gothique_97
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- Oct 13, 2001
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I have a wnter/spring project that I hope to complete by the April Whitakers gathering. I'm going to rebuild my 10 year old Thunder'ceptor .
Its been sitting in my mother's garage in Connecticut since it last flew in 1996 [post-college life has kept it and most of my other rockets grounded for several years]. Well, last month, I drove up to the Northeast to visit family for the holidays, and packed the rocket into the car for the trip home.
The trouble is, this rocket only breaks down into two 6 foot long sections that were certainly not going to fit into my Neon [along with mine and my girlfriend's luggage, and presents]. I knew before even driving up there that I'd be cutting the rocket into fourths.
This had an added benefit; since its last flight, it had developed a small but noticeable kink in the lower section airframe just above the motor mount. Cutting the lower section in half would allow me to cut out the kinked tubing, or reinforce it with a coupler.
I didn't get to take a closer look at all of the parts till we got back to Georgia. Silly me; I didn't think of the tubing coupler already in the rocket when I cut it for transport. I cut the rocket too close to the coupler to simply put another couple in there to rejoin the pieces [I left less than an inch between the cut and the top of the coupler; hardly enough room for another coupler to hold the other half of the 3 inch airframe in place]. So in cutting out that and the kinked section, I'll loose about 8 inches from the overall length of 148 inches.
Another of the things that will have to be replaced are the 'spikes' on the lowest set of fin tips. They were made from Estes BT-5s and were bent all to hell before I even painted it. My plans are to replace these with 1/2" wood dowels cut carefully in half down the length and bevelled to sandwich the fin.
I'll also be replacing the 3/4" wide elastic shock cord with tubular nylon, my first time using that.
For you photo-fiends, photographic updates will be few and far between. Our digital camera died recently and we only have an analog camera to take pictures with. But I'll try to get text updates posted here as they happen and as time permits.
Its been sitting in my mother's garage in Connecticut since it last flew in 1996 [post-college life has kept it and most of my other rockets grounded for several years]. Well, last month, I drove up to the Northeast to visit family for the holidays, and packed the rocket into the car for the trip home.
The trouble is, this rocket only breaks down into two 6 foot long sections that were certainly not going to fit into my Neon [along with mine and my girlfriend's luggage, and presents]. I knew before even driving up there that I'd be cutting the rocket into fourths.
This had an added benefit; since its last flight, it had developed a small but noticeable kink in the lower section airframe just above the motor mount. Cutting the lower section in half would allow me to cut out the kinked tubing, or reinforce it with a coupler.
I didn't get to take a closer look at all of the parts till we got back to Georgia. Silly me; I didn't think of the tubing coupler already in the rocket when I cut it for transport. I cut the rocket too close to the coupler to simply put another couple in there to rejoin the pieces [I left less than an inch between the cut and the top of the coupler; hardly enough room for another coupler to hold the other half of the 3 inch airframe in place]. So in cutting out that and the kinked section, I'll loose about 8 inches from the overall length of 148 inches.
Another of the things that will have to be replaced are the 'spikes' on the lowest set of fin tips. They were made from Estes BT-5s and were bent all to hell before I even painted it. My plans are to replace these with 1/2" wood dowels cut carefully in half down the length and bevelled to sandwich the fin.
I'll also be replacing the 3/4" wide elastic shock cord with tubular nylon, my first time using that.
For you photo-fiends, photographic updates will be few and far between. Our digital camera died recently and we only have an analog camera to take pictures with. But I'll try to get text updates posted here as they happen and as time permits.
