Hey Luke,
your Saturn is really turning out great....regarding the fins...how about something like the good Dr. Zooch's flame fins for flight??...maybe a longer set that would simulate five F-1's at full throttle....wouldn't have to be to scale of course...they would be longer than your rocket!...do you think that would work? I actually like his flame fins, I think they are a neat solution to the problem...
Rick
ps- I just got Dr. Zooch's Saturn 5 in the mail today.....I have book marked your build thread from a while back....gonna be a fun build!!
Thanks Rick... I appreciate it.
The Flame fins are a neat idea and a neat solution to the problem... and they're terrific for making a kit that practically anybody can build without a lot of 'exotic materials' without a lot of 'specialized skills' and of course it saves a lot of money on materials when selling kits-- but they're not really for everything... and I don't really think that's the look I want to go for here...
Don't get me wrong-- I like the Flame fins too, and for small kits, like I said, they're a quick and easy solution (and quite innovative) on a number of issues, but for kits where you're going for larger and more detailed, I think they rapidly hit their "reality limits" so to speak... Not that regular balsa "slip in fins" like on the Estes Space Shuttle kit or Titan IV kit or Mercury Atlas kit haven't been done before (they certainly have as in the kits I just mentioned) but I'm not prejudiced against clear plastic fins... I just like them REMOVABLE for display.
The older Saturn V kits (Estes or Centuri, not sure which or both) used "slip on" clear plastic fins which were actually thin plastic sheet (maybe 1/16-- I've seen them used on a club buddy's model-- never actually used them myself) which slipped directly over the "scale" size Saturn V fins to enlarge their area. A quite novel and innovative solution that I've never seen duplicated in any other kit. Kits like the Estes Titan II Missile used "twist lock" clear fin cans that attached to the bottom of the rocket for flight, and the old Gemini-Titan II kits used a 'roll yer own' approach, including a couple sheets of plastic-- one to roll into a tube you glued together that would slip over the back of the body tube for flight, to which you glued 4 clear plastic fins you cut from the other sheet. That works too, but it's a bit inelegant... but for the 60's and 70's, it was high technology...
I haven't actually done much work on the Saturn V in a week or so... been quite busy with house/farm/car work. With nicer fall weather finally breaking the 100+ degree heat we've suffered under all summer, I'm catching up on a lot of work over at the farm shop. I HAVE created a rocksim design of both the Saturn V and the I-F and have been playing around with them a bit, looking at different fin sizes and CP location, as well as tinkering with the mass and adding noseweight, attempting to come up with a happy medium. I'm also tinkering with the motor mounts and running sims, and looking at the performance numbers...
I'm sorta at the point in the build where I have to make some decisions before I move forward. It's hard to put fins on the rocket until you actually decide what size and what type!
Same thing for the motor mounts... I guess I SHOULD get after it and build the towers-- that's the thing I've been dreading the most, and now the hour has come... :dark:
I'm still considering my "clear flame fins" method-- but I'd have to make a hobby shop run to get the materials-- roll a "tube" out of clear plastic and bond it together with Tenax, then cut clear fins and glue them to the tube with Tenax, and install a couple extra BT-5's in the motor mount out by the outer body tube wall into which the clear fin assemblies would slip, just like a CLEAR version of flame fins...
Still fiddling with it and probably will be for a little while...
Thanks and good luck with your Saturn V... if built "stock" pretty much directly as the instructions say, it makes a terrific flier (papered my fins but otherwise IIRC that build was pretty much spot on stock...)
Good luck! Later! OL JR