Excelsiorrocketry.com down? I need decals!

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CORZERO

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Excelsiorrocketry.com

Is this site down temporarily or for good? I need Estes Phoenix Missile kit # 1380 decals from him!!!

This is a huge bummer if he no longer sells! I purchased a sheet for a Black Brant II from him and they were better than the Estes decals. I could have sworn I was browsing this site a month or so ago???

If anyone has his contact info I would greatly appreciate it!
 
His ALPS printers are failing and he has decided not to continue patching them together. One of the previous times that things went down, he spent a lot of time/effort/money to send a printer to Japan for a repair (the only way to have them serviced), and the thing broke again in a month. So he decided it wasn't cost effective to continue. He may still have some decals preprinted in stock yet - he did keep his site up for a while to sell the things he did have. Several people, myself included, went through what he still had and bought up what we though we might use at some point. Probably after things depleted (I would guess), he pulled the site down. So, this is not a temporary outage, that portion of his business has been shuttered. That said, he might still be willing to try certain things - he printed new custom upscale decals for me after he had announced that he wasn't doing it anymore. Mine were only black & white, so they came out OK. Colorized stuff was degrading in quality.
 
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My guess is that it is temporary.

You can PM him, his handle is "sandman". He doesn't post here much.

It's not temporary (as far as new decal production goes) from what I've read.

He's also stated over on YORF that he's done here
 
Scheisse!!!!!

What am I supposed to do? Any suggestions? I REALLY REALLY need this sheet for my build!

Included in the Estes Phoenix Missile kit #1380 I purchased from Ebay was a sheet that, until now, I assumed were waterslide decals. I set everything up today to begin applying them and find that they are pressure sensitive! This is BAD news! How am I supposed to line up 40 pressure sensitive decals and not screw it up???? I have put so much work into this build! This is truly a sad day.

Can we crowd fund him or something? Surely there was a demand? How much will it cost to fix his printers?
 
Scheisse!!!!!

What am I supposed to do? Any suggestions? I REALLY REALLY need this sheet for my build!

Included in the Estes Phoenix Missile kit #1380 I purchased from Ebay was a sheet that, until now, I assumed were waterslide decals. I set everything up today to begin applying them and find that they are pressure sensitive! This is BAD news! How am I supposed to line up 40 pressure sensitive decals and not screw it up???? I have put so much work into this build! This is truly a sad day.

Can we crowd fund him or something? Surely there was a demand? How much will it cost to fix his printers?

The Phoenix Missile may be common enough for him to have pre-printed versions available.

BTW, Mark (Stickershock23) is back so if you can go vinyl (they're easier than you think), that is also an option.
 
What about inkjet waterslide decal paper from Amazon and printing them myself? Any experience with that? Anyone have any input as to image sharpness and quality? I have an instructions file I downloaded from https://www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/estes.htm that includes a decal image.

Any thoughts?

I have an email out to Gordon.
 
What about inkjet waterslide decal paper from Amazon and printing them myself? Any experience with that? Anyone have any input as to image sharpness and quality? I have an instructions file I downloaded from https://www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/estes.htm that includes a decal image.

Any thoughts?

I have an email out to Gordon.

Yes I have done that.

Most of all the graphics on this rocket are waterslides I made myself.

Initiator.Before.Liftoff.jpg

Initiator.F40.Liftoff.jpg

Greg
 
Crap! I was on the site just yesterday looking at the Estes Shrike decals. The main sheet was out of stock while the one with the meatball decals was. I have never made my own and have no idea how too. The original ones I have are too old and yellowed to use.
 
The problem is that he was using OOP ALPS printers to print all those great decals that had great opacity, silver & gold accents, and of course printed white as well. No other laser or inkjet type printers can do that, so anything that you print yourself will not have the same level of finish quality. His decals were almost as good as the original screen printed decals - almost, because they scratch a lot easier. But in other ways, some of his stuff was actually better looking.

The issue is that the ALPS printer was a home-use grade machine, not designed for the duty cycle of commercial printing. They have complex, multipoint heads that are delicate and expensive to replace. They used to be sold and serviced by Best Buy, but since they don't exist anymore, that's no longer an option. Gord explained to me that a group of the original staff from ALPS bought up the tooling and repair equipment and started their own business to handle service. But they are Japanese, and thus located in Japan. But that's the only choice. But as the printers are OOP, parts are aging, spares are dwindling, and the costs to keep them going are rising. The hassle in keeping the machines in service wasn't worth what he could get out of them, and the repairs aren't necessarily long-term fixes either, as I pointed out before. So, crowd-sourcing doesn't really help the long term issue.

You can buy an ALPS printer on eBay still, even ones that claim to be reconditioned. Gord apparently has a number of them. But they are old enough that they aren't long term reliable anymore.

Now, back to the issue of your Phoenix, maybe someone has the decals that they'll part with (I'm not selling mine, I'm redoing my Phoenix as we speak). But even if not, the color combination might lend itself to printing your own decals on a laser or inkjet. The trouble there is that printer design assumes that you're printing on white or near-white media. There is no white in the ink. The colors are blended so that they look correct when printed on white backing. So, home-printed decals won't work as well on darker color models. However, your rocket is to be painted white, so it might work out.
 
It's not that hard. You print decals using an InkJet printer onto decal paper. Then you spray 2 to 3 coats of Krylon clear acrylic spray and let dry 3 days. Then voila!

Greg

Presuming that your rocket's base color doesn't show through or the decal needs to be white.
 
Does he still? Its been a long time since the website was updated, its hard to tell if he's still doing business based on what you can see. What sort printer does he use?

I couldn't tell you. It's been years since I've ordered from him. I ordered some Mercury Redstone decals and I was pleased with their quality.

Greg
 
Does he still? Its been a long time since the website was updated, its hard to tell if he's still doing business based on what you can see. What sort printer does he use?

I couldn't tell you. It's been years since I've ordered from him. I ordered some Mercury Redstone decals and I was pleased with their quality.

Greg

Someone paid for a TangoPapa ad in the July/August 2015 issue of the NARs Sport Rocketry magazine. A pretty good indicator I'd say. :rolleyes:
 
Presuming that your rocket's base color doesn't show through or the decal needs to be white.

Yep. You have to make allowances and spot color will be a problem as well.

They do have white decal paper, which I have used (see the silver portion of the fins on the rocket I referenced). It works pretty well.

But it's one of the few alternative in an ALPS-free world.

Greg
 
I do not know where you all think Gordo is all washed up?? Did anyone here bother to read his post on YORF?? He only lost the domain name and wants it back. A domain name company out of AU has snapped it up. I can only imagine he did not renew it in time.
 
I don't know that anyone is saying he's washed up, but he is out of the decal printing business from everything that we've seen and heard. Not all of us frequent YORF, so if he doesn't come here anymore, not everyone will be up on the latest details. Do you have a link, or should we just attempt to browse until we find what you're referring to?
 
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