Upscale, Circa 1989

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd post some pictures from an upscale project I've been working on, which has some mods to it. I have to say that the Estes catalog from 1992 was my personal favorite, and I've been slowly working on a few from that era I always wanted to build.

Before I add more to this I thought I'd post it in the pre-assembly stage and see if anyone can guess the model (although I don't think it will be much of a challenge for some of the folks on here.)

It's an Estes Yellow Jacket! Kit No.2008! Awesome!

Right you are Overeasy!

Seeing others upscale theirs made me want to try a Yellow Jacket as well. Also, I was wanted to incorporate some other design ideas and try them out:

1. Expanded engine mount for standard through E motors
2. Zipperless design
3. Payload bay for altimeter and later camera
4. Baffle (I hear they burn out, but wanted to give one a shot)
5. Through the wall fins in a different way

This may be a bit overkill, but after seeing a few of the high power build threads, I wanted to try assembling the whole fin can as a unit first and gluing the apparatus into the body tube.

Here is the fin can assembly. Motor mount is standard E length.

Well, I though I had more pictures of the build...

Here is the test assembly of the fin unit into the lower body tube.



I then glued everything in with wood glue, and added fillets to the fins. There is a baffle added to the front of this tube.

...and here's the final product. I anchored the recovery to a 1" long BT-60 nose block which partitions the front tube into a parachute and payload bay. Everything was finished with wood filler. I used Rustoleum paint on this one. The decals are from Excelsior. Finally, this was the first time I had used Future finish, and I think it turned out well.

So, all total, BT-60 upscale Yellow Jacket based off the resources on the JimZ site.








I think I'll try it on a C to start. The later plan will be an E9 or E12. I wonder what it can take in terms a composite motor...

1st... Welcome to the forums!

2nd... A build thread was a good introduction.

3rd... Congrats on the rocket... Looks good to me.

I've got a 2" Estes PSII version that's awaiting fillets, paint and primer, and a BT-60 upscale of the YJ. It was designed to be zipperless, but had problems with it separating on me when I was transporting it (always above the roughest, toughest, most damaging imaginable surfaces). I hope you have better luck w/yours that I did w/mine.

All The Best!
Jim

Thank you Jim! I remember looking at your YORF post when I was starting to think about building this one. You definitely have two nice ones going there.

Adam

Nice job! I remember that one from my earlier foray into rockets. You've got me thinking about trying my own upscaling on a couple of my older favorites from that time frame as well.

Thanks! I love the simple lines of the YellowJacket. I hope you had as much fun building yours as I did mine!

All The Best!
Jim