V2 00000

Here's my V2:



I've always wanted a V2, and I wanted a LPR one for the parks I fly in. I could never find the Semroc X kit, but the plans are available on line. One day I googled the nosecone, body tube, and boat tail, and to my surprise found the nosecone and boat tail were available from BMS, and the body tube was a 4" piece of BT-55. The fin pattern was available in the plans, so I ordered a nosecone, boat tail, piece of BT-55, and a sheet of 3/32" balsa.

I went with the semi scale fins. Cutting the fins wasn't the hardest part--the hardest part was cutting the launch lug pieces for the turbo pumps and pull out plugs.
To get it to balance where the directions said I cut up some small pieces of an old tire balance weight I had and glued them into the nosecone.

I was going to paint as White Sands #12, but my daughter wanted me to paint it camouflage. I used craft paints and mixed up colors that were close, thinned with future and windshield washer fluid, and airbrushed them on.

Hope to fly it next weekend.

Mighty nice little V2

Nice!

Where did you find the fin pattern?

It looks great!

Thanks for the compliments! I had some bleed through from the camouflage, so I tried to brush paint to cover a few spots. It's a 3 foot model.

The fin pattern is in: https://www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/estes/k-22.pdf

View attachment k-22.pdf See last page.

Cutting fins and sanding was a bit intimidating at first, but it turned out to be a big confidence boost. Now I know I can cut my own fins.

As a fringe benefit, I also have a big sheet of balsa (not to mention the scraps I have laying around from kits), launch lug material, some BT-55 tubing, and some BT-20 tubing left over. My local hobby shop is reducing many rocketry parts and kits, so I got a bunch of balsa nose cones in BT-55 size, parachutes, and other odds and ends. So I'm building this:


View attachment viking 7 Sounding Rocket.ork

and this:


View attachment Vanguard TV-0.ork