Designer's Special

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

dave carver

....what hump?
Joined
Jan 18, 2009
Messages
4,973
Reaction score
9
Location
Idaho
I won an Estes Designer's Special on eBay. Not the trash disposal special, the good one:)

I got one of these in the early 90's when I joined the ranks of the BAR's. Built as many rockets from the box of stuff as I could, kinda like I'm going to do now.

I was looking at a collection of tubes and the same for nosecones from BSR Hobbies that has a few more tubes and 'cones in sizes not in the Designer's Special for a few bucks more. I paid $45 with shipping for it and figure the stuff from BSR will run about $50 shipped.

With the cost of kits these days I figure to save 50-60% on the same number of kits as I'll have tubes and nose cones.

I want to run build threads on the rockets I come up with, all I have is a webcam and I need to learn how to get them here, I guess that's what the tutorials are for :cool:
 
Congratulations. Have fun with your projects and let us know what you do.
 
Congratulations. Have fun with your projects and let us know what you do.

I opened the box:) When I removed the plastic covering I got a wiff of something: MILDEW:y: I looked the box over, couldn't see any stains. Opened it to a stronger smell of mildew. Start looking through things, hmmm, 1990 Estes catalog, tubes, fin designs, all looked good with no staining. The Alpha book, hmmm, smell strong from this. Thumb through the booklet and as I got towards the middle I noticed red stains at the staples. They were rusted! Staples on the catalog were not rusted due to the galvanize plating on them.

Weird:cyclops:
 
Built 4 from the box so far and was looking on eBay again and there was another Special! Missing a 18" chute and the BT50 nose block I got it for $15 less than the first one:cyclops:

While I wait for it to arrive I think I'll be making a mini RAMJET from the BT50 tube I have left and the BT5 that I can't really figure how to use besides the skinney mini rockets.

Still working on a camera so some day soon here.....
 
Mini RAMJET built. Then I built a Maxi RAMJET, well, Maxi for the size tubing in the kit. It's built to fly on 24 mm motors. Took 2 pieces from the BT 60 tube to make it leaving me with about 8" of BT 60 leftover and that bulbous nose cone. What to do with it.....I know!!! A Goonie!! But what Goonie? I was going to go with a Cherokee D Goonie but too common. Think, think, think....Got It!!

A Mercury Redgoon!!! Or is that a Mergoony Redstone? Or it is Mercury Goonstone? Be that as it may I finished building it. Some design compromises were made like mostly on the Escape tower. 1 rung less on the lattice work, single upright connecting the tower to the capsule instead of the forked end, no diagonal braces. Escape tower is ment to be representitive and not historicaly accurate. Even then, there is still 27 parts to the tower! A scale one has at least 47 parts built from scratch :p

I am STILL working on a camera to try and post pictures. I know there are some here who don't believe anything without photo documentation:cyclops:
 
Added to my pile of Estes parts with some orders from SEMROC and I'm waiting on the Starlight parts box that is on the way. From SEMROC I got 2 tube assortments and the Small nose cone package with a BT70 coupler and BT70 and BT80 nose cones. I'm waiting for the BT70 and BT80 to 29mm motor mounts to get here. The 2 rockets designed around the 2 29mm mounts are ment for the AeroTech 29 40/120 motor, in E and F sizes.

As it stands, since I started my building jag I have 9 rockets in the semi finished phase and 10 in filling/spackeling phase.

Future projects include a rocket based on a thread of using tubes for fins. Not like a tube-finned but with the small tubes having nose and tail cones glued together to form a fat tubular fin. My next order from SEMROC includes a pile of BT5 nose cones with the RamJet version being my tailcone.

....and still working on the camera thing :p
 
Back
Top