AcroRay
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2010
- Messages
- 25
- Reaction score
- 2
I recently built the kit of the Chinese Long March 3A (CZ-3A) kit produced by Sky and imported from China by Apogee.
The kit has a pre-printed body tube, plastic fin can with fins and engine bells that need to be glued on, and a unique one-piece nose cone. Overall, it is similar to Estes' "E2X" style rockets, but with some bugs and improvements that an experienced modeller could engage in.
The kit is really lacking in detail. I added numerous conduits to the BT, NC and fin can that were pictured on reference photos and diagrams. Also, the engine bells block the engine mount if you glue them in place (as indicated in the instructions) and the holes for them were way out of alignment, so I plugged the old holes, placed new ones, and painted in black for the cavity in the fin section they reside in (again, as seen in some file photos). The plastic of the nose cone is milky white and translucent, and also doesn't like to keep paint, so several layers of careful primer, paint and clearcoats were required. I also added a home made Chinese space agency symbol - which the kit is missing but which I saw on file photos.
(I'll post a build thread elsewhere later, as I also modified the recovery system to de-bug some problems the kit has.)
The kit has a pre-printed body tube, plastic fin can with fins and engine bells that need to be glued on, and a unique one-piece nose cone. Overall, it is similar to Estes' "E2X" style rockets, but with some bugs and improvements that an experienced modeller could engage in.
The kit is really lacking in detail. I added numerous conduits to the BT, NC and fin can that were pictured on reference photos and diagrams. Also, the engine bells block the engine mount if you glue them in place (as indicated in the instructions) and the holes for them were way out of alignment, so I plugged the old holes, placed new ones, and painted in black for the cavity in the fin section they reside in (again, as seen in some file photos). The plastic of the nose cone is milky white and translucent, and also doesn't like to keep paint, so several layers of careful primer, paint and clearcoats were required. I also added a home made Chinese space agency symbol - which the kit is missing but which I saw on file photos.
(I'll post a build thread elsewhere later, as I also modified the recovery system to de-bug some problems the kit has.)
