Red River Rocketry Stratos - Build (Basically Finished)

Background:

As many of you know, John Dyer has suspended opperations of Red River Rocketry. John is a member of my local club (DARS) and is in general a most excellent fellow. He has been very helpful to me and my boys as we have waided neck deep into rocketry over the last few years. When John told me he was suspending operations I knew I had to get a Stratos before it was too late. I particularly like white rockets that look like planes or spaceships, and have a nice decal set (sound specific, but more in this class than you may think). The Stratos is definately an exemplar of the group, so when I needed a bigger parachute and was looking to round out (get to $40 free shipping) my JonRocket order I found he had a Stratos in stock. Perfect! Now when it arrived at my house yesterday, and my wife asked me what happened to my promise not to grow the build pile (which is admittedly creeping from it's pre agreed boundaries) I informed her that I was not growing the build pile, but I was to start the Stratos that evening. As I got the "really, you're going to try that technicality look" I asked her chearfully how she liked the new fence I've been spending the last 2 weeks putting up and she gave me the "well played" grin. Aside: I am very lucky that my wife is highly tolerent of the rocket hobby, and she even likes coming out to the launches. Normally, I wouldn't do a build thread on a kit as there are instructions, and someone else has probably done one before. However, when I search "Stratos" in the title of TRF threads, all I got was the dude jumping out of the balloon, and this kit is too cool not to get some build thread love before they are all gone.

To keep in mind throughout the thread:

- All normal glueing will be done with Titebond II unless otherwise stated.
- I build on the geological time scale, so don't expect super rapid progress.
- I jump around in the directions (when I read them).
- Any screw ups are mine and should not be taken as a reflection upon the quality of John's product.
- I can't spell, I know this, don't tell me about it, I'm 35 and it ain't getting better from here.
- This is going to be iPhone photography, so I appologize up front for the quality.

Stratos:



I mean really, how cool is that?

Opening the bag it is obvious that John really did put some work into this one.

- Parts are high quality (SEMROC I believe)
- The balsa is good quality and the laser cutting is laid out with consideration for the grain direction.
- Thankfully none of the little balsa attachments were on the long curve section.
- The decal set is excellent, and it is waterslide. I cannot overstate my disdain for stickers.
- The marking guides are on heavy paper, maybe light cardstock is a better term...in other words, very robust.
- There is a small cardstock canopy that was unaware of. My battle with Cardstock will be renewed.

I'm totally on board with your fondness for lots of decals on white rockets that resemble air- or spacecraft. I just bought the RRR HV-308 - a nice looking little rocket in my opinion. I may have to spring for one of these, too, before they're gone. Thanks for posting your build on this.

Subscribed. Looks like it will be a fun build and attractive finished product. op:

Lunch time, so I'll slap a post of some progress together.

Once the fins were cut out from the sheet the edges were lightly sanded with a sheet of 320 grit to remove the tabs and char. The big wings that kind of dominate this rocket are made from 3 pieces of balsa. You can see how they allign in the pic below. Edges were given a very light scim of glue, alligned using a piece of aluminum angle, and sandwiched between wax paper under ~10 lbs for ~1.5 h until the glue set. When the weight was removed I had two nicely formed wings.

I always paper my balsa fins for two reasons. 1) It adds a suprising amount of strength at the cost of very little weight. 2) I hate filling balsa. There are several ways to do this, and Ol Jr has a thread somewhere that describes in detail how to use glue and paper. I mention that because I cheat and use label paper, and is described below.

1 - cut a piece of paper roughly to the fin



2 - After peeling and sticking I use a bondo spreader to press the paper down, particularly at the edges.



3 - Flip the fin over (so the label paper is on the mat) and carefully trim away the excess with a sharp exacto. This leaves a nearly perfect papered fin.



4 - Flip fin over and repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat....until all fins are done on both sides.



5 - Back to the wax paper to seal the edges, or in this case I painted the entire fin (except the area that will be covered by the fillets, I want the glue to absorb there) with CA using a Q-tip. I did only one side and let that dry overnight. I probably should have done both and sandwiched, but CA has a nasty way of suprising me with what it will grab onto permanently. The unweighted drying did result in a very slight warp that should be no problem to deal with down the road, if it doesn;t straighten out when I do the other side that is.



Note: I have multiple times sanded the airfoil/roundover into the fins with the paper unsealed by CA. It has worked fine, but it does tend to clog the sandpaper. I am sure though sealing with CA is a superior method.

Dean B said:

I'm totally on board with your fondness for lots of decals on white rockets that resemble air- or spacecraft. I just bought the RRR HV-308 - a nice looking little rocket in my opinion. I may have to spring for one of these, too, before they're gone. Thanks for posting your build on this.

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I like that one too, but this was my must have.

Marc_G said:

Subscribed. Looks like it will be a fun build and attractive finished product. op:

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I am sure it will be a fun build, and it has the potential to be a very attractive finished product. That however will count on the one executing the build.

For anyone following along, there was some progress last night after the organizing meeting for this was done: https://r4cw.webconnex.com/register There was a small conspiracy this year that resulted in me getting volun-told that I was the race director. When two ministers, a choir director and your wife get together and decide something you are typically along for the ride. But anyway, enough of the not rockets, on to the Stratos!

Main focus was on the nacelles and motor mount, starting with the nacelles.

The tubes were filled with diluted Elmers Wood filler on day 1, and quickly sanded to smooth. The tubes were of very good quality, with almost no spiral groove. However, I have a pathological hatred of spirals, so I filled them (even if they weren't there). This also forces me to give the entire tube a good going over with sandpaper, which is never a bad thing for adhesion. Yes, I even filled the part of the MM that will protrude.




Next I needed to make the angled cuts in the nacelles. Provided with the kit is a cardstock wrap that is heavy enough to be used as a guide if you are careful. After cutting out and wrapping the first nacelle tube I put a new blade in the Exacto and went to work.



Upon finishing both, the entire inside of the nacelles was painted with thin CA using a Qtip. The fore end of the body tube was also painted at the same time. After these dried a few hours I cleaned up the fuzzies on the cuts with 320 grit sandpaper.

John's kits are high quality and he has some neat back stories to go along with his rockets.

Personally, my favorite is the Scortch. My first one lived up to it's name when I missed putting the forward o-ring on the delay grain of a D9W reload.

Not really anything exciting here. The only serious deviation from the instruction come from my preference to have the kevlar thread pass through the inside of the forward centering ring instead of outside along the body tube. I also used a wrap of masking tape to keep the kevlar ends from unwinding while I glued everything up. It's just easier to keep aligned when the MM is inserted this way, and as the kevlar will not extend outside the body tube it will not have enough impact on zipper potential for me to worry about. The rings needed a little ID sanding, but were a nice snug fit with the BT when test fitted. The kevlar pass through of course required a shallow notch be cut on the iside of the forward CR. The supplied kevlar will leave me about 4" short of clearing the body tube, which is to my mind ideal. However, it is therefore easierst to attach now before the MM goes in. If I ever need to swap out the elastic I can always fish it out from the MM end.



Moments later the kevlar loop knot and the elastic knot got a drop of glue and were left to dry overnight.

Note: I know I'm being nausiatingly detailed in some of these descriptions, but I learned from such threads when I first came here. In for a dime, in for a dollar I guess.

This build is going suprisingly quickly. The major task of the evening, and really the critical task of the build was getting the wings attached correctly. Also, they don't attach straight out as we are so accustomed to. These deflect downward by about .5" from body to tip (see pic from instructions below). This fortunately is the tips on the table angle which is easier to achieve than other angles.



Before attachment the leading and trailing edges were rounded, and the surfaces which had been painted with CA were sanded smooth. The strength and stiffness of these fins is really amazing after the paper and CA treatment. I will note that the slight warp of the big fins that resulted from my CA paint job on one side and drying without weight did in fact go away when the other side was painted and the fins dried under ~10 lb inside a wax paper sandwich.

I attached the fins as described in the instructions (double glue method). Then while only partially dried I put them on the mat and began to fiddle with getting the down angle just right. I am sure there are nice scientific ways of doing this, and there is probably a jig I can just download, but I went with the callibrated (by glasses) eyeball. All in all, not bad.



Once dried, the topside got a thin fillet of Titebond II. As of this morning both sides have received their final fillets of Titebond Molding and Trim. I did the wing fillets now as it will become increasingly crowded around the aft end of this thing, and if any fillets need to be good, it's these.

AlfaBrewer said:

John's kits are high quality and he has some neat back stories to go along with his rockets.

Personally, my favorite is the Scortch. My first one lived up to it's name when I missed putting the forward o-ring on the delay grain of a D9W reload.

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Interesting fins on that one. Shame about the funeral pyre though.

Also put the parachute together. Pretty standard stuff, but I'm including it here for completeness sake.

12" Mylar parachute kit that include sticky disks for both side of the mylar. I worry that 12" is a bit small as I overbuild and therefore end up with rockets in excess of their stated weights, but I'll reserve judgement untill the end. If all elese fails I got a free JonRocket parachute with my order which appears to be a really nice plastic chute kit.



Assembly, I assume by the instructions, but I didn't read them:

- Sticky disks on both side of mylar
- Cut slits
- Feed thread and tie trying not to crush the edge, but instead make a loop.
- Cuss because your fingers are too big for this job
- Dig around in bathroom looking for tweezer
- Finish knoting lines
- Super small dab of think CA applied with a toothpick to each knot
- Trim excess thread
- Attach swivel with closure (my addition to every parachute).



I like mylar as a parachute material as it folds so small and pops open well.

Wow. I was slacking (at least rocket building wise). It is bad when you have to go four pages deep to find your uncompleted thread, but I'm back at it.

The MM was installed using copious amounts of TB-M&T. I don;t like to use a glue that shrinks for this as it can suck in the bt a bit as it dries. I also use quite a bit more than is needed as it seams to give a few more seconds work time. A thin skiff and it grabs instantly. I can;t remember if this is a deviation from the instructions or not (because I didn't read them much), but I chose to have the engine hook on the belly.



Next up the installation of the tube fins (nacelles as they are called in the instructions). No step by step pics on this one, just use of the calibrated eyeball for alignment and Titebond Molding and Trim for the attachment (I wanted a glue that wouldn't shrink much for this application). The nacelles are aligned with the "bottom of the V" in the angle aligned with the tube/wing intersection, and flush with the aft of the tube and wing. Once this was accomplished the fins for the nacelles were attached with TB-II and filleted with TB-M&T. These fins are flush with the point on the nacelle at the front and hang off the back of the nacelle a bit...really nice looking, but probably the first point to impact ground, so much care was taken to properly fillet.

At this point I should note that upon drying the shrinking of the TB II at the wing-bt joint caused the angle to be less steep than when initially set, i.e. the tips no longer touch the table when the bt is resting thereon...should have used TB-M&T for this joint I guess. It didn't really kill the ascetic and they deflection is symmetric, so it certainly wasn't worth cutting the wings off and reattaching.

Starting to run low on parts...looks at build pile.

Next up attachment of remaining fins and launch lugs and fiddly bits.

The skids are really simple to attached with TB-II and filleted with TB M&T. Only tip here: if you have anything but the tiniest of hands you must fillet before LLs are installed.



The LL is cut in half and the pieces placed along a bt-wing joint. The instructions are not extremely demanding regarding this, which is refreshing. I've always thought the place lug 6.25" from aft end level of exactness a bit silly, so here one went at the very back and the other where I thought it looked right. These were glued in place and filleted with TB-M&T.



Lastly, the fiddly bits. Two toothpicks are included along with instructions to cut these to 2" in length. I also decided to take a piece of sandpaper and slant the flat end to match the trailing edge angle of the fin they will be attached to. Another change is I decided to attach them now as I don't want to paint them all black and then attach...I think I will probably blend them to the fin, paint them white with red tips. These were attached and filleted with the usual suspects making sure to match the angle I sanded into the aft of the tips.

OK, so the body is done and ready for primer. Normally I use Rustoleum Grey Automotive primer, but since coverage inside tubes is tough with Rustoleum 2X white I will use white primer for this job.

As you can see the aft end ended up pretty symmetric (keep in mind the picture is at an angle), and close to the diagram for what it should be. Not perfect, but well within my tolerances. You can also see that this is a big bird.



You may have also noticed the NC, which is a work in progress that will require quite a few more filler/sand cycles to get to where I am happy with it. It appears I am still at war with card stock...a powerful enemy it is.

That's looking pretty darn good. I like that design a lot and your workmanship looks great.

Red River wasn't on my radar until recently—they have some very nice kits out. Unfortunately they're going away as a lot of their balsa parts were manufactured by Semroc. If anyone is interested in any of their models, now is the time to strike.

foamy said:

That's looking pretty darn good. I like that design a lot and your workmanship looks great.

Red River wasn't on my radar until recently—they have some very nice kits out. Unfortunately they're going away as a lot of their balsa parts were manufactured by Semroc. If anyone is interested in any of their models, now is the time to strike.

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Thanks. The first coat of primer really called out the flaws though. At leastbthis is a smallrocket, so sanding won't take toolong.

As for RRR, yes the stuff is of excellent quality. I was talking to John last month, and he was very specific about using the phrase "suspending operations," not closing down. I believe his intent is to return to production down the road a bit, but who knows when/if that will be...so yes, get them while they are around. During our chat the topic of SEMROC came up, and yes many of his parts are from SEMROC but not as many as I thought. He didn't appear to view the loss of SEMROC as insurmountable, but definately sad and a challenge.

Nice build thread and a nice rocket too...

Note: I know I'm being nauseatingly detailed in some of these descriptions, but I learned from such threads when I first came here. In for a dime, in for a dollar I guess.

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Go for it - its very useful for newbies and even experienced heads can learn stuff from build threads, new techniques and maybe just different ways of doing stuff - its all good so dont apologise and thanks for sharing.

Astro-Baby said:

Nice build thread and a nice rocket too...

Go for it - its very useful for newbies and even experienced heads can learn stuff from build threads, new techniques and maybe just different ways of doing stuff - its all good so dont apologise and thanks for sharing.

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What she said!
-J

Progress has been slow, but relatively steady. Onto the nose cone, which of course needs a great deal of work to look just right.

Started by attaching the screw eye, I did not go to the hardwood dowel trouble for this as the NC weighs basically nothing and even a vigorous ejection still gives you this much force:

(Almost nothing) * (a lot of velocity)^2 = don't over complicate it...it will be fine.

Therefore, the simple method of make hole, fill with glue, screw in eyelet was employed.



Now the cycles of this CA and polish begin. Thin CA was applied with a Q-tip and sanded after drying. This was repeated 3 times, so that a relatively smooth nearly rock hard surface was obtained.



NOTE: This is the first time I've had problems with the pics not displaying, so sorry for the links

Do you have that technique you just can't get? Maybe not, but I do and it is making card stock doo-dads and fiddly bits.

The canopy was cut out, and glued together as best I could. Clear gift wrapping tape held the thing together while the glue set and was removed later. Next, a spot on the NC was roughed up with 80 grit to expose some of the unsealed balsa below in hopes this would facilitate attachment. I used 5 min epoxy to attach the canopy, not wanting to rely on the ability of wood glue to soak into the sealed surface. Then began the countless (really I lost count, probably 6-8 somewhere) cycles of thinned wood filler/sanding cycles. This is my issue with card stock, it isn't that I can't get it to where I can live with it, it is that it takes me inordinate effort to get it there. I have no idea how people make card stock bits so clean they blend with one or two fill cycles...just astounding to me.



After the completion of these many cycles (not pictured), three coats of primer with sanding in between got it just right.

The entire model was painted with Rustoleum 2X Gloss White. Mercifully uneventful.

Now the first thing I was disappointed in with the kit, and admittedly this is entirely a matter of personal preference and could have been mitigated. The decals are really thin and fragile, at least compared to Estes or Quest Decals. I did not realize this in advance, so I went with them as is. If I were to do it again they would have gotten a few coats of something to toughen/thicken them up before applying. As I didn't do this and my skills are not refined with such delicate decals I have many small blemishes in the decals. That being said I am overall happy with how it came out, and there were a lot of those little buggers. I need to pick up some MicroSol and MicroSet on the way home. I hope that softening them will help with some of the wrinkles, and just let them lay down better.

Also note, that I think I may have won the protracted war with respect to the canopy shape.


White Paint:


With Decals:


That pretty much does it. Some decal treatment and clear coat, and then I'll post some launch pictures in a month or so. Won;t be ready for this Saturday's launch, so it will have to wait until July.

Beautiful work, catalog build!
Not a wood grain or tube seam to be found.

I wish the vendors would give you an extra "test" decal. (I think I'll add that to my Odd'l kits.)
That way you could try the test one first to see if you need an additional clear coat of Micro Scale Decal Film.

I usually try and test with the smallest decal, usually the company logo.
(Why put those on the model, everybody at the club launch knows who made the kit anyway.)
That gives me an idea of the soak time and how it well transfers from the backing onto the model surface.

If the image runs or the decal tears, I don't cut or soak any more decals -
I'll add a coat of the Micro Scale Decal Film.
That thickens up the clear film and protects the image.

Beautiful job Chris. I feel you pain about the decals. I mangled the big one on the P Chuter Extreme and I mangled a replacement. Flies without now.

Beautiful rocket design and build and finish!

Thanks very much for the kind words folks. I look forward to flying this one in a month or so.