Fin thickness for Estes Pro Patriot

The Estes December sale was a great windfall for a lot of us looking to get Pro Series II kits on the cheap! I got a Leviathan and later noticed that it uses the same nose cone and body tube diameter as the Estes Patriot from the original Pro Series in the early 90's. Back when I was a kid, the Pro Patriot was probably the most awesome model in the whole Estes catalog. The Leviathan's single 29mm motor mount is probably a more reliable way to fly this beast instead of the 4x 24mm motor mount of the original.

Now I'm thinking that I'll scale-bash the Leviathan into a Patriot. The JimZ site has the original instructions and templates, but doesn't list the fin material or thickness. I'm guessing it was balsa instead of ply, but the thickness wasn't listed. Would anybody know these details about the Pro Patriot fins by chance?

I can't help you with a dimension but I do know that they were built up using a basswood core, ribs, and cardstock skins. An old build thread on YORF has some nice pictures: https://forums.rocketshoppe.com/showpost.php?p=45806&postcount=13

I've had a hardcopy of those plans in my roundtuit rainy day folder for years . If I ever do build one I'm going old school 4-barrel cluster.

Thanks for the tip on the basswood cores. I can probably measure the templates to estimate the thickness on the original kit. Right now I'm thinking about building my fins from plywood core with skins of thin fiberglass if I want to fly it on a 29mm H motor.

I'm surprised the die-cut skins of the original could take the abuse of a 4x E15 cluster! Given the E15's reliability problems, it'd be surprising if many Pro Patriots survived multiple launches.

Several years ago I purchased a built one w/out the NC. Bought a Big Daddy to fix that. Cluster mount(D only) was in bad shape and I re-built the lower half for 29mm. Big Daddy BT and a Pringles can with a wrap or two of paper for a coupler. My fins had a 3/32ish lite-ply core, a balsa rib to give it the "Right shape'' with 1/16? balsa skins. They were very thick. I replaced them with 1/8 ply, no skins. It looked "Good Nuff'' when I was done, But a purist would cry ''Heresy"!

here is the one I built; https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?64532-3-16-semi-scale-patriot and the design file.
Rex

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