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While waiting on suitable painting weather for the Japanese rocket fighter and the custom nose cone for the Coaster Dynasoar Centauri, I had a sudden overwhelming urge to get on with a RCRG I have wanted to do ever since I acquired a copy of the Spaceship Handbook by Jack Hagerty.
The Athena was the name of a fictional rocket created by G. Harry Stine, writing as Lee Correy. It appears in “The Day the Rocket Blew Up”, published in the Saturday Evening Post on August 15, 1953.
The Spaceship Handbook contains a large serving of fantastic rocket drawings. A huge labor of love from Hagerty and Jon C. Rogers, who did the drawings. One that instantly caught my eye a few years ago was the Athena. It is just about a perfect layout for a Depron RC RG.
The drawings include extensive detailed fuse station measurements of many of the features of the craft. They even include station measurements for the panel lines! Makes it super easy to scale for a model, as you can see from the drawing picture. In fact, I did not make a drawing. A scale factor of 1/46.15 scales the model to match a BT-80 tube. I converted the measurements on the drawing and applied them directly to the tubing and Depron. It turns out that the scale factor that sizes the model for BT-80 sizes the tip tubes to exactly BT-5 size, which is handy. An assortment of Estes PNC-5 cones supplied three cones that were close enough for the tip cones.
The Athena is complete, except for a more “scale-like” nose cone, canopy fairing, windows and a little painting. I have a custom 3D printed cone on order to better match the original design. Might add a paper hat to the PNC-80 cone to get by in the meantime. The original has quite a harpoon attached to the cone, I will model that spike for display purposes, but the spike will be removable for flight.
I did the markings on my Silhouette 4 vinyl cutter. Took some artistic license and made the tail markings oversize. I ended up wrapping the vertical tail and the wingtip body tubes in red vinyl, which worked out nicely. However, I am still looking for matching red paint for the wingtip cones...
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It turns out that G. Harry evidently built a display model of each (or at least most) of his fictional spaceships. The entry in the the book has two pictures of his original model, as well as a copy of the painting of the rocket published in the Saturday Evening Post.
One weirdness in the drawing is the canopy. The drawing sort of replicated the WWII style birdcage canopy shown in the painting, which does not make a lot of sense. The painting has a number of details different from the model. Note that the pic of G. Harry’s model shows a much more sensible X-15 style canopy fairing, which is what I will put on the model.
Current plan is to maiden this at the little local RC RG gathering in April or May that I mentioned in the Vulcan thread.
More to follow.
The Athena was the name of a fictional rocket created by G. Harry Stine, writing as Lee Correy. It appears in “The Day the Rocket Blew Up”, published in the Saturday Evening Post on August 15, 1953.
The Spaceship Handbook contains a large serving of fantastic rocket drawings. A huge labor of love from Hagerty and Jon C. Rogers, who did the drawings. One that instantly caught my eye a few years ago was the Athena. It is just about a perfect layout for a Depron RC RG.
The drawings include extensive detailed fuse station measurements of many of the features of the craft. They even include station measurements for the panel lines! Makes it super easy to scale for a model, as you can see from the drawing picture. In fact, I did not make a drawing. A scale factor of 1/46.15 scales the model to match a BT-80 tube. I converted the measurements on the drawing and applied them directly to the tubing and Depron. It turns out that the scale factor that sizes the model for BT-80 sizes the tip tubes to exactly BT-5 size, which is handy. An assortment of Estes PNC-5 cones supplied three cones that were close enough for the tip cones.
The Athena is complete, except for a more “scale-like” nose cone, canopy fairing, windows and a little painting. I have a custom 3D printed cone on order to better match the original design. Might add a paper hat to the PNC-80 cone to get by in the meantime. The original has quite a harpoon attached to the cone, I will model that spike for display purposes, but the spike will be removable for flight.
I did the markings on my Silhouette 4 vinyl cutter. Took some artistic license and made the tail markings oversize. I ended up wrapping the vertical tail and the wingtip body tubes in red vinyl, which worked out nicely. However, I am still looking for matching red paint for the wingtip cones...
.It turns out that G. Harry evidently built a display model of each (or at least most) of his fictional spaceships. The entry in the the book has two pictures of his original model, as well as a copy of the painting of the rocket published in the Saturday Evening Post.
One weirdness in the drawing is the canopy. The drawing sort of replicated the WWII style birdcage canopy shown in the painting, which does not make a lot of sense. The painting has a number of details different from the model. Note that the pic of G. Harry’s model shows a much more sensible X-15 style canopy fairing, which is what I will put on the model.
Current plan is to maiden this at the little local RC RG gathering in April or May that I mentioned in the Vulcan thread.
More to follow.
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