Fun with a DW

Following my victory in the August Fliskits Design of the Month Contest, I received a Deuces Wild as part of the prize. A number of other projects have been distracting me but I've finally made a start. So, let's have some fun...

Here's what's in the bag:


First order of business: look at the instructions, laugh maniacally and put them away. I won't be needing those!

My name is BT-20, holder of a thrust ring, mount for an 18mm motor, brother of a twin, and we will have our places in this rocket or the next.


Coming soon: what happened to the cone.

Oohhhhh, this is gonna be a fun one!

Using the DOM prize money in the form of Flis Bucks can be very dangerous. Who knows what a DW kit bash can Morf into.op:

Daddyisabar said:

Using the DOM prize money in the form of Flis Bucks can be very dangerous. Who knows what a DW kit bash can Morf into.op:

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I do. You're just going to have to keep watching and find out.

Included in the kit is a wooden cone. There's not much of a choice about what to do with that. A dose of thin CA to try to strengthen it a bit. Then seal, sand, seal sand, seal sand; prime, sand, prime, sand. And finally it looks usable.


The body tube is too long, so it's been cut in two. (I also put the cone onto the body tube when sanding it so I didn't sand too much off the back end, then wrapped some newspaper round it to mask the tube when spraying primer onto the cone. The masking was not 100% effective.)


Coming soon: when one is not enough...

I sure hope that nose cone is going on the front of the rocket and the motors in back. A nice, safe rocket with a computer simulation you can confidently take to the RSO table and prove stability. But with two body tubes, one nose cone and with parts and instructions being discarded up front, it doesn't look good.

There will only be one body tube. But it still looks a bit too long, so off comes another bit.


Hmm... on second thoughts, maybe it was right first time. Not to worry; from the first piece of tube to be removed, I cut a short piece, slit it lengthwise and make a coupler:


That gives me an idea. This rocket only has one cone, and that's wooden. I like paper cones. I can do all sorts of things with them. So I make another coupler and use it as the foundation for one cone, which has teeth around one end. It's also a lot easier to stick a piece of tube into a paper cone, so I make another one with a thinner tube.


And then I put the whole lot together. (Don't worry that it looks a bit squint, it's not glued together yet.)


Coming soon: fins and things.

Now for some fins. And, since I like paper cones, let's have another one.



Hmm... there may be something important missing, but I'm not sure exactly what...

Coming soon: the true shape becomes apparent.

adrian said:

Now for some fins. And, since I like paper cones, let's have another one.

View attachment 154318

Hmm... there may be something important missing, but I'm not sure exactly what...

Coming soon: the true shape becomes apparent.

Click to expand...

The only things I see missing are real fins, motors, motor mounts. motor retention, recovery system, launch lug, nose weight, paint, decals and any chance of getting past the RSO.op:

Ah, that's what was missing - another set of fins!



It is now obvious why I carefully avoided referring to the balsa cone as a nose cone. It is also obvious that this is to be a scale model of a missile. But which one? Bragging rights to the first person to correctly identify it before the next installment, especially since nobody got it last time I asked about the same missile.

Daddyisabar said:

The only things I see missing are real fins, motors, motor mounts. motor retention, recovery system, launch lug, nose weight, paint, decals and any chance of getting past the RSO.op:

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Recovery system will not be part of this thread. I don't fit parachutes permanently to rockets; they live in my range bag and are fitted shortly before the rocket is launched. The same parachute can thus be used for more than rocket, sometimes during the same flying session.

Paint and decals will happen when everything else is done. Nose weight will certainly happen because an initial attempt with Rocksim puts the CP somewhere ahead of the new fins; fortunately it's easy to stuff weight into a hollow paper nose. Launch lug can happen now that fins are in place. The motor mount may be a bit of a problem...

Back in May, I visited Flugplatzmuseum Cottbus, where among the exhibits were these missiles in an outdoor display case:


For reasons which will soon become clear, the top one interested me, and as the missile was not labelled and I did not recognise it, I posted this thread. The massed intellect of TRF also failed to identify the missile. Fortunately, another completely unrelated thread led to a Russian website with pages on lots of all their missiles from early Cold War to near present day, from which I got the designation "K-5". A bit more Internet hunting revealed that the missile is the Kaliningrad K-5M, alias RS-2U, also known in the West as AA-1 Alkali.

Now, let's take a closer look...


Some people have stuck a Deuces Wild style motor mount onto an otherwise scale model for entertainment. Here's a scale model which requires a Deuces Wild style motor mount. It isn't quite to scale, though. A scale model of the nozzle would be a 13mm mount, but a pair of 13mm A's aren't going to send this model very far; in fact, it would probably blow its nose after it was back on the ground. So I fitted the original Deuces Wild's 18mm mounts, though they needed to be shortened by 15mm to fit. They'll still hold the motors well enough, though the model will look rather less accurate once the motors are sticking out of the mounts. In any case...


Coming soon: the little things.

If the motor sticks out a bit just flame it up with some yellow tape and a red Sharpie. The Zooch fliers won't mind. Nice to see a mid canted motor scale rocket.

I'm fairly new returning to model rockets and very new to posting on the forum (though I've been lurking/learning for months) and have to say that this is the coolest thing I've seen here yet.
You're an inspiration to novitiates.

A really interesting scale project! So those are the main motor nozzles?

Loving this project! Very cool to find a real rocket with a deuce style mount. Very proud to have it CALLED a "Deuce style mount" as I doubt the designers of that rocket called it that lol

dpower said:

A really interesting scale project! So those are the main motor nozzles?

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They must be. There's no nozzle in the tail cone as that's where the the guidance system was housed. The K-5 used beam riding guidance. The basic idea here is that the missile doesn't look forward at the target, it looks backwards at the aircraft which launched it. The launcher illuminates the target with a very narrow radar beam and the missile tries to stay inside it. So the K-5 was only of any use against something slow like a bomber, and then only at modest range because the nearer a beam riding missile gets to its target, the further it gets from its launcher, so the wider becomes the radar beam and the less accurate becomes the missile.

jflis said:

Loving this project! Very cool to find a real rocket with a deuce style mount. Very proud to have it CALLED a "Deuce style mount" as I doubt the designers of that rocket called it that lol

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Probably not since when the K-5 was designed, the Deuces Wild didn't exist and neither did you. Nevertheless, when I saw the thing in the museum and spotted the nozzles, the first thing which went through my mind was "Deuces Wild". I originally planned to build it from spare parts, though the only suitable tail cone was the one from a Deuces Wild. I'd ordered one from a local vendor but it never showed up, so when I got the prize for the DoM contest I took the chance to get the real kit, with the specific intention of turning it into this.

I'm now part way through adding the details, and you're soon going to find out why the fin tips are that funny shape...

Various details are now added - fin-tip pods, covers for steering links to the fins, tail spike, fabric protection near the nozzles, strips on the aft nose cone, bands round the nose tip, and a conduit on the underside. Also visible is one of the launch lugs, in the same place as one of the real missile's attachment points to its launch rail. Another is hidden between the main fins.


Underside view showing the conduit with paper caps on the ends.


The fin fillets need a bit more work, but the model is looking more like the real thing...

Coming soon: enough gluing, time for some painting.

That's looking fantastic!

Is that tail spike what I think it is? Metal? :y: Super strength is needed but won't you poke your eye out with that?:cyclops: How many times will you "stick" the landing?

Daddyisabar said:

Is that tail spike what I think it is? Metal? :y: Super strength is needed but won't you poke your eye out with that?:cyclops: How many times will you "stick" the landing?

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The tail spike is plastic. There's no metal in this model. Hopefully the spike will survive contact with the ground, but if not, it can be drilled out and replaced. Failing that, the one I saw at the museum was missing the spike (and also the front part of the nose, which would have been the fuse of the original missile), so losing the spike without replacing it won't be a total disaster.

I think a nail or solid plastic would work with no problem. The more weight up front the better,

Are there any cool paint schemes on this one other than the old Soviet "I don't know if it is grey or green?"

Daddyisabar said:

Are there any cool paint schemes on this one other than the old Soviet "I don't know if it is grey or green?"

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The original photo I took at the museum could be "I don't know if it is grey or green", but the close-up of the nozzle shows it to be light grey, so that's how I've painted it - the same shade as my SA-2, in fact. The forward part of the nose is a slightly lighter shade, as it is on the museum specimen. Not going onto the model are the black stripes and text on the museum one as the Russian word means something like "training" or "practice" so those markings would indicate an inert practice round - very suitable for a safe museum display, not very suitable for a flying model. The motor nozzles and ends of the fin-tip fittings are painted gold to match the museum one, though. The fuse, which is missing from the nose of the museum specimen, is painted based on a photo I found in the Wikipedia article. So is the light tan tail spike.



The first flight report won't be until some time next year as our club is now shut down for the Christmas holiday.

Nice model! After it's painted you might consider applying some sodium silicate solution downstream of the deuce motors. This will help protect the aft-end from the exhaust. BP motors have especially dirty exhaust. In my experience the silicate solution is transparent over the paint. I've then had to clean up some after a launch and apply again. I bought the solution on the internet. Considering the shipping cost it is a little bit expensive, but at the same time the large bottle I've got is a life-time supply.

Daddyisabar said:

The only things I see missing are real fins, motors, motor mounts. motor retention, recovery system, launch lug, nose weight, paint, decals and any chance of getting past the RSO.op:

Click to expand...

Fins: check. Motor mounts: check. Motor retention will be by the usual method for many of my scale models, i.e. tape. Launch lug, check. Nose weight won't be visible. Paint, check. Decals...

... check.

The RSO may need to be bribed with vodka, or failing that, primed with vodka.

Looks great. Take a shot of tater water and push the button!

Did it fly or did the RSO suddenly go dry?

?????

By the time the K-5M was complete, our club had shut down for the winter. Weather permitting, we start launching things again on the first Saturday in February. But the K-5M has "flown" by string propulsion - it passed its swing test just fine.

Thanks for the update. Hopefully the skies will clear.

Everyone was hoping the monster had gone away. Or fallen into a deep pit from which it would never emerge.

But it was only sleeping. Awaiting its chance. Watching for a break in the Scottish weather. And finally it got its chance...

The sun finally broke through last Saturday, and the K-5M took its rightful place on the pad:


Both motors lit, and away it flew:


In fact it rolled quite a bit, at least to start with, and the early part of that double smoke trail looked almost like DNA. Nevertheless the K-5M was fully stable, and recovered safely on a 12" parachute. Which means it will get to fly again...