My Eleanor. Estes Black Brant II #1958

Those familiar with the film "Gone in 60 Seconds", whether the original or inexplicably popular remake, know that Eleanor is the name given to a Ford Mustang that had given the protagonist serious problems in the past. It was the car he couldn't tame; the one that got away, and one that puts fear and apprehension into him when he thinks about it.

Eleanors exist for many people in many disciplines. For me, Eleanor exists as a model rocket, in the form of the Estes Black Brant II, kit #1958.

When I was about 8 years old, my parents finally gave in to my constant staring at the rocket wall at the local hobby shop. They let me pick out a rocket, and I knew which one I wanted. The Black Brant stood out on the wall, beckoning my young eyes with its D engine power, high altitude claim, and its looks. Oh my, those looks. It wore its complicated, striking roll pattern scheme with pride, and its large fins, boat tail, scale antennae, and long, pointy nose stood as a middle finger to any other rocket who thought they were cool. One thing is for sure, this rocket defined cool.

With much help from my dad, we assembled the kit and I couldn't wait to fly it. So much so, that we decided to fly it before painting, the only concession being a single black decal stripe that my dad applied after much begging from myself. I wouldn't have to mask it off later for painting so what did I care, right? Anyway, my dad built a launch controller from Radio Shack parts, we took the rocket to the local school field, and loaded it onto the launch pad. After a countdown, we held the button down. And waited..........turns out a single 6V battery going through 50+ feet of wire doesn't deliver a whole lot of amperage to the igniter. But it delivers enough. A few seconds worth of holding the launch button down later, the Mighty D engine fired. It was the first rocket I had seen go. It was amazing. With a huge (to my ears) roar, the Black Brant shot up like a scalded cat, darn near out of sight. A few seconds later came a "Pop", and the rocket began its journey down. But the field we had flown from wasn't big enough, and even with very light wind, the rocket descended into the adjacent woods. I was crushed. I hadn't even considered the possibility of losing the rocket, and yet there I was, empty-handed, the coolest thing I had ever owned rotting away in the top of a tree.

Fast forward a few years, I had gotten over the Black Brant incident and was enjoying the hobby immensely. I was building my own kits and even doing a halfway-decent job of finishing them. I knew how to select motors based on the field and conditions, and was looking for a new kit to tackle. I saw another Black Brant at the store, and decided it was time to try it again. So I set to work on it, got some parts painted, and.....not sure what happened. It never got finished. Maybe I wasn't happy with the paint, or knew that another D shot would spell doom for it and didn't want to lose it, lost interest in rockets as I discovered RC airplanes.......not sure what happened. In any event, the rocket never got finished.

Having gotten back into the hobby last year, I decided to refurbish some of my old kits and relive some of the magic with my young daughter. This kit left such a vivid impression in my memory, that I knew I had to have one. Sadly, they have been discontinued for some time, but thanks to eBay, a kit found its way into my hands. The kit that got away from me twice before. Once in flight, and once on the build table. It's been hanging from my wall for a little while, and I've decided I have no more excuses left. It's time to tackle Eleanor.

So, here goes.

Absolutely awesome. I'll be watching. The Black Brant II is without a doubt my favorite rocket. I've never had an Estes version, but Santa brought me a Madcow 2.6" fiberglass version that is in the build process. Can't wait to see Eleanor take shape and blast off into the clear blue sky.

First order of business, after reviewing the instructions, was to separate and clean up the plastic parts. In my rocket-building past, this step was accomplished with a dull utility knife or scissors, and not much else. Fortunately I've learned some more advanced techniques since then, like using sandpaper, and my plastic parts are turning out much nicer. An interesting design element of the Estes BBII is that the motor mount tube doesn't sit flush with the end of the boat tail - it actually rests a little inside the opening - so the bottom of the boat tail only needs to be opened enough to allow the motor to pass through.

Here is the wasp waist/boat tail section mocked up. The motor mount tube self-centers when rested against the inside of the boat tail, however, there is no real good mechanism to center the green centering rings that attach the motor mount tube to the main body. You can rest them up against the upper section of the wasp waist, but the best you can do is eyeball it. Also as can be seen, per the instructions, the motor sticks 1/2" out of the bottom of the rocket. Normally I'd consider that to be too far to look good, but the fins stick a ways down as well and the motor is mounted using friction fit. So a little extra purchase when trying to remove a friction-fit D motor certainly won't hurt.

In order to ensure the motor mount tube is properly aligned and not just eyeballed, I decided to glue the entire tail assembly together, and to the main body tube, in one step. First thing I did, while the section was mocked up, was glue the thrust ring in place. After being happy that it had a nice fillet of glue on the top side, I glued the motor mount to the tail cone, then came the lower body tube and wasp waist, and finally the two centering rings were slid on and glued in place. Before the glue had a chance to set on any of the parts, I glued the entire assembly into the main body tube. Here are all the parts in place before I glued the assembly together.

The fin sheet is a solid 1/8" thick. Nice. The real BBII had a diamond pattern taper to the fins, but just having done the same thing to my new Estes Honest John kit, I had no intention of trying to replicate that again. So, easy enough to spread some Carpenter's Wood Filler onto the fin sheet before removing the fins. Die-cut fins too! A blast from the past, though these were very cleanly cut.

The body tube and nose section are coming together. The kit came with an elastic shock cord! Yeah! Unfortunately the shock cord was a measley 26" long. I probably would have lived with that in the past, but I started getting visions of my nose section snapping back and smacking the beautiful roll patterned body tube and denting it. So I swapped the elastic cord out for a new 1/4" x 48" rubber shock cord. That gives me a little bit more of a warm and fuzzy feeling.

PS isn't that nose cone sweet? Of course it is; asking if a long conical nose cone is sweet is like asking if the sky is blue. It just is.

Man I wanted one of these back in tha day. Another one on my short list to clone.

Looking good so far!

Putting the big pieces together. Got the fins and the launch lugs attached. I toyed with the idea of putting on 3/16" launch lugs instead of the stock 1/8", figuring a hot rod like this could use a slightly stiffer launch rod to start a 1000'+ flight. In the end, I decided that the larger lugs just looked weird on the svelte BT-55 body, and stuck with the standard lugs.

My kit only included one toothpick for an antenna. Not a problem though, as I remember them being very fragile. So I found some carbon rod and cut a few pieces to serve as antennae. I'm going to be mounting these TTW of the nose section into wood blocks on the inside, which should provide a much stiffer attachment than stock. Yes they are shorter than the toothpick; the manual has you cutting the toothpick down a ways so these will be the correct length once mounted.

Fun fact: The Black Brant II was classified as a Skill Level 4 kit until 1993, when it was reclassified as an Explorer series (Skill Level 2).

Flyfalcons said:

Fun fact: The Black Brant II was classified as a Skill Level 4 kit until 1993, when it was reclassified as an Explorer series (Skill Level 2).

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Knowledge is power. It looks great! Can't wait to see it finished!

Here's how I tackled the antennae. With several pieces of 5/64" carbon rod (1/16" would be a better size but this was already in my garage, so yeah.......always bet on free), I cut several balsa blocks and several backing plates from a popsicle stick. I then drilled through the balsa blocks at the appropriate angle, glued the backing plates on, then sanded the balsa blocks to match the inside radius of the nose section coupler. After that, I glued the carbon rods into the blocks using CA, and put a drop of CA on the ends of the rods to seal them (Carbon dust being rather unpleasant and all).

Because the tube marking guide couldn't make a full wrap around the body tube, I had an inherant distrust of the locations I marked for the antennae. I sort of eyeballed a compensation for the tube marking guide, not a problem for surface mounting stuff, but before I drilled holes through the tube, I wanted to make sure the locations were accurate. So I cut a few short lengths of carbon rod and very lightly glued them to the body tube to check proper 120-degree alignment. When I was satisfied that they looked good, I drew a small circle around the rods and gently removed them. The unexpected benefit was the CA pulled off a perfect hole-sized section of glassine from the tube. Perfect for verifying where to drill.

The final result of my efforts. I drilled the holes into the tube at 5/64", but they proved to be too small for me to try to thread the carbon rods through from the limited room inside the nose section. So I drilled them out the next size up, 3/32". The extra 1/128" gap around the antenna will easily be filled with glue, wood filler, and primer. I am very pleased with how this turned out, and expect the antennae to last as long as the rest of the rocket.

Excellent work. I may just have to get one of these kits before it's impossible to find.

Highly recommended. The plastic coupler is not something easily found or replicated. Current prices on eBay of $35-40 are pretty reasonable. Of course, a re-release by Estes would be really, really awesome as well. Also in 13mm, 18mm, and 29mm please!

Small triangle filler pieces have been added to fill the gap between the fins and the plastic coupler. Cleanup and paint comes next.

Madcow has a 29mm version...

https://www.madcowrocketry.com/1-6-38mm-mini-black-brant-ii/

I saw that! No boat tail though, sigh. I do like Cosmodrome's 2.6" size for 29mm.....

Well, the Madcow 2.6" fiberglass has a boat tail! It's a beauty. I haven't looked into the Cosmodrome version much yet.

You did scan absolutely everything so you can make repairs, or clone it, right?

The BBII is the source of my catch phrase "Seagulls Beware". I've got three in various stages of assembly, and a pair of upscale clones.

My solution to the toothpick problem was to install paperclips as a TTW replacement.

Kruegon said:

You did scan absolutely everything so you can make repairs, or clone it, right?

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There are already plans available to build a BBII from scratch. I'll be using them in the future for something. I did happen to do one better than scans though...........I found a second kit on eBay. :blush: I like to hedge my bets. I will be sure to get my own scan of the decals before cutting them up, though.

noffie79 said:

Well, the Madcow 2.6" fiberglass has a boat tail! It's a beauty. I haven't looked into the Cosmodrome version much yet.

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Yes, truly gorgeous. I logged onto Madcow's Black Friday sale at 7:01am to find they were already sold out. Turns out it could have just been a problem with their mobile site, as it wasn't listed at all while others were listed even if they were sold out, so I kind of wish I had tried it on my computer. Maybe next year I'll snag one. Don't know how well it'll do at my club field (1000' x 1000' surrounded by trees).

For what it is worth, I posted a plastic parts set for the BBII on Thingiverse to 3D print the nose, boat tail and wasp waist. There are also parametric versions on OpenSCAD so you can scale the parts up or down. The nose and tail are easy enough to make from paper, but that wasp waist is tough - 3D printing it works well!

I have one that I built in 1990, and it is in rough shape. It's a miracle I have it at all. It goes like 6 miles up and comes down 2 towns away every time. In a perfect world, I would refurbish it. In the real world, I don't know if I'll ever have time.

gpoehlein said:

For what it is worth, I posted a plastic parts set for the BBII on Thingiverse to 3D print the nose, boat tail and wasp waist. There are also parametric versions on OpenSCAD so you can scale the parts up or down. The nose and tail are easy enough to make from paper, but that wasp waist is tough - 3D printing it works well!

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Oh really? How well do they compare to the original parts? And are these based on the Estes parts?

Flyfalcons said:

Yes, truly gorgeous. I logged onto Madcow's Black Friday sale at 7:01am to find they were already sold out. Turns out it could have just been a problem with their mobile site, as it wasn't listed at all while others were listed even if they were sold out, so I kind of wish I had tried it on my computer. Maybe next year I'll snag one. Don't know how well it'll do at my club field (1000' x 1000' surrounded by trees).

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Well, with Chute Release becoming available next week, in decent winds, a 1000x1000 field should be just fine for it. I don't plan on sending mine up more than around 2000-2500 feet