in time for the club Halloween launch on the 28th - it's about time I flew a Gyroc!

Pics from Saturday's launch...

Duane's Estes Make-It-Take-It leaves the rod on an A8-3 (Click to enlarge).

Saturday's launch did not just involve the TARC Geezers; quite a few other folk joined us at Pegasus, many bringing rockets to fly. In addition to me, Duane, Marc, and Vince, there were Art, Blake, Matt, and Phillip, along with the Hope Rising and James Clemens TARC teams. We also had a few spectators, including Art's pastor and a young rocketeer who got to start the launch by pressing the button that sent my A8-powered Estes Alpha 3 skyward. Needless to say, there was a lot of activity, and I had a very hard time keeping up with rockets taking to the air. In addition to the Geezer TARC birds, more than 25 other rockets made voyages on Saturday; I say "more than" because the two TARC teams were still flying their BMS 3" School Rockets when Duane and I departed the field.

A couple of things of note:

Duane had the "Curse of Recovery" while I was afflicted with the "Altimeter Curse". My GDTV-1 rocket hit an altitude of 479 feet on an Aerotech E20, but the payload section got a nice bounce on landing. The bounce broke my altimeter bay, resulting in the Perfectflite Alt 15k/WD altimeter tumbling free inside the tube. It beeped out the altitude just fine, but chirped like a deranged bird when I tried to reset it for the next flight. I didn't see any obvious cause, but the net effect was that the GDTV-1 flew without an altimeter on its first rail-guided flight. I will have to conduct my experiment on a later date with a new, stronger altimeter bay - and a different altimeter. This one is toast.

My last flight of the day was made by my reliable Probe-18 on a B6-4, loaded with my favorite Micropeak altimeter in the payload section. The rocket grabbed some good air, but I was horrified to see it separate in two at recovery. The sustainer tumbled to earth, suffering minor damage, but the payload section - with my beautiful altimeter - drifted to the southwest and was lost to sight. It's probably somewhere in Mississippi...

My GDTV-1 is about to clear the rail riding an Aerotech
 E20-4 White Lightning motor (Click to enlarge).

The Probe-18 gets started on its ill-fated journey
(Click to enlarge).

October 3 and 4 are the 75th and 60th anniversaries of the 1st rocket to reach space (the V-2) and the flight of Sputnik 1, which opened the Space Age. In keeping with the spirit of these events, Art Woodling and Vince launched some Sputnik-like rockets, and there were a couple of V-2's leaving the pads. I was going to bring a small Sputnik, but Mr. Klutz (me) broke one of the dowels when I pulled it out of storage.

Art's "Pumpkinik" on a C6-3 (Click to enlarge).

The "Flying Purple People Eater" gets going on an Estes
F15 (Click to enlarge).

Vince launches his C-powered V-2 (Click to enlarge).

Blake's V-2 heads north towards London on an E9
(Click to enlarge).

So here are a few more pictures - I was busy with Geezer TARC during much of the time and didn't get to take as many as I would have liked, but they should give you a flavor of the rockets launched at Pegasus yesterday.

Marc's Aspire going up on a F44 (Click to enlarge).

...and coming down under chute (Click to enlarge).

Art's 50+ year old Scout (his 1st rocket) recreates its 1st
flight on a 1/2A6-2 (Click to enlarge).

Phillip's camera-carrying Sprint XL rides a D12 motor
up into the sky (Click to enlarge).

A Zooch Saturn 1 on a B6-4 (Click to enlarge).

Vince's "Spooknik" clears the pad under the power of
an Estes A10 (Click to enlarge).

A "Sputnik Too" under the thrust of an A8-3
(Click to enlarge).

Vince's Ares scale model riding a B6-4
(Click to enlarge).

An Estes Interceptor leaves behind a cloud of smoke
from its C6-5 (Click to enlarge).

A Space-X Falcon with Dragon capsule makes a
successful flight (Click to enlarge).

The Hope Rising TARC team go over their launch procedures (Click to enlarge).

A Gemini DC belonging to a Hope student leaves the
pad (Click to enlarge).

A Hope Rising BMS School Rocket rises on an
Estes D12 (Click to enlarge).