Lockheed Defender Build

If your letters are white, and you use a white primer, you can buy stick on letters in various sizes and fonts at your local hobby store. After a solid primer layer, stick the letters in appropriate position as masks, maybe do a light overcoat of white primer, then do your final outer colors. Once completely dry, carefully peel off your masks to reveal the white.

I just sprayed the back end of the rocket. I have some fuzzies that need to be addressed and a little work on the fillets.

I am working on the laser cannons too. I won't glue them on until I have a nice, even coat of primer on the back of the rocket.

Haven't settled on how I am going to finish it yet. I'm just not very good at visualizing and I just found out the Cricut that was gifted me is not usable because Cricut shut down the design room you need to run it.

RANT ON
Going to rant now so skip ahead if you don't want to read this. How's that for some ****. You market a piece of hardware that you sell which requires propriotory software to run in. You don't provide the software with the equipment but you require your customers to join (for free) a "design room" so they can design their projects and have the hardware do it's thing. So then after a few years you pull the plug saying that the software was based on an obsolete operating program and now your machine is a paperweight. But it's ok because you might qualify for $75 off one of our newer machines...

This is the problem with all the cloud based stuff out there. It's not really yours. It's all an illusion. They have all the control and your money and when they want more money they'll figure out a way to get it from you. My wife has started buying digital movies on Amazon because she doesn't want to store the disks anymore. Well when the internet is down, can we watch that movie? Nope, no that I can tell. I haven't figured out a way to actually download them to my computer. It seems all you can do it stream them. I just don't like this cloud bullshit. BTW the Cricut Mini my sister in law sent looks nib which makes this suck even more...
RANT OFF

So anyway, I am open to ideas. Meanwhile I am hoping to find someone local that has a Cricut that can do a few masks for me.

-Bob

I'll stop short of a blanket objection to cloud stuff in general, but I agree with your rant about Cricut. Orphaning a machine like that is very crappy.

Bruiser said:

Meanwhile I am hoping to find someone local that has a Cricut that can do a few masks for me.

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Good luck on your search.

Keep in mind that if you aren't trying to do anything crazy with the colors of your lettering, you could just cut the lettering and apply it, rather than going through the extra (and more trouble-prone) step of masking and painting. On the other hand, if you're trying to match the lettering to another paint color on the rocket, then masking could be the way to go.

Neil has had good results painting water slide decals cut to fit.

BABAR said:

Neil has had good results painting water slide decals cut to fit.

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Yeah, but not cutting text.

Cool airplane rocket!

Thank you. it's coming along nicer than I thought it would.

I have the fuzzies all taken care of. I have glued the cannon pods on. Still working on the details of the barrels. Gonna try to get a coat of primer on the front half tonight.

I have cut lettering out of MonoKote when I flew RC aircraft. I guess it would be similar to that. I imagine Hobby Lobby would sell vinyl.

Thanks
-Bob

Well I was going to edit my last post but I don't have that option so here's the pic I was going to add. It's the tail of a scratch built R/C airplane I designed and built while assigned to Kunsan AB, ROK back in 1994. I called it the Raptor. Jurassic Park was pretty big right around then



-Bob

C'mon you shouldn't tease like that. Show some pics of the whole plane!

Oh no, you'd be disappointed, the Raptor hasn't had an engine in it or been assembled in over 20 years. I only dusted off the tail for the pic and you can see the wrinkles in the covering...

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to come up with a paint scheme for the Defender.

-Bob

The Defender is in the final stages of construction. It's all finish work now that the primer is on.




Not sure what I am going to do next. I've tried a few paint schemes in OpenRocket that I just didn't like. I guess you could say I am stuck now.

The only non-paint stuff I have to do is glue on the engine retainer and make the recovery system.

-Bob

Paint it matte black, throw some yellow trim-monokote lines on there or panels and off you go!

Bruiser said:

The Defender is in the final stages of construction. It's all finish work now that the primer is on.

View attachment 380776 View attachment 380777 View attachment 380778 View attachment 380779


Not sure what I am going to do next. I've tried a few paint schemes in OpenRocket that I just didn't like. I guess you could say I am stuck now.

The only non-paint stuff I have to do is glue on the engine retainer and make the recovery system.

-Bob

Click to expand...

Very nice!

I hadn’t noticed the belly cannon laser doodads

Have you mounted the shock cord yet? I was thinking maaaaaybeeee if the cord is mounted on the internal belly side of the tube it miiiiight be more likely to fall dorsal side up and less likely to break off the doodads

Wow, looking very nice! Will be interesting to see what color scheme you end up using. Really cool to see it go from a simple sketch to your completed model.


Tony

Nytrunner said:

Paint it matte black, throw some yellow trim-monokote lines on there or panels and off you go!

Click to expand...

Satin black gets my vote. Matt does have some texture to it. Or yellow with road runner decals.lol...

"Have you mounted the shock cord yet? I was thinking maaaaaybeeee if the cord is mounted on the internal belly side of the tube"

The shock cord connects to an eye screw that is in the middle of the ejection buffer. A picture of the buffer is in the very first post.

The paint scheme I like the best is basically black on the top, Dark gray on the strakes and light gray on the bottom. Haven't figured out the color for the upper and lower rudders though...

I did buy a can of 2X Winter Gray today

-Bob

I've also thought of aluminum and blue. One on the fuselage and the other on the wings. Again, not sure on the rudders. It sounds cool in my head but not so good in openrocket…

-Bob

Some samples. Sorry there are no rudders but OpenRocket won't allow them

Go out side and pigment it "Wavy Gravy" dude.

What the he*** is that, lol! Maybe I can adapt this paint scheme



-Bob

Been doing a few small things to the Defender today.

I made my final decision about the wing engines. I have been struggling with them because they looked "small" to me for the scale of the rocket. I was worried about that when I chose the bt20 tubes. I had thought about using bt50 tubes but I knew I would be adding weight to the nose so I hoped to limit how much by going with the smaller tube. Today the Defender went under the knife and got a little bit of a modification.




It is now equipped with advanced radar/ECM pods on the wings, something no state-of-the-art combat aircraft would ever be without. As soon as the other radomes come in I will complete the modification.



I also glued in an engine stop so that I don't have to remember to bring tape with me to the launch.

The blue tape is on the spine because I have been checking the cg with the assorted engines I am likely to launch her with. There'll be more to come on that once it's all figured out.

Who knew a scratch design could be this much fun!

-Bob

I've been fiddling around a little bit with this and that because it turns out my rocket is apparently quite sturdily built going by it's weight. No 24mm Estes motor for this one. The choices have come down to Aerotech E30 or F44 motors. It would have been fine with an Estes E12 but then I needed to shift the CG forward 5+ inches The resulting weight slowed the rod speed enough that it would not be safe and the ceiling was less than impressive.

I did actually think about removing the 24mm mount and going with a 29mm but I would not have gained anything except for a skinnier wallet. The extra thrust would have been negated by the extra weight involved that my performance would have been the same, or slightly less even with more costly engines.

In an exercise to try to lighten her tail up a little I turned new radomes for the pods. All four radomes come out to less weight than just one of the forward plastic cones you see on the pods in the prior posted picture. The reduction did save some weight but not enough to affect the big picture. The 4 plastic cones came in at .26 ounce and the four balsa cones come in at .064 ounce so the weight savings is .196 ounce.



So next task is to get them faired in with some cwf then a light prime. Then it's off to the paint shop. Probably needless to say but the theme for this paint scheme is "less is more", at least altitude-wise

-Bob

I’d say cluster the outboards, but they are a bit far off centerline and that spells big trouble if one doesn’t light.

Great progress, really cool to see it come together. One issue with putting motors in those outboard pods is the strength of the fins. A friend had a rocket motors in pods like that (although high power) and when one motor lit late, it tore the fin off. Did not end well.

Looking forward to seeing it painted.


Tony

In between going to dog shows and a vacation to Connecticut I did get some work done on the Defender. It has the base coat of Rustoleum 2X Gloss Navy Blue overall with the nose painted Rustoleum 2X Gloss Black. The blue took a few tries before I got it right. I need to figure out how I am going to do the markings. I see a Cricut in my future because most of build are not kits and I am going to run into this same problem over and over. Anyway, the obligatory picture



-Bob

Wow, I wouldn’t have thought of that color, but it really works for this model!
Nice!

Yellow pinstripes, Blue Angels livery?

Vinyl decals and Cricut machines are expensive. How about home printed decals for your scratchers? With a graphics program you can draw up your own and print on inkjet or laser decal paper.

Wow you should totally kit this out

WOW, Bruiser, this is one awesome rocket.