Rheintochter / Rhine Maiden

Well I have been yakking about doing this one for ages - all my projects though take me a long time to get moving because I like to run all possible plans in my head before even putting pen to paper. I like to toy with various configurations, look at lots of pictures and think it all through, read a fair bit and then finally start translating what's in my brain into drawings and finally into hardware.

I now have this one down to a technical drawing and have ordered up some bits today from Fliskits. My design gives a rocket of about 25" in length (I may have to make some small mods as I go along which will increase or decrease the length and a span of about 13.5" She will be built around a BT55 tube as a core with BT60 and BT70 outer tubes to give it the girth. Fins will be lightweight balsa - the thinnest I can make work clad in paper for strength and she will be single stage powered off a single D12-3.

I had hoped to make it a cluster of 4 or maybe 5 motors but adding the width to accommodate more than a single motor started to create a bit of a monster both in body width and also fin span. Rhine Maiden has such huge fins that as the body size goes up she rapidly becomes very large in span - much bigger than would be easily transportable.

The design has been a bit harder than I expected because with such big fins and those forward canards she needs a lot of power and nose weight - more power means bigger motors at the back end and then more nose weight cancelling out the advantage of the bigger/clustered motors. I know none of this is insurmountable given a large amount of space and a bigger brain with more folds than the one I have but rather than build a megabucks monster which may be hopelessly unstable and beyond my resources anyway I decided to go a bit smaller.

My expectations are that she will be a slow and (very) low flier and will be sport scale with slightly smaller canards and a modified rear end - the original had 7 rear end motors - I have to come up with something that gives a good representation of a 7 nozzle cluster but is in fact a single motor. I have a plan for that (several actually) and will work round that. At this stage I will probably not build on the small nozzles around the upper stage to keep the weight down and simplify the design.

This is probably a premature post but I thought I would stick a stake in the ground. I will start posting pics of the design as soon as I start the build and of course add to this with a build thread.

Simulation ???? I don't do sim - too thick to calculate all the variables so I will just build and hope for a good outcome and use my intuition about stuff.

I really wanted to do Sea Dart first but the Nazi SAM has just kind of grabbed my imagination more - its just a bigger challenge. I have a week off work coming up and will start building then probably.

Sound like a fun project. Look forward to your build.

I took a few pictures of the Rheintochter while I was at Udvar-Hazy last year with the exact same intentions. I would love to do this in HPR, maybe around 6" diameter or so. You're welcome to the pictures if they'll help with your project. Send me a PM if need the higher res originals. Good luck and looking forward to seeing how yours turns out!

Looks really unstable with those nose mounted fins.

You must feel the Force flowing through you. Between you, the Rheintochter, the launch Pad, the rocks. Many mind sims, some hope sims and a bit of luck. I foresee you doing a great job as your skill level has been rising quickly. Maybe consider laminating two pieces of balsa to a thin birtch core for the fins. Then staining them to bring out the wood grain and then a thin coat of finishing epoxy for strength and shine. If you can get your hands on a 24mm AT or CTI motor you will have much more power for not much more weight than the D12-3. TTW fins, a very big yet light chute/s, pivot the canards to help CP? So many problems to solve and so many decisions to be made. Go for it! You have the tools and the talent.

Not so much the 'force' mre just smug self confidence smarter peeps would walka way i am sure

I did think of having a go at this ina. Natural chrome and bare wood but decided its going go be hard enough as it is without pushing my luck on a wood and chrome finish. I am going for late war Luftwaffe in two tone green with or maybe white with red bands as oer a pic I have off the web of one of these in a Polish museum. Thanks for the pics by the way Stan they are useful. I have been pic collectimg for some time now to give me a feel for this but more data is always good.

The canards arent as big as they appear really when its done to a scale, the model will have slightly smaller ones. I did think of the canards being mounted on some lightweight steel wire which would allow them to swivel and having the swivel high on the canard root edge so its natural inclination would be to be vertical BUT discounted the idea...too complicated...just heft in some nose weight, make sure the canards are in line and reduce their size a bit os my gut feeling.

I have to build for D sizes as Es are next to impossible to get in the UK and very expensive and going the reloadable route is, for this project, too much expense. I looked at reloadable a few months back but the cost/risk ratio was not good. My only flying field is relatively small which limits power so reloadables make not much sense for me.

Your build threads are always entertaining, and this looks like a really challenging project. I'll be watching closely.

Astro-Baby said:

I did think of having a go at this ina. Natural chrome and bare wood but decided its going go be hard enough as it is without pushing my luck on a wood and chrome finish.

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The wood in the pictures looks like quarter-sawn oak. If you *do* decide to go with wood fins, I can send you some quarter-sawn sycamore. Oak has a fairly porous grain structure. You could use oak for the fins, but the porosity would make the wood weak in the micro-lumber sizes needed for scale. Sycamore *looks* like quarter-sawn oak, but is not porous. I've got some cut in 1/16" and 1/8" thicknesses. It's quite hard (it's well seasoned). An alternative would be to laminate some mahogany veneer.

One of our club members (Chris Greco) has build a BEAUTIFUL Rheintocher-R1 Scale model I believe base on BT-80 Main body. Flies Staged with Core D12-0/D12-3 with 6 A10-3T's Canted 25° around the aft end of each stage. The detail and workmanship are outstanding. Sorry I don't have any pictures.

I found one.

Micromeister said:

One of our club members (Chris Greco) has build a BEAUTIFUL Rheintocher-R1 Scale model I believe base on BT-80 Main body. Flies Staged with Core D12-0/D12-3 with 6 A10-3T's Canted 25° around the aft end of each stage. The detail and workmanship are outstanding. Sorry I don't have any pictures.

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That would be cool to see!

Micromeister said:

One of our club members (Chris Greco) has build a BEAUTIFUL Rheintocher-R1 Scale model I believe base on BT-80 Main body. Flies Staged with Core D12-0/D12-3 with 6 A10-3T's Canted 25° around the aft end of each stage. The detail and workmanship are outstanding. Sorry I don't have any pictures.

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I found the photo (posted after you post) but at the time he hadn't worked out the ignition of the upper stage A10's. Did he fly it at a later launch?

I've been looking at some Photos of this thing. I've also seen Video somewhere where someone made a Beautiful Rocket out of one.
"Just Do It!"
That was my Motto when I was a Kid. I've since learned it was a really bad one, but for a Rocket Build, it still rings true!

Gonna' launch a Chinese Lantern now.

I'm just going to be Honest, and tell you that this Museum Replica does not accurately represent Reality.
The Struts between the Rear Most Fins, have been absent in Black and White Photos.
Not to call the Model a Fraud, but are those Cross Struts only there to keep th Model Stable?
Are they a Strutt like Support Framing Device, like other earlier German Designs???
They are either Accurate or they are not.

I have found some pics of one of these which appears to be launched with a box like structure around its tail. The struts between the fins seem absent in most pics though and none visible in any launch shots.

That model one up there ^^^^^^ is AWESOME - I dont think mine will look half so good but at least it shows that my idea is not totally mad (not sure whether thats good or bad ). Mine will be a lot simpler for sure but at least it proves all that fin area with the canards as well doesnt necessarily make it too wild to fly. I am going for a kind of sport scale - ie its not a faithful replica and I am taking some liberties by simplyfying it as much as possible to keep the weight down in the build as I suspect its going to need a lot of noseweight and while I am not averse to low and slow I would at least like it to get high enough to stand a chance of a chute opening I also need to build from off the shelf parts as I lack any maching capability like a lathe (damn) and am not generally good at shaping balsa - just hate sanding

Interesting he went D12 as well albeit with clusters around the edge. I was thinking of a cluster of 19mms but in the end opeted for a single motor for practical reasons. As this will be my firts 'off piste' build its all a learning experience.

I took a few pics tonite of some of the rough drawings of mine while I work out templates for stuff and work out the build sequence.

Here's a Pic' of it flying with Flares on the Tips of its Wings/Fins. There's also another thing I found a Pic' of.

So, those Fin Struts are sometimes Functional.:wink:

They look like they are a pair of hirizontal only connectors...like two planks od wood either side. Thats the pic I was thinking of earlier in the thread. There are also some launch vids on YT. There were something like 80+ launches of this missile so its not surpising that there may have been different variants as the engineers involved would ha e tweaked stuff.

The flare pods show up in some pics whichw ere obviously for visual tracking as the guidance was in some cases radio control from the ground.

Relooking at the model above I can see what he did there, he added the canted motors on the sustainer stage but to get them to dit it looks like he went with dour fins on the upper stage rather than the six which my plans show.
Wonder how they are ignited on that model, i assume electrically by an onboard battery/timer with .....cant see how else it could be done but it is a beautiful model. It would be interesting to get some insights from its builder for sure.

Time for an update on this I came home from work a week or so back to find a pile of Fliskits bits waiting for me si it was finally time to stop yakking and start refining the rough drawings into working plans and then into hardware.

A word on the plans here - mine were drawn from various web trawling, a tiny model by Fitters kits, which I never got round to building but it provided some useful ideas for how to handle the assembly and assorted line drawings plus some picture from an ancient book I have (had now as my eldest son has stolen it - he says borrowed it ) called German Secret Weapons which was pretty naff but did at least have some artists impressions of how it would have looked. From all of this I drew up some semi scale plans and then adapted them for the tube sizes available and scaled accordingly.

The nose cone was the tough challenge and I ordered two from Fliskits - a longinsh one for BT-70 fitting which turned out to not have the right profile, ( lacking a lathe I may try and hand sand this to shape if plan B doesnt work out). Plan B is a BT-60 fitting cone and the taper down from the large BT-70 tube will be done with a paper shroud - you'll have to follow the build I guess for this to make much sense at the moment but basically Rheintochter (RT for short) has a largeish ogive shaped nose that has a gentle curve all the way from just forward of the leading edge of the front fins. I am going to build a prototype of the front end to see if my ideas for a paper shroud work out - if not I am down to sanding a lot of wood away from the BT70 tube. Plan X is to cut the end of the BT-70 nose cone and mate it to the forward end of a BT-60 nose cone (High risk strategy but it may work if Plans A and B fall on their face).

Finally with line drawings to scale I have started assembly - its a bit of playing around so the drawings are slowly being inked from pencil. I am not great at technical drawing and find it hard to visualise stuff unless I can play with bits in my hands (oo-err matron).

So with all that said here we go on the gluing bits of toilet roll together to build a semi scale version of a Nazi Wunder Weapon - Jahol ! Mein Obergruppenfuhrer Uber Engländerin (cue the Horst Wessel Song here )

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Firts up is a picture of some of the parts - there was a whole box load because I wanted enough spares in case of a massive mistake in the build.

I went with Fliskits parts as all of the Semroc stuff I have had was very sturdy and solid but I felt given RTs monster wing sizes which translates into lots of lumber and weight I wanted the lightest build I could manage. The Fliskits tubes seem lighter than anything else so I went with those (not to say they are weak - most of my Fliskits birds have flown a lot and not come to any harm).

Anyway heres the pile of processed paper and fibre rings laid on the floor awaiting the spark the genius to craft them into something amazing

After the parts had sat on the study floor for about a week my other half, getting all possessive over their bit of the floor asked when I was likley to start building something so I relented and put a motor together

I am not going too step by step with this guide as I assume anyone likley to copy this process wont be a tyro and will know how to do stuff - if you are a Tyro and copying this then put the drugs down and build something a bit more basic to start with because this is the way of pain and tears

The motor assembly is a standard 24mm mount to a BT-55 tube.

It wont be fitted until almost comnplete assembly of the bird so I can get weight data from the actual RT unit and decide whether its going to need something bigger up the tailpipe.

The core of the RT is a BT55 tube - everything else is either paper transitions or outer coverings atteched to its BT-55 spine.

To get the 'steps' into the shape is built up by transitioning one tube inside another (or outside) and covering with a paper wrap. The firts step in the body work is around the booster body rocket nozzles. This is done in my model by using a step up from the BT-55 tube to a BT-60 tube....and eventually to a BT-70.

This is the first part- its a 3" long BT60 with two BT60 to BT55 centering rings. The base of the tube (nearest the rocket nozzles) has its centreing ring fitted flush with the end of the tube for cosmetics while the upper centering ring is recessed into the tube a little bit for a stronger fitting.

The flush fitted ring was done by making sure it was a good fit but not too tight, then apply some glue and sit the tube over it. The recessed ring was done using a BT-60 tube coupler to push the ring into place (and thereby making it square) and then whipping the coupler out before it got stuck in there itself. As ever lots of dry runs, practice and deft handling make for quick and sure construction - if ONLY I had those skills

Dimensioning data - the tube is cut to 3" long. One ring is fitted flush the other recessed by approx 1/2" (the recess depth isn't super critical)

Next up is the booster casing outer skin. I will refer to this as a booster because on the real RT thats what it is - this is a single stage kit so technically its not a booster but it looks like it is - lets not get bogged down in semantics or I will never get this built I will just call it a booster.

This is a 4 1/8th " BT70 tube and just like the previous tube this one has two centering rings fitted - these are both recessed and heres something different - the bottom centreing ring is a BT70 to BT60 to fit the unit assembled in the earlier step, while the upper centreing ring is a BT55 to BT70 to fit the rockets main core.

Like the BT-60 tube in the earlier step a tube coupler was pushed down to make sure the rings are square.

Dimensioning Data: 4 1/8th" BT70 - one BT70-BT55 Centering Ring, One BT70-BT60 Centering ring. Rings recessed by approx 1/2" (Recess depth is not critical)

To allow the paper transition cones fore and aft on the BT70 booster tube I added some lips to the tube to give the transitions something to grip to. The lips were made from a BT-70 tube couplet cut in half. Before cutting the coupler was marked with an 'X' on each side so it was easy to identify which side was true and square.


This was glued into the BT-70 with only around 1/8th to 1/16th left sticking out for the paper transitions to attach to.

Build Data: - BT70 couper cut in half - glued into place with small edge prodtruding of approx 1/16th"

The two booster unit sub assemblies were glued, filleted and left to dry. Heres a pic of the pair together.

And here's a dry fitting so you can see how the units nestle inside each other.

The BT55 inner core sticks out at the end - this will be detailed later with some cones to simulate the 7 individual cones of the real RT. The step between the largest tube (BT70) to the BT60 will be covered with a transition cone made of paper.

The second pic shows each tube with a centreing line added. I realised that with such a bird as RT with assorted fins (each section has different fin counts) plus booster nozzles and a cable duct it would be essential to have a common refence all the way down the tubes. As this wouldnt be possible once the body was assembled I decided to add a 'zero' reference line to each tube before final assembly.

I will do the tube staging dimensions when its gluied together.

I am adding dimension data on here so if anyone wants to copy it it may make life a bit easier for them. When the templates are ready I will add them for anyone who wants to clone this build.

Heres the rear end with a prototype paper cone transition (on my plans this is 'C' shown in the foregorund). Th cones are likley to slow this whole process down as the website I had for making cone templates has vanished and the only ones I could find this morning produce very unreliably dimensioned cones so I may have to number crunch the cones manually which is painful as I am sure you know if you have ever calculated cones.

If anyone knows an ace website (ideally free) that can run cone patterns off I would be grateful.

In the picture the bit at the back end is where the motor will be placed - I have to come up with some half cones to give this a look and feel as if there were 6 rocket nozzles. My initial plan was for a cluster but sizing proved too problematic. The real thing has seven nozzles here and while a 7 cluster rocket had its appeal the costs for build and launching were, for me at any rate, prohibitive.

KUTGW!op::clap:

The Book, "Rockets and Missiles of World War III" has a beautiful two Page Pic' of said Missile on its Launcher.:

Its odd how no two pics ever seem to be exactly the same, there are differences in the rear fins layout and also the nozzles at the mid point plus the casings for the two halves are often subtly different. Perhaps that's to be expected in a missile that never reached productions as Rheinmetal probably tried different mods and changes. That pic above is the best quality version I have seen of that particular picture and its very useful as it gives me some ideas for the nose end of mine so thanks very much for that.

I took to doing the cone transitions by the manually working it out method but it turns out my compasses aren't big enough for two of the transitions so tomorrow I have to go find a better pair of compasses.

Appropriations for this project are getting a bit larger than I had hoped