Ramjet re-due

The next thing to do is sand down the streaks fins and body tube and order some 4" tubes to go over the streaks and fins.

I'm watching Got a 2X in progress and an 6X up in the garage Got all the stuff for an 8X but I want to do that for my 3rd level

dave carver said:

I'm watching Got a 2X in progress and an 6X up in the garage Got all the stuff for an 8X but I want to do that for my 3rd level

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Nice, can't wait to see your L3 version

Before and after sanding streaks

Fins

The streaks were uneven so I had to trim them to get them even

Now on to the body tube.

Before sanding

After sanding

The electric sander with 80 grit made short work of sanding the tube.

I measured the OS Dia of the rocket and divided by 6 and comes out to be 1 3/16" apart

I'm using the Estes tube guid to make lines from one end to the other, I need a longer angel to do this.

I'm making two lines as a guide to get the streaks and fins better alined with each other and to be as straight as possible.

Ok, I'm getting a little ahead of my self, I need to do more body work before I start marking and gluing on the streaks and fins. I first need to put on a coat of filler primer sand it all off and fill in all the pits and holes.

If you get two aluminum angles from the hardware store you can tape them on the tube with just enough gap to slide the fin between them for gluing - you will end up with perfectly aligned fins.

I'm cheating on the 2X I'm building, the strakes are full length and not broken into 18 little pieces. This is to try it out before the 8X version. I made the 18 strake blocks for the 6X, what a pain...

Zebedee said:

If you get two aluminum angles from the hardware store you can tape them on the tube with just enough gap to slide the fin between them for gluing - you will end up with perfectly aligned fins.

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That's a great idea, I would never have thought of that, thanks for the advice. Once I get to that point I'll let you know how it turns out.

Had to super glue some X-acto knife cuts in the airframe from removing the streaks and fins. Next will have to go to HD to get some angle, all thread, washers,nuts, JB weld, primer, and a space heater for the shed so I can continue to work on this, I also orderd a 38mm motor retainer body for this as well.

It was suggested to me to use two pieces of angle to get all the streaks and fins align together and this is what I came up with, its not done yet its just a mock up to see how it will work.

That's not quite what I was meaning - here's how I did it. The angles are there to make sure the fin is 100% aligned with the long axis of the tube, the fin guide it to keep the span of the fin perpendicular to the tube.
I can confirm the resulting alignment was very good and resulted in an arrow straight flight for my level 2 with no rotation.

Zeb

Still need to fine tune it

Got a heater for the shed, now I need to clean out the shed so I can resume work on the RamJet.

Got these from Aeropack, the 38 is for the Ramjet that I'm currently working on and the 54 is for the painkiller 3 rocket that I still need to paint.

Can't wait to see how this turns out. The Ramjet is probably one of my favorite Estes kits of all time and I had been giving some thought to upscaling. I have LOC 7.67" and 5.5" tubes; not sure how close that combo is to scale but probably close enough. What are the overall dimensions of the tubes you're working with?

pyrobob said:

Can't wait to see how this turns out. The Ramjet is probably one of my favorite Estes kits of all time and I had been giving some thought to upscaling. I have LOC 7.67" and 5.5" tubes; not sure how close that combo is to scale but probably close enough. What are the overall dimensions of the tubes you're working with?

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54mm and 98mm tubes. The 54 is 36" long and the 98 is 15" each it's the K&S 4X upscale I got this kit before the K&S mishap.

dave carver said:

I'm cheating on the 2X I'm building, the strakes are full length and not broken into 18 little pieces. This is to try it out before the 8X version. I made the 18 strake blocks for the 6X, what a pain...

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I did the fillets on the 18 strakes times by 2 equals 36 fillets and to tape each one and now I get to do it all over again, it's all part of the hobby. But for now I'm still doing the body work from the bad fiberglassing I did, again part of the hobby🚀

I know that this is not rocket related but this project is on hold till this bad boy is healed

Kehoes23 said:

View attachment 252337
I know that this is not rocket related but this project is on hold till this bad boy is healed

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Nice!
I put my Reaper on in Chicago back in '83.

It's been two weeks since I got my tattoo, it's pretty much heald at this point, I need to go back to get it touched up. I was planning on starting up this project again but instead we buried my high school sweetheart instead. Both her and her sister o d on drugs. She was not my wife, we dated off and on in high school, she was only 38 and her sister was 41. I will get back to this project just not now.:sad:

I got back to work on the ramjet, put on a heavy coat of primer, next I'll sand it off and fill in all the pin holes and scratch marks, I know most of this body tube will be covered by a 4" outer body tube, I just want to make inner body tube as nice as possible since this is a discontinued kit.

Got half the body tube sanded

All the white dots are the pin holes in the fiberglass.
Should I keep spraying on primer than sand until the pin holes are gone or should I use the laminating epoxy I used to glass the tube to fill in the pin holes?

Put another coat of primer on but this time I did a small section, I'll just sand the primer off and put a coat of epoxy on and go from there

Getting started on the first epoxy

Inner body tube done, now start on the outer body tube

Both tubes done. I'll put on two more coats sanding between coats, then a coat of primer

Ok, so the first coat of epoxy was a little thick and have some runners which means a lot of sanding, so next coat will be less, a lot less epoxy and a thinner coat, just going to wait a few days so the epoxy has time to fully cure before I start sanding, I do need to build a heat lamp cure box of some sort, anyone have plans or an idea how to build one? Be sure to send them my way.

Well, it's been a while since my last post, been busy with family and other things in life, but I did manage to start fixing a 4" body tube that I cut fin slots into, I am now filling in the fin slots with Aeropoxy still need to do the other two

I did put a pice of tape between the tube coupler and tube as to not glue them together.

This rocket along with my half scale Patriot is back in storage, meaning in the closet until we move, once we are settled in I'm going to be working on these two rockets until they are finished.