EXPjawa
Well-Known Member
I finished this up over the holidays:
I always liked the Estes Hawkeye, but was always afraid I'd loose it. Mine was (is) painted bright red and only has one or two flights on it. Twenty years ago, I built a 2X upscale, but decided now that a BT60-based 3X was necessary. At this size, though, the turbine bodies on top of the wings looked silly empty, and the whole rocket was begging for more detail. So I built cores for the turbines to give them a more realistic look. Primary mount is 24mm, but the two turbine cores are built to accept 13mm engines. According to RockSim, a pair of A3-4T engines would boost it an additional 125 feet or so. The main wings are 1/8th ply, the canards and rudder fins are 1/8th balsa. I added cardstock strips to the rudders to help stiffen them some and to add some detail to the surface. Decals came from Excelsior, but most of the panel lines and such are drawn on by hand. Paint was done using Duplicolor's Metalcast system, smoke over the silver basecoat. I call it "cosmic countershading". It has a 24" ripstop parachute. Since its the middle of winter, I'm waiting till fair weather to fly it. Unfortunately, the local club doesn't fly again till the end of May...
I always liked the Estes Hawkeye, but was always afraid I'd loose it. Mine was (is) painted bright red and only has one or two flights on it. Twenty years ago, I built a 2X upscale, but decided now that a BT60-based 3X was necessary. At this size, though, the turbine bodies on top of the wings looked silly empty, and the whole rocket was begging for more detail. So I built cores for the turbines to give them a more realistic look. Primary mount is 24mm, but the two turbine cores are built to accept 13mm engines. According to RockSim, a pair of A3-4T engines would boost it an additional 125 feet or so. The main wings are 1/8th ply, the canards and rudder fins are 1/8th balsa. I added cardstock strips to the rudders to help stiffen them some and to add some detail to the surface. Decals came from Excelsior, but most of the panel lines and such are drawn on by hand. Paint was done using Duplicolor's Metalcast system, smoke over the silver basecoat. I call it "cosmic countershading". It has a 24" ripstop parachute. Since its the middle of winter, I'm waiting till fair weather to fly it. Unfortunately, the local club doesn't fly again till the end of May...