Cloning the Estes Starship Vega: Rose colored memories

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Hi folks,

The building will recommence this weekend as I'm about done with the fin guide.

Does anyone know where there is a Rocksim file for the Starship Vega? I checked on EMRR, and didn't find one (they did have a "Super Vega" but it didn't have fin pods). I'm planning on sealing up the fins with CA but wanted to check what that does to stability and so forth before I commit.

I could try building it myself in Rocksim, but I'm still a rocksim novice and on this build would prefer to have a good starting point...

Thanks!

Marc
 
Anyway, my plan is to:

1. Sand the fins a bit but leave them square
2. Test fit the nose cones into the fin pod holes
3. Glue the root edges and cutouts
4. CA treat and spot putty (maybe CWF instead of putty?)
5. Attach fins

The smaller triangular fins will be put on first, followed by the main fins and canards.
 
Finally, the build continues.

I sanded the fins with some fresh 320 grit while they were still in the fin sheets. These fins from SEMROC are already very smooth; any rougher paper would not have helped matters.

I cut them out and did the routine stack-sanding to remove burrs and most of the charred laser-cut residue.

On the root edges, I applied a thin coat of glue and allowed it to soak in.

Here are the small fins that go in between the main fins:

Starship Vega  024.jpg

Next, the dreaded task of marking the body tube. Maybe not so dreaded, but for me this is a big source of error. The angle at which I hold the marking pencil or pen, the straightedge I use, how I hold the tube against the straightedge (I use small angle aluminum), all impact the lines. Sure, I'm within a millimeter, but I'm trying to get it perfect.

I started with a reference line using the angle aluminum straight edge. This is the best way I know to get as close to perfect as possible:

Starship Vega  025.jpg

You will also notice I made marks around the tube for the places where I will need to align fins. Further, if you look at the right side (which is the forward end), you will see some non-uniformity in white color of the paper. I soaked some thin CA in there, and in places it resulted in a mottled aspect to the paper color/transparency. Harmless.

I bought the ring set from SEMROC, which included marking guides for the six required fin-lines. This guide set worked fine. I made small marks at each center point of the stamped tick marks, then connected them using my straight edge again (the angle aluminum one). It worked out well:

Starship Vega  028.jpg

Voila! My tube is ready. Now, what about those fins...
 
The Vega fin set contains main fins made out of 1/8" balsa, and a set of smaller fins made out of what looks to be 3/32" balsa. The canard fins are also 3/32" from the same sheet as the smaller fins. Here is a pic of the small bottom fins:

Starship Vega  029.jpg

I decided to put on the smaller bottom fins first, then rotate and do the main fins and canards which share center lines.

I sealed all these small fins with thin CA.

Starship Vega  031.jpg

You can see where I got a bit liberal with the CA and it pooled under the wax paper making some flat spots.

I sanded the hardened fins with first 220 grit then 320 grit:

Starship Vega  032.jpg

I decided not to do any spot putty type smoothing on these... they are small and I would probably screw them up with the repeated sanding processes, instead I'll just glue them straight on. I will be using filler primer later on anyway.
 
Last edited:
I decided not to do any spot putty type smoothing on these... they are small and I would probably screw them up with the repeated sanding processes, instead I'll just glue them straight on. I will be using filler primer later on anyway.


Now that the fins are sealed with CA, have you given any thought to rubbing in enough CWF to fill the grain of a test fin with a finger tip?

After a light sanding with 320 grit you might like what you end up with! Sanding fins is much easyer when their not attached to the body tube.
 
Last edited:
With small, narrow fins like this I kind of prefer to have them mounted before I sand... I find I'm less likely to mess them up. For bigger fins, I agree with the pre-sanding. It was pretty hard to get them pretty smooth after CA sealing without messing up the egdes. I decided to save the rest of it for post-attachment.
 
I used CWF on the attached small bottom fins. Rubbed it in, gave it 45 mins to dry, then sanded with a 220 grit sponge lightly, then a 320 grit sponge and some 320 paper. Nice and smooth. :)

I also tried CWF on the not-yet attached canards. It's drying now... I'm a bit worried about sanding but will give it a try.
 
The journey continues.

I attached the CA-sealed, as yet unfilled lower fins using my new fin gluing guide.

Starship Vega  033.jpg

(see it here). Small fillets of Titebond Molding and Trim Wood Glue (TMTG). After this I decided to take Bradycros up on his suggestion and I slathered on some CWF. After it dried, I sanded it down. Given the fins were solidly attached, it was a breeze to sand the relatively soft CWF on the hardened fins without damaging the wood.

Here's an after picture, which also shows fresh glue put on for where the canard fins will be. I used one of the canard fins as an applicator to give me exactly the footprint of glue I desired.

Starship Vega  039.jpg

Notice the fin will be placed just adjacent to the marking line, rather than centered on it. I try to do this generally, so I can always see the marking line rather than covering it up. In reality, the marked lines were perhaps the biggest source of error in fin attachment. I wound up using my fin guide (which is my "perfect" reference) and then averaged the position across the three lines, so that in the guide, I was getting the overall best position of the tube. Sounds complicated, but actually took me 10 secs to position the tube.

Prior to attachment of the canards, I decided to attempt filling and sanding them. Here they are slathered up with CWF, really rubbed in hard:

Starship Vega  036.jpg

I have piece of paper that's either worn 220 grit or newish 320 grit on a sanding block, I simply carefully moved the fins around on it to get the surfaces smooth, then did the edges very carefully:

Starship Vega  037.jpg

The finished fins are nice and smooth:

Starship Vega  038.jpg
 
Again using my FGG, I attached the canards:

Starship Vega  040.jpg
Starship Vega  042.jpg

The FGG is working out great. I'll detail it in it's own thread. I ran into an unexpected issue in that the bottom small fins (first ones glued) would hit the guides when gluing the bottom big fins, because I couldn't move the guides out farther, since I already put on the fin nose cones (I was pissed when I found this out!) but I eventually used an alternate set of guides with appropriate geometry and it all worked out.
 
The main fins:

I really should have waited to attach the small nose cones to the main fins. This was a huge mistake, attaching the cones before mounting the fins, because it severely limited flexibility of how I used my FGG since the fins were no longer simple planes but had these big lumps in them. We'll just ignore that for now, and presume I planned all this...

It starts with a fit-test of the cones in the fins. They were all uniform and looked like this:

Starship Vega  030.jpg

I wanted to get the cones attached in a symmetrical manner, centered within the plane of the fin. This was hard and I'm not really happy with my results, which are imperfect.

I started by building things up to the proper height to match the height of the bottom of the fin on its side if the nose cone and small BT-5 segment are on:

Starship Vega  034.jpg

I then glued them (wood glue) and did best I could to get it all aligned. It was hit and miss.

What's funny is that if I were designing this, I would have recommended not having a cutout in the fin stock, and instead sliced the nosecones down the middle, and sanded them in the middle a bit, then glued them face-on to the nose cone. I probably would have done a better job this way.

Nonetheless the wood glue dried, and I filled in gaps a bit with TMTG. After it dried, I soaked in CA, and eventually used CWF filler:

Starship Vega  044.jpg

Starship Vega  045.jpg

Eventually I sanded them with lots of different things to get them smooth. I used sponges (150, 180, 220 grit), loose sheet paper (220 and 320 grit), and a couple blocks of various grits. The results:

Starship Vega  046.jpg
 
Did I mention all the fins were coated with wood glue on the root edges before CA sealing/hardening etc.? If not, well, I pre-glued them to let the glue soak in for strong bonding.

Once again, the FGG assisted me in getting the fins on just where I wanted them to be. See that thread for details (once I get around to posting there). Here's the finished product:

Starship Vega  047.jpg

This is one of the few rockets I've ever built where I was satisfied with fin placement. I'm pretty jazzed about how it came out, which is rare for me.

Next up comes gluing in the motor mount. Wish me luck in not getting it locked before final placement...
 
Looking very good so far!!
When I do a motor mount or coupler, I ensure there is a bead or globs of glue, so it stays wet. If you wipe it to a film, it'll grab. Works for me anyway / my story & I'm sticking to it.....
 
This is one of the few rockets I've ever built where I was satisfied with fin placement. I'm pretty jazzed about how it came out, which is rare for ...

Really??? I just eyeballed 15 fins using regular fin wrappers and lines. I just don't get the FGG. :confused2:

Anyway the build looks great so far so who cares what I think! :roll::clap::handshake::cheers:
 
Jeff-

My eye/hand isn't up to the task of attaching fins un-aided, without a huge amount of error. It's one of those tasks my brain wasn't designed for. I see how others do it great, and I just stare... like folks that can speak 10 languages. Not how my brain works!

:wink:
 
Im thinking about doing some sort of spring action shock absorber in the landing struts. Anybody else done something like this?

Marc

The QModeling version has them. I have yet to 'stick the landing'. It is a cool feature, tho. I think with the right size chute you really shouldn't need them, not to mention the spring takes up a good bit of room. Attached is the OR file that I have made that approximates the QM design. (Upscaled a bit)

View attachment 3in_vega_legs.ork
 
T-Rex... thanks for the .ork. I'll take a look.

Meanwhile, I've got the mount in. I used Titebond II. Simple affair:

1. Squeeze some glue into a spiral in the tube, an inch and half or so down. I don't bother to use a qtip to smooth it out or anything. The key thing is to use plenty of glue so it doesn't all soak in and lock while inserting the mount.

Starship Vega  048.jpg

2. Insert motor mount not quite far enough to hit the glue. Squeeze some glue around the aft end of the tube in three or four places.

3. Insert mount rest of the way, using a twisting motion, so glue gets spread around tube while insertion is happening. In this case I had a brief pause as the rear centering ring aligned with the tube and went in, but because there was plenty of glue, things were well-lubricated and there was no lock. I stopped it right where I wanted it to be:

Starship Vega  049.jpg

4. Done. Sit vertically for a day or so for the glue to dry. I did check with penlight and saw a nice fillet of glue around the forward centering ring, quite uniform, and it made me happy.

Starship Vega  050.jpg
 
Last night I glued the rings onto 2" dowel sections. The rings and dowel material were purchased from SEMROC.

I started with a tiny bit of glue at the appropriate points, pushed on the rings, added a bit more glue after the first dabs set up a bit. Here's a picture:

Starship Vega  051.jpg


After that was dry, I used some TMTG around the mating points for the rings and dowels, and some Carpenter's wood glue around the bottom ring and up a millimeter or two on the dowel, to get a good hard coating to survive landing impacts.

I swabbed some Titebond II around the insides of the fin pod tubes, then pushed the ring/dowel assemblies through (causing a fillet to form around the upper ring where it meets the tube). I then pushed the tube onto the fin nose cone and made sure everything was seated straight. Repeat process for the other two.

Starship Vega  052.jpg
(oops, I uploaded the wrong picture... see below after some text)
I put a dab of glue on the underside of the bottom most ring and put on the little disc that makes the bottom of the landing strut assemblies. Here are some pics of the build-complete rocket:

Starship Vega  055.jpg

Starship Vega  056.jpg

There will still be some filleting to do on the inside of the tube pods (tomorrow...) and I've added some CWF to rough or low spots I found on the fins. I'll sand that down tomorrow as well.
 
Last edited:
I'm going to take my time in the finishing of her... usually at this point I rush it but for this bird it will be slow going.

You are a wise man, Marc.

I have a similar problem, I get toward the end and just want to get it done and move on. The fins on my Vega aren't even filled, looks a lot like the one I built in high school.
 
I'm going to take my time in the finishing of her... usually at this point I rush it but for this bird it will be slow going.


Taking your time to fill and smooth everything at this point in the build will aid tremendously in getting the blemish free and smooth paint job you desire.

Why would there be any need to hurry? After all, this is supose to be relaxing

The build is coming alond nicely!
 
Taking your time to fill and smooth everything at this point in the build will aid tremendously in getting the blemish free and smooth paint job you desire.

Why would there be any need to hurry? After all, this is supose to be relaxing

The build is coming alond nicely!

Hi Todd,

Will do, or at least, will try to. I'm about to head down to my rocketry dungeon and do a bit of sanding. I put some CWF on last night right before bed, in the regions where there were imperfections.

Next up is a Blue Bird Zero. Having another rocket in the "obvious progress, instant gratification" mode makes it easier for me to do the little touches on surface prep. That, and the fact that it's 35F and windy out, so no spraying filler primer today anyway.

Meanwhile I took another look at the Bradycros Fin Beveler, and bookmarked the page (since I had to clear out my overflowing PM box). I will be constructing something inspired by your design in the near future. I want to bevel some of the BBZ fin surfaces. Your design is the best thing I've seen. A few things are not intuitively obvious to me, regarding the angle of bevel (despite several reads of that page's posts), but I'm going to mock up something and have at it.

Meanwhile, I have a date with some sandpaper. Oh... that sounds bad. :y:Everyone, please take that comment in the non-perv sense. :wink:

Marc
 
Back
Top