Semroc Starship Vega Build

Another one of my childhood warm and fuzzies like the Orbital Transport. I ordered this on Friday and it was waiting in the mail box this morning. I gotta say, I love these guys.

I'll probably start construction on this tomorrow, but in the interim, here is what you get:

Subscribed! This kit is on my list of rockets I need to have!

esoterikbass said:

Subscribed! This kit is on my list of rockets I need to have!

Click to expand...

One down, one to go for me. I want the Mars Lander too.

I'll be watching! I scratch built one of these not long ago, right before SEMROC came out with the kit.

+1 on tracking this one. I love the retro look of that ship. Bon chance!

So I began work on the Vega tonight. The laser-cut fins are great and essentially dropped out of the frets with minimal amount of sanding of nubs along the edges. However, you'll notice that the balsa is extremely soft and I urge great care while sanding them it's very easy to sand through them quickly if you ham-fist things as I often do. I did have some foresight, I used the fret as a template and cut another set of small fins for, just in case and it was a good thing that I did because I manged to snap one while sanding.


This is one of the smaller fins that I had to replace



I wanted to put a nice knife's edge along the leading edge, but again, use care, I sanded too fine of an edge and it split along the grain and left a divot that I will need to build up the edge again. In retrospect, I wish I would have soaked the leading edge with super thin CyA to hardened it more before I shaped it. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20.


The rest I lived with putting a not-so-knife's edge on.


After the sanding, the shaping, and the cussing, I hit it all with sanding sealer to make it a little more rigid and to seal it for the thinned wood filler. I know some see this as an unnecessary step, but I think it helps in preventing the balsa from warping when you hit it with the thinned filler. Besides, I don't mind the extra work and the end results of the combination of several coats of sealer and then thinned wood filler makes for a smoother finished fin pretty much devoid of wood grain. Or maybe it's just me. So, I'll add a couple more coats of sealer before I call it a night and start on filling tube seams, marking the tube, building the motor mount, and landing gear tomorrow.

Subscribed. Do you plan to strengthen the fin/pod joint?

dpower said:

Subscribed. Do you plan to strengthen the fin/pod joint?

Click to expand...

I probably should, but aside from filling it with a glue fillet and then build it up with wood filler where the pod and fin merges I'm not too sure what to do. I probably should have papered the entire fin just to re-enforce that spot at the top of the fin where it is the most narrow. Now that you brought it up, I can see all sorts of potential for a break right there. At this point I think I should have addressed that, but I think I might be too far along to do anything about it. I will definitely do that on the next one. Dang, wish you would have subscribed and brought this up sooner!:cry::cry::lol:

Actually there are a lot of things I thing I will do differently on this one next time.

Okay, here is where I am at as of today.

Filled the tube seams


Sanded the seams later and found a few spots where the filler didn't um...fill.


While adding the eye hook and nose weight I had the nose in a spring clamp and discovered just how soft this balsa really is! It really put a dent in the nose! So, I filled the dent. I was surprised by this. I have a lot of sealer on this nose and I would have thought that it would have sufficiently soaked in and made the wood more rigid. It didn't obviously.


Began construction of the landing gear. I'll add the bottom pads today.

A great kit ,one that deserves to be in my collection ,so I shall have to order one.

I sure do wish I had bought one of the big ones from Qmodeling when I had the chance.The Andromeda and Nike X were great builds ,I can only imagine the Vega !

Hope they get back on their feet soon.

But for now ,the SEMROC is a fine choice ,and like their other offerings ,I`m sure top notch quality.

I`ll be watching this build.

Cheers

Paul T

You and me both. I was planning on the Nike X first then the Vega.

Anyone know where they're at with getting back into the fight? I was thinking of them this morning and all of the snow they have had that way this winter and then the big blizzard yesterday. Hope they don't have a spring like last time.

Final Leg of Construction

Adding the landing gear pods to the fins is fairly straight forward but you may want to mark the pods with a centering line so that it easier to set the alignment. I came up with the below contraption but in the end it was more of a hassle than it was worth and ended up just eyeballing them. I slathered enough glue into the insert to make repositioning easier and giving myself a little more work time


Once I had the pods positioned where I though they were nice and straight I let them dry while dangling from the can to insure they remained straight.


Completed fins and gear attached


The only drawback I found was the softness of the balsa. as you can see I have gouges to fill and leading edges to rebuild. If I were to do this over again I would use a more rigid balsa or as I mentioned earlier, paper the the fins and canards.

The Need to Watch Conquest of Space

In the end, she builds into a classic-lined rocket and once all the little problems are addressed she'll look really nice.

Looking good. Nice job!

The Starship Vega is such a classic. It's one of two of my childhood rockets to survive with me to adulthood. It's great that SEMROC brought it back as a kit.

That`s a beauty alright ,good work on it !!

I think I`ll replace the soft Balsa with Basswood ,and give the main fins a coat of 20 min. finishing epoxy ,that adds good strength and would resist scaring.

Great looking rocket ,wish I had mine from when I was a kid ,but this seems just as good or better.

Cheers

Paul T

Very nice, Steve!! Are all the fins the same thickness? The radiator fins on the bottom look thinner. Maybe its your airfoiling and the camera angle...

T-Rex said:

Very nice, Steve!! Are all the fins the same thickness? The radiator fins on the bottom look thinner. Maybe its your airfoiling and the camera angle...

Click to expand...

The radiator fins are thinner, but not because that is the way they came with the kit. As you may recall, I replaced them with some that I cut from stock (which I think was a bit thinner than the original pieces). I had problems with the others crumbling along the leading edge and will address in a subsequent addendum.

Thanks for the the kind words! Hope you enjoyed the whole build blog thus far!

Addendum


This morning I received a message from Semroc providing an explanation to the issue of the soft balsa with this kit. It seems that despite their paying for denser balsa, their supplier has continued to send them soft balsa. Semroc offered to replace the kit at no cost to me, but I declined. I feel that this is the nature of the beast and I am comfortable enough in my skills to correct any shortcomings in my example. The fact that Semroc contacted me and offered a replacement means a great deal to me. (and this is not the first time they have done that) This, ladies and gentleman, is the stuff that customer loyalty is made of.

Do not be put-off by the possibility of running into an issue like this with one you may purchase or have purchased. These issues are easily overcome and it builds into a nice example.

The cheapest and easiest method is to paper the fins which will provide a considerable amount of reinforcement and adds "armor" to the fins. Not only that but it makes for a smooth surface devoid of wood grain.

In G. Harry Stine's Handbook of Model Rocketry, this technique is explained and illustrated.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471472425/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Tim Van Milligan's Rocket Design and Construction also covers this technique.
https://www.apogeerockets.com/Rocket_Books_Videos/Books/Model_Rocket_Design_And_Construction

And last but not least, Tim has a video of this technique on Apogee's web site.
https://www.apogeerockets.com/Advanced_Construction_Videos/Rocketry_Video_16

And I suspect that someone has added a thread here on TRF how to do it as well.

The other option is to do as Sodmeister suggested and replace it with a heavier wood.

When I do these blogs it's to discover any issues and post them here so that the next guy can have sort of a heads-up. I hope that I have accomplished this and someone will find it useful.

Sweet build, sir. . . very nicely done.

SEMROC is indeed ,a model of what customer service should be !


Paul T

sodmeister said:

SEMROC is indeed ,a model of what customer service should be !

Click to expand...

Absolutely.

GuyNoir said:

Sweet build, sir. . . very nicely done.

Click to expand...

Thank you sir. Much appreciated.

Just a brief update. Added the fillets, and filled gaps around gear pods. Also fixed the fin that sheared at the top while sanding. Sand it all smooth and she's ready for priming.

she is really turning out nice! great job!

SteveA said:

Just a brief update. Added the fillets, and filled gaps around gear pods. Also fixed the fin that sheared at the top while sanding. Sand it all smooth and she's ready for priming.
View attachment 118037

Click to expand...

After digging out of 17 inches of snow, I sanded all the fillets and filled fins today and it's ready for primer.

Very nice. That Orbital Transport seems to have been an extremely popular product in its day. I built one in 1968 (11 years old) and I remember that was the one I displayed in my room on a launcher because it looked so great. Something about the proportions and details really hit it just right. In any case, TODAY I received my Semroc Orbital Transport and it looks so great. I actually bought two. I'm going to paint one like the "box art" and do another one with maybe a camouflage pattern, or maybe in blacks and grays or olive green and orange. I don't know.

I've also ordered two more of my childhood favorites that, by some miracle, Semroc also manufactures:

https://www.semroc.com/Store/scripts/RocketKits.asp?SKU=KV-38

https://www.semroc.com/Store/scripts/RocketKits.asp?SKU=XCE-KC17 (I might be having memory creep on this one. I THINK I remember building this in the mid 60s, but maybe not. The other one for certain.)

But Semroc certainly is a great company. I still like Estes too though. I'm currently building a Comanche three-stage that is really going to look great.

You'll have to do a build log on that SST. I've contemplated buying one from time to time, but never got around to it. I've had nothing but good luck with Semroc. They have wonderful service. I noticed in another thread that you're getting back into rocketry. Welcome back and I hope you have fun with it again. The hobby and the industry has came a long way since then. It's too bad that the plethora of products available now wasn't available to us back then.

Best wishes
Steve

Thanks Steve. I'm almost done with the Comanche. It was surprisingly difficult building my first rocket since about 1969. I had to relearn (and hopefully improve on) all the things that have to do with filling and sanding and getting everything all lined up. Maybe a three-stage wasn't the best to start on, but it certainly looks good. Next will be the Orbital Transport. By the way, the SST is a fine looking kit. I may actually have to do that one before the OT.

Aside from papering, another way to address soft balsa is to give fins several coats of rattle can lacquer sanding sealer. I tape them upright on cardboard (using tape on the root edges about as far up as I expect the fillets will go) and zap them heavily 3 times. Lacquer tacks-up quickly and I generally don't wait until they're dried to re-coat. When they are dry, I sand and repeat. Fills the grain beautifully and hardens them up a good deal.

While it is not as bullet-proof as papering, it does work well (haven't broken any fins—yet) and I do it on most all of my fins.

As balsa nose cones go, I burnish them with a paper towel doused with thin CA. You gotta work quick, but it gives them a nice, hard shell.

Both techniques will prevent any gouging or dents.

The Starship Vega build is looking great and yes, Semroc is a top-notch company to do business with—the majority of my kits and parts come from them. I have three Semroc birds (feeling like they've been forgotten) on the paint table right now. I should get off my butt and do some sanding.