Dr Zooch Soyuz

I received this kit as a gift in the July 2015 Secret Santa gift exchange here on TRF. I put this kit on my wish list because the Soyuz is cool, and this kit gets you the look without taking itself too seriously. Works for me. So, without further ado.....

Falcons...the Zooch Soyuz is a neat kit! post pictures!

Cool, I just got the ASTP Soyuz version with the Saturn 1b bundle. I hope to start building it as soon as I finish a few Estes kits, merc redstone, Lynx and Scorpion. Looking forward to the build and comparing notes.

Let's start with step 1. Actually step 1 is inventory. Step 2 has you wrap some card stock around one of the body tubes and then set that aside, so let's start with step 3. After drawing lines on the lower body tube, the engine hook is installed with some card stock reinforcement under it and a piece of masking tape over it. There's also an engine block in there somewhere.

Yes, there's some body tube cutting involved in the kit. The kit includes some card stock that you can wrap up to make a cutting guide, but the Estes tool makes tube cutting a piece of cake.

Here's the lower body tube assembly coming together with two centering rings at the top (along with kevlar line) and a transition wrap that I made in accordance with the instructions. Don't do that! I lined up the alignment lines darn near perfect and while the smaller transition diameter sits tight against the smaller body tube, I found the larger diameter sits wider than it should. If I were to do this again, I'd wrap the transition right up against the centering ring and body tube, after those two parts are glued together. As it is, I'll feather the transition down using a combination of sanding and filler. Here you can see I've done some preliminary sanding just to make me feel a little better about this part.

These are the Spider Beams, which are used to help align the strap-on boosters later in assembly. Anything that helps me with that procedure is highly appreciated. The balsa stock is 3/32" and the instructions say to make them no wider than 1/8", so I did my best to make them 3/32" square.

More cutting stuff! I've been staring at this hobby saw sitting around in my garage for months, not sure why it's out on the table as I haven't used it in about forever. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I found out I get to use it! Yay! Now imagine my sense of irony and frustration when I go to grab the saw and can't find the friggen thing. Like, anywhere. So I did what any red-blooded American should do, and just used a power tool. The scroll saw cut through the balsa block like buttah.

Onto the strap-on boosters. A sense of dread about these faded pretty quickly after I read the instructions and just got to work on them. The main assembly is in two wraps. Just take your time slowly massaging them into a nice round shape. There is an included large dowel that works great for the main tube, and for the upper "witch's hat", I found that using a conical nose cone worked amazingly well to get the card stock to wrap up nice and tight. So add a Crossfire ISX or Black Brant II kit to the list of materials needed to complete the Soyuz. I used a 1983 Maverick. Worked lovely.

Once you get the two wraps, um, wrapped, you stick the witch's hat through the main tube and set the angle so it matches the angle of the transition wrap on the lower body tube. Easy! Well, almost easy. My first wrap isn't perfect but it's not bad either. A small amount of balsa filler or something else easily sandable (don't want to dent the paper even worse!) should help fill a couple tiny dents and maybe also feather the ridge where the two card stock wraps join. Time to build three more of these things!

After the four boosters are done, balsa bulkheads are cut from the stock and glued in. I highly recommend cutting them oversized and sanding down for a perfect fit.

she is looking great Falcons...I struggled with the witches hats...its just a tight cone you have to make there....yours look great!

I did a little sanding and filling on the boosters until common sense took over and I reminded myself that this is supposed to be a fun ant scale card stock rocket. So let's attach the boosters. The manual makes a big deal of lining them up but with the spider beams in place, they went right on. I did have to sand the spider beams down so the tanks would sit flush against the body tube.

Da, darling. Now it's starting to look like a Soyuz. Unfortunately in my excitement to attach the boosters, I forgot to add the lower strips on each booster. That's okay though; I can still add them once the glue dries.

Prepping for the fins. My method for using the marking guide was to slide a motor into the rocket to weigh it down and cut a hole in the center of the guide for the motor to slide through. I then sat the rocket and guide onto a roll of masking tape to help flatten the guide. Seemed to work well. Oh, the rings on the strap-on boosters are on now so let us never speak of that again.

And......fins.

Doing work. The lower engine bells actually aren't as horrible as I thought they would be. The first one didn't turn out well because I lined up the overlap line instead of the top and bottom parts of the cardstock. So when you build yours, remember that the overlap line will be at a different angle than how the piece actually overlaps. Fortunately it was easy to simply cut out a replacement bell so I have sixteen good ones. I timed making one of them from starting the cut to setting down the completed, glued part. Two minutes and three seconds.

Not my idea but I like it. Gluing the engine bells together first before installing them should make that process easier.

Starting construction of the interstage area. The small stop band sits flush against the top of the main body tube, so use that as a guide to make sure that there are no gaps.

The upper interstage coupler requires pushing the balsa block fully into a body tube. To prevent the wood glue from grabbing before the block was in place, I inserted the block further than it needed to go, added a band of glue, then pushed it back into position. This picture was taken just before adding the glue.

The interstage V-braces are small and not easy to work with. I made a balsa angle to use as a jig when gluing the dowels to each other to make the V-shapes. The tough part was aligning them in the lower interstage tube with equal spacing because they kept wanting to fall over. So I just glued the first one in, then figured what the spacing should be and went one by one. The result is what you see here. The alignment sleeve is used to help keep them vertical. Next I'll spread a layer of wood glue to really lock them into position.

Sanity check before locking them into place. The upper tube is sitting slightly crooked but that's okay right now. I just want to make sure the braces fit within the upper tube.

That should qualify as a generous amount of wood glue.

While that's drying, I'm going to skip ahead and work on the upper stage and capsule section. I also need to paint the interstage section before joining it and my paint hasn't arrived yet. This time when doing the paper transitions, I pre-fit them using tape to get the sizing right, then glued the wraps together. I also beveled a small amount of the balsa block to give the wraps more glue surface area and allow for easier smoothing later.

The Launch Escape System is coming together. A dowel is centered in the tube by using a paper wrap. The capsule required some sanding to get the tube to fit, and as you can see, it will require some filling to smooth out. A paper cone will serve as a transition between the tube and the dowel.

I set the upper section onto the interstage bracing for a quick glamor shot. I'm going to do some smoothing before adding the LES detail pieces.

Flyfalcons said:

The interstage V-braces are small and not easy to work with...

Click to expand...

The T20 size ASTP version does not have these, it has a printed paper wrap for the interstage.

I was wondering who was going to be insane enough to build a smaller interstage section than this thing. It is very, very cool when complete but would be tough to do it on a smaller scale.

she is looking awesome so far Falcons!

After some pre-painting of the interstage ares, it's time to glue it together. An alignment sleeve is used to hold everything straight while the glue dries. Because the upper part of the braces are being glued, I am supporting the rocket inverted to prevent drips going down the braces.

Looks great! Did you have any trouble painting the core tube area in between the strap on boosters?