DaveCombs
Carnivore, Interrupted
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2009
- Messages
- 3,096
- Reaction score
- 6
Hey, kids - long time, no see...
So I was trolling eBay for replacement bomblets for my Estes Cluster Bomb (a kit which is, incidentally, about as easy to find on eBay as hen's teeth, whatever that means). I lost mine at one of our club launches quite a while back. I found out that they're the same ones used on the Meteor Masher kit.
Found a Masher kit for cheap and snagged it. Much to my chagrin, and contrary to the description, the kit had been opened and the body tubes and nose cone had been painted - BADLY - with a rattle-can green. But the reason I got the kit was the bomblets, and thankfully they were still in their original white. So, after applying the appropriate discipline to the seller, I set the kit aside in the build pile so when spring rolls around I can paint the bomblets and get my cluster bomb back in the air. (I'm also considering sending a pair to someone on here with a 3D printer, so they can be "preserved for posterity".)
It's midwinter here in Ohio, so that means it's full-on build season. I've been pulling out kits and getting them to the point where all they need is paint. While getting another one out, I ran back across the Masher and so I pulled it out and started looking at it. Looking at the instructions, I think I've come to appreciate the piston system that's used to separate the airframe and allow the bomblets to fall. It looks like a pretty slick and durable design. I'll probably head over to EMRR to check out some performance reviews.
I'm relatively sure I have enough body tubes lying around (a long piece of BT-20 stuffer, a short piece of BT-50, and two pieces of BT-55 for the airframe) to replace the botched ones, and the nose cone is salvageable with some 400-grit wet/dry.
Darn it, I think I'm gonna have to build this thing.
Anyone have one, and are there any gotchas to look for? I'm probably not going to stick with the paint scheme, and by extension I probably won't use the peel & stick decals.
So I was trolling eBay for replacement bomblets for my Estes Cluster Bomb (a kit which is, incidentally, about as easy to find on eBay as hen's teeth, whatever that means). I lost mine at one of our club launches quite a while back. I found out that they're the same ones used on the Meteor Masher kit.
Found a Masher kit for cheap and snagged it. Much to my chagrin, and contrary to the description, the kit had been opened and the body tubes and nose cone had been painted - BADLY - with a rattle-can green. But the reason I got the kit was the bomblets, and thankfully they were still in their original white. So, after applying the appropriate discipline to the seller, I set the kit aside in the build pile so when spring rolls around I can paint the bomblets and get my cluster bomb back in the air. (I'm also considering sending a pair to someone on here with a 3D printer, so they can be "preserved for posterity".)
It's midwinter here in Ohio, so that means it's full-on build season. I've been pulling out kits and getting them to the point where all they need is paint. While getting another one out, I ran back across the Masher and so I pulled it out and started looking at it. Looking at the instructions, I think I've come to appreciate the piston system that's used to separate the airframe and allow the bomblets to fall. It looks like a pretty slick and durable design. I'll probably head over to EMRR to check out some performance reviews.
I'm relatively sure I have enough body tubes lying around (a long piece of BT-20 stuffer, a short piece of BT-50, and two pieces of BT-55 for the airframe) to replace the botched ones, and the nose cone is salvageable with some 400-grit wet/dry.
Darn it, I think I'm gonna have to build this thing.
Anyone have one, and are there any gotchas to look for? I'm probably not going to stick with the paint scheme, and by extension I probably won't use the peel & stick decals.