Estes Curvilinear

This is a cute little rocket, launches on mini engines. Easy to build, I swapped elastic for a kevlar harness, otherwise built stock.

Learned how to add the outer fin ring part in Open rocket, used a coupler and sized and located it to fit. Tried to match the colors on the packaging, purple nose and fins, silver body and black fin ring.

The kit chute is the orange estes. Haven't opened the package yet so used a 12 in plastic in the OR file.



View attachment Estes Cuvilinear.ork

RodRocket said:

This is a cute little rocket, launches on mini engines. Easy to build, I swapped elastic for a kevlar harness, otherwise built stock.

Learned how to add the outer fin ring part in Open rocket, used a coupler and sized and located it to fit. Tried to match the colors on the packaging, purple nose and fins, silver body and black fin ring.

The kit chute is the orange estes. Haven't opened the package yet so used a 12 in plastic in the OR file.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the Open Rocket file for the Curvilinear...I wasn't able to find a RockSim file either, until I found your post.

I was just looking at this and wondering ...
1. What would happen if I stuffed a C6-5 in there?
2. Wonder if anyone's created an ork file yet?

...To the sims! Thanks!

And it looks like if you added some weight in the nose, a C6 (or even one of them fancy-pants Apogee 18mm Ds) would send it up really, really fast.
View attachment Estes Cuvilinear Beefy.ork

What is the length of the nose cone from the shoulder to the tip? Thanks

TNmike said:

What is the length of the nose cone from the shoulder to the tip? Thanks

Click to expand...

I measure 4.75" of exposed nosecone

I built mine with an 18mm engine mount - don't recall how much nose weight I added but it couldn't have been very much. Flies perfect on an Estes B6-4. It's awaiting paint along with a bunch more finished and mostly flown LPR and MPR models.

I just started building this rocket. The only problem so far was that the little piece of balsa between the body tube and the ring fin is a bit fragile and I had one break off. I fixed it by over-engineering some stringers down the sides. I am now to the point of attaching the fins. How hard was it to get the ring fin on without breaking the fins?

closet astronaut said:

This is a cool little rocket, this is what I did with mine, I added a little to it:
View attachment 118992

Click to expand...

4.5 years late, and I don't know if closet astronaut visits here anymore, but I would just like to say that is really great.

I didn't have a problem with breaking any fins but I papered them so that probably prevented it. I've also flown it on a 1/2 A using an adapter - flies nicely on mini engines too, draggy enough you can see the whole flight but light enough to acelerate so as not to weathercock.

Update: note I made during the build says I added .5oz of nose weight.

Just finished my Curvilinear, it's hanging upside down while the last coat of future dries.

goose_in_co said:

Just finished my Curvilinear, it's hanging upside down while the last coat of future dries.

Click to expand...

Nice work on the paint job! I just pulled this one out of the build pile and put the engine mount together yesterday. Did you paint the ring before you glued it in? That's what I'm thinking of doing.

cheers - mark

Hey Mark,
Thanks for the kind words, you are seeing the better side of the rocket...:blush:

Here is the best picture that I have of the build process during paint. I installed all 4 fins, and then painted the ring fin and the rest of the rocket separately. The picture is a poorly lit image of the body with paint and without the ring fin. After all parts were painted, I folded over a piece of sandpaper and sanded the slots so that the ring fin would slide in. Then I used a drop of gel CA glue on each fin to set it in place.

hope this all helps

Goose