Dr. Zooch Return To Flight Space Shuttle build thread- #2

good deal the Dr will set you right.

Just a note here.

This has nothing to do with the current conversation and postings...

Back in 2009 we moved the orbiter's lugs forward off of the elevator, set some places on the Internet do not display this change. When you buy one of our shuttle kits, the instructions that you get are the most current way of constructing the kit.

Dr.Zooch said:

Just a note here.

This has nothing to do with the current conversation and postings...

Back in 2009 we moved the orbiter's lugs forward off of the elevator, set some places on the Internet do not display this change. When you buy one of our shuttle kits, the instructions that you get are the most current way of constructing the kit.

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This modification gives a more "scale-like" appearance by moving the orbiter further back on the stack does it not?? IIRC yall found that it wasn't necessary to hold the elevons at 0-degree incidence during boost, thus it can fly with the elevon 'fixed' at the best glide angle without affecting the trajectory of the combined stack?? This allows the orbiter mounting lugs to be moved further forward onto the main body, thus shifting the orbiter rearward a bit to a more "proper" location?? Correct me if I'm wrong...

Later! OL JR

not the best picture....but I found this when I was going thru pics for my Zooch Saturn 1b build thread....its a pic of my Zooch Shuttle in flight...this kit is blast to fly!

Ok I just received my shuttle Monday and here is what I plan on doing, I will be building 3 orbiters at once, 1. will be stock from the kit. 2. Will be as realistic as possible with full wraps and will probably be for display, and 3. will be modified to look like the orbiter used in the movie Armageddon, complete with booster rockets, canards, and winglets. The builds starts this week and I will be taking lots of pictures and would love any advice.

shewme said:

Ok I just received my shuttle Monday and here is what I plan on doing, I will be building 3 orbiters at once, 1. will be stock from the kit. 2. Will be as realistic as possible with full wraps and will probably be for display, and 3. will be modified to look like the orbiter used in the movie Armageddon, complete with booster rockets, canards, and winglets. The builds starts this week and I will be taking lots of pictures and would love any advice.

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Looking forward to seeing your progress!!! Please post it here and post plenty of pics!!! We love pics!!!

That should be neat, the "Armageddon" shuttle, despite the movie's obvious shortcomings... It was at least a neat design, if totally unrealistic...

Good luck and I hope to see your progress reports soon!

Later! OL JR

I second the request for pics! Document every step of your build please. Take twice as many pics as you think we'd want to see, and post them all.

I'll make that a third request. We love pictures here! The Zooch Shuttle is a great kit to build and fly!! His lifting bodies are pretty cool too!

I was looking into doing the egg foam bottom for my ET, but in my area the egg cartons do not have that nice round shape with out a foam rib breaking it up, does any one have any other suggestions.

Ok to start with I have made a binder for my instructions and I am using books to press my wraps flat. I have scanned my wraps also.
Ok I have a few questions.
Has anyone done the front V shaped mount for the authentic look on there ET, and did you go into the tube with it or did you just glue it to the
outside.
I was thinking of sanding the balsa wood bulkheads down thinner for the shuttle and adding one to the center of the cargo bay to retain the shape better and more strength.
Has anyone built up the cockpit and if you did could you share pictures.
I have seen post on this build page for more detailed wraps, but I didnt see a link, can anyone show me the light. I did find one here that is great but they are not the same size and my scanner/printer does not scale with % its just a pinch movement on my Ipad so getting the same scale is almost impossable.
Thank you for any help I love this web site and I promise to take so many pics that your going to get sick of me.:eyeroll:

An important tip on the orbiter- if you are going to non-stock the build, watch the weight and balance very closely. Being off by as little as 1/4 inch can cause the orbity to not fly. Also remember that the images in the wraps are sometimes sized to a single pixel, so reproductions that are off-sized by as little as 1% can be wrong when flight times comes along. You kit has only been flight tested as a stock build.

Good luck.

Shewme...I used the conventional front mount on my Zooch shuttle..... I glued it to the outside of the ET. It has worked perfectly. I have not had any issues with the Orbiter cargo bay losing shape. Luke sent me the wraps...I will have to try to find where I saved them on my computer.

I suspect your build skills much more advanced than I mine...I followed the directions on this build to a tee and I was surprised how easily it went together. Honestly, I thought this kit was beyond my abilities, especially when I opened the kit and saw how many parts were in there... but the instructions in this kit are just excellent. you are really going to enjoy flying this one!! Good Luck!!

shewme said:

Ok to start with I have made a binder for my instructions and I am using books to press my wraps flat. I have scanned my wraps also.
Ok I have a few questions.
Has anyone done the front V shaped mount for the authentic look on there ET, and did you go into the tube with it or did you just glue it to the
outside.
I was thinking of sanding the balsa wood bulkheads down thinner for the shuttle and adding one to the center of the cargo bay to retain the shape better and more strength.
Has anyone built up the cockpit and if you did could you share pictures.
I have seen post on this build page for more detailed wraps, but I didnt see a link, can anyone show me the light. I did find one here that is great but they are not the same size and my scanner/printer does not scale with % its just a pinch movement on my Ipad so getting the same scale is almost impossable.
Thank you for any help I love this web site and I promise to take so many pics that your going to get sick of me.:eyeroll:

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Ok thanks doc for the advice the first shuttle will be made following your instructions to the T. The second hi detail orbiter will just be for show. And the armaggedin shuttle might never fly, I will try to make it flyable.

Here is my instruction book



Here are my Mercury Redstone fins with there primer coat about to get sanded



And my nose cone for the Redstone



More to follow

Ok the build has begun! Ok hold down the applause. Now I am not going to describe every little detail and instruction, the good doctor already wrote those. So I will let my pictures say it for me.



here i pre sanded the nose cones to be smoth with the SRB tubes.




i also numbered witch nose cone went to which tube.


alright now I have the SRB wraps cut out and then I


coiled up the wraps and placed them inside of the tubes to make them rounded again.

Well I got on a roll and wrapped the SRB's and installed the bell skirts

shewme said:

Ok to start with I have made a binder for my instructions and I am using books to press my wraps flat. I have scanned my wraps also.
Ok I have a few questions.
Has anyone done the front V shaped mount for the authentic look on there ET, and did you go into the tube with it or did you just glue it to the
outside.
I was thinking of sanding the balsa wood bulkheads down thinner for the shuttle and adding one to the center of the cargo bay to retain the shape better and more strength.
Has anyone built up the cockpit and if you did could you share pictures.
I have seen post on this build page for more detailed wraps, but I didnt see a link, can anyone show me the light. I did find one here that is great but they are not the same size and my scanner/printer does not scale with % its just a pinch movement on my Ipad so getting the same scale is almost impossable.
Thank you for any help I love this web site and I promise to take so many pics that your going to get sick of me.:eyeroll:

Click to expand...

A few suggestions:

1) DO NOT deviate (much, if at all, ESPECIALLY on the first orbiter build) from the Dr. Zooch instructions. Gliders can be notoriously sensitive to weight and balance... DO NOT add strengthening ribs or other stuff-- it's plenty strong on its own, believe me. If you start going crazy "strengthening" it you'll get something that won't glide at all... Remember the REAL shuttles "flew like bricks"-- they glided in for a landing 10 times steeper than a commercial airliner. The glider version Zooch designed works and works well, but a slope soaring glider it ain't... IOW it glides much like the real thing... Once you've built it STOCK, you can always run off copies of the bulkheads and glue them to thinner balsa and play around with the design using the more detailed wraps... (which I'll gladly send you when I can-- on vacation at the moment and hitting the road tomorrow, so I don't know when I'll be able to send them, and they're too big a filesize to upload here, or I'd have done it LONG ago... )

2) You CAN glue the struts directly to the sides of the tubes-- that's how I did it in my build. Don't recall doing the bipod (as it was called on the real shuttle) since the orbiter on the Zooch model has to come off to glide, and thus doing a "realistic" bipod would not have the capability of mounting the front of the glider in a way to take flight loads and still be able to separate at apogee... Course if you can come up with a way, we'd all love to see it...

3) Built up the cockpit?? As in "superdetailed it inside, with windows"?? I'd say no... it's not that sort of a rocket... when you're fifteen feet away launching it, you'll not be able to see anything inside the windows anyway, and CERTAINLY not after pushing that button! If you wanted to build a display orbiter with those modifications, that's CERTAINLY doable... but I'd save it for a display only piece-- remember the weight issue with a flying glider and also the balance issues as well... adding stuff in the front only adds weight and potentially throws the balance off, meaning a poor glide performance.

4) Hmmm... Not sure what printout you're talking about that's the incorrect size... and you might need to transfer the files to a memory stick or something and open them on a computer with a different printer setup, rather than trying to goof with the I-phone thing... It's virtually impossible to give you exact settings and stuff, because there's as many printers as there are computers, and every one of them seems to handle print files differently, have different scaling settings, and so on. BUT, your best bet is to work with a system where you can physically type in scaling percentages as needed, rather than depending on some dinky "pinch" movement on a phone... I've printed off F-1 engines for a Saturn rocket I'm building, and after a couple test prints, dialed in EXACTLY the scale I needed to make them exactly the size I wanted... but it depends a lot on your particular system. The other thing is, MAKE SURE that your printer settings have any "print size to page" settings turned OFF-- these will resize the image to fit the PRINTABLE AREA of the paper, NOT reprint the file in the ORIGINAL size regardless of whether it takes up the entire page or not... I've run into that one a time or two myself... (margin settings can throw it off too with these on).

Later and good luck! OL JR

shewme said:

Ok the build has begun! Ok hold down the applause. Now I am not going to describe every little detail and instruction, the good doctor already wrote those. So I will let my pictures say it for me.
View attachment 139129here i pre sanded the nose cones to be smoth with the SRB tubes.
View attachment 139130View attachment 139131i also numbered witch nose cone went to which tube.
View attachment 139132alright now I have the SRB wraps cut out and then I
View attachment 139133coiled up the wraps and placed them inside of the tubes to make them rounded again.

Click to expand...

One tiny suggestion for future posts...

Could you PRETTY PLEASE turn your photos so things are right-side-up and not sideways-- usually in your picture viewer program on your computer, there's some buttons at the bottom of the page when you actually open the pics and look at them that will allow you to "flip" them right-side-up and keep them that way-- THEN upload them here... makes it MUCH more enjoyable to look at your project...

Thanks and good work! OL JR

Yes will do on the pictures, I am still learning how to use the Ipad. Have a good time on your vacation Luke.

shewme said:

Yes will do on the pictures, I am still learning how to use the Ipad. Have a good time on your vacation Luke.

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Thanks...

I sent you the wraps... everything for the Zooch shuttle to your email, plus I sent along superdetailed wraps other folks have sent me for the Zooch Saturn V and Saturn IB...

Enjoy!
OL JR

Shewme...the Zooch saturn 1b is an awesome kit! flies just like the rel 1b...stable as a rock in flight...I have 35 flights on one of my Zooch 1bs.

luke strawwalker said:

Thanks...

I sent you the wraps... everything for the Zooch shuttle to your email, plus I sent along superdetailed wraps other folks have sent me for the Zooch Saturn V and Saturn IB...

Enjoy!
OL JR

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shewme said:

Has anyone built up the cockpit and if you did could you share pictures.

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No pictures on this post, but in this thread Dr Zooch said he's made one with a cockpit, working doors on the cargo bay, which also houses an altimeter.

Apparently doing all those mods is super easy and can't possibly change the way the orbiter flies. :lol:

Doc, got pics of it?

BTW, I just ordered my second shuttle. After reading over this thread again after the recent bump I remembered that I have the wraps and want to try one with those.

ok I got the hi detail Wraps, (Thanks luke) and after I get off work today back to the build. Thank you for all the advise everyone and will you be posting your build Mushtang?

shewme said:

... and will you be posting your build Mushtang?

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I've already built one in this thread. My Space Shuttle build starts on post number 304 and goes on for about 3 pages.

Well I got hpme from work and put my do not disturb rocket construction zone on the door.
Well I said I could not find the right tipe of egg carton for the bottom of the ET, well I dodn't look very well

That worked very well and it looks great


I also finished my fins for the Redstone. I still need to trim the toothpic on the escape tower.

You can make a more detailed orbiter and get it to fly. My advice is to first build stock, get it flying and then find the CG. For example use the tip of the nose of the stock orbiter as you datam, then use a thread and some blue masking tape to see where the orbiter hangs level while upside down. That point will be your CG. Next measure the distance ( called the arm) between that level hanging point and the tip of the nose (your datam). As long as every other orbiter that you modify has the same arm to its CG point, you can do whatever you want to it. Heck, I have an orbiter that has a real cockpit, windows and a cargo bay that opens up and holds an Altineter 2 during flight- it flies like a champ... because I have the CG in the correct place after all of that modification.

Dr.Zooch said:

You can make a more detailed orbiter and get it to fly. My advice is to first build stock, get it flying and then find the CG. For example use the tip of the nose of the stock orbiter as you datam, then use a thread and some blue masking tape to see where the orbiter hangs level while upside down. That point will be your CG. Next measure the distance ( called the arm) between that level hanging point and the tip of the nose (your datam). As long as every other orbiter that you modify has the same arm to its CG point, you can do whatever you want to it. Heck, I have an orbiter that has a real cockpit, windows and a cargo bay that opens up and holds an Altineter 2 during flight- it flies like a champ... because I have the CG in the correct place after all of that modification.

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Just like the real orbiters, which had to be properly ballasted with lead weights before flight in anticipation of the expected vehicle landing weight distribution and configuration (where the mass was located within the vehicle, thus affecting the CG... basically EVERYTHING on the shuttle was accounted for and had its mass stated, and its location in the orbiter and thus it's distance from the basic vehicle CG and relation to all other mass on the orbiter...

The CG isn't extremely critical during the ascent phase or on orbit, but during reentry and landing, especially during landing, the CG location is very critical, because if it's beyond a certain range, the vehicle would handle sluggishly and be hard to control or impossible to control...

Later! OL JR

what do you think of this?

and thanks Doc for that info I will follow it. I love Scifi stuff and The Armaggedon shuttle is so close to the basic shuttle that I think I can make it work, or at least have some fun trying, I mean after all isn't that what rocketry is all about.

Do you have pics of that shuttle Dr.Zooch I think we would all love to see it, and is the video inside the Lifting body video you made real, its hard to tell and I would be very interested in what camera you used.
Thanks

shewme said:

what do you think of this?
View attachment 139450View attachment 139451View attachment 139452
and thanks Doc for that info I will follow it. I love Scifi stuff and The Armaggedon shuttle is so close to the basic shuttle that I think I can make it work, or at least have some fun trying, I mean after all isn't that what rocketry is all about.

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That looks terrific... GREAT JOB!!!!

I think it'll fly just fine... the "canards" up front may tend to move the CP forward a bit, but the longer wings should compensate. It'll be interesting to see if this will glide... if you plan to make it glide, that is...

I'd think the canards would tend to screw up the glide performance pretty good, and the additional weight of the booster rockets flanking the orbiter would add a lot of weight and drag that would ruin the glide-- gliders are notoriously sensitive to weight and balance issues... and the shuttle isn't a particularly efficient glider to start with...

I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing this!!! KUTGW!!!

Later! OL JR