I am building one with my kids right now.
A few observations, notes, and suggestions:
1). Dry-fitting the shuttle bulkheads, as per instructions, is virtually impossible: far too many moving pieces to keep aligned with either 2 or 4 hands. It's far easier to start gluing the bulkheads with PVA, which adds some viscosity and stabilizes the parts' attachment position, then continue on gluing the wishbones. The wood glue sets in slowly, and remains pliable for 15-30 minutes (depends on which one you use), so there is plenty of time to fix alignment issues.
2). Use masking tape to help align things just right, until the glue cures.
3).
Laminating wings helps to add extra strength to the multi-section balsa panels, and will help with durability. I also CA-ed the exposed fin edges, and sanded them smooth.
I followed the same process with Sirius Interrogator build a while back, and after 20+ flights (some less than graceful), am yet to experience any structural damage to the fins.
4). Last but not least, we decided to upgrade from decorative, to fully functional boosters!
Parallel staging and booster ejection will be implemented by utilizing Apogee's strap-on booster pods that will burn 18mm Estes BP motors (B6-0 or C6-0), and separate upon burn out.
Boosters are held in place via a hook connected to the booster/rocket nose cone. Once ejection charge fires, the boosters' nose cones will be propelled upward, and take the boosters with them for a safe descent on streamers.
If we time things right, the main 24mm motor will continue burning for a second or two longer, providing a nice visual treat of booster separation, followed by extended main engine burn, followed by shuttle separation and glide down. In all, the package should descent back to earth in four (4) pieces.
The only open question is whether we keep the original (decorative) SRB boosters tubes in place and add +2 of our own, or cut out the decorative tubes and position our functional strap-on boosters exactly in place of the fake ones.
The whole kit is way too complex to model out in OR or RS, so we will just have to eye-ball that decision.
Any suggestions?
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