luke strawwalker
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- Jan 18, 2009
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A few weeks ago, Wes over at Dr. Zooch contacted me about building some kits for display at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Museum. I jumped at the chance... It took a little longer than I figured it would, but I've had a lot of irons in the fire lately around here, and I wanted to do absolutely top-notch work, so I hope it was worth the wait! They're now finished and I'll ship them back to Dr. Zooch, who'll then forward them on to the museum folks.
He asked me to do the EFT-1 with plain yellow flame fins, and the Jupiter C Explorer 1... I've done the EFT-1 beta build thread elsewhere here on the forum, and I have my own Jupiter C kit, but haven't built it yet... I'll do a build thread on that one when I build my own... it's pretty straightforward anyway, other than having to shape the nosecone a bit with sandpaper to make the adapters for the Explorer I satellite and the second stage motor cover...
I went a little beyond the instructions on the Explorer 1... the instructions call for the tip of the Explorer 1 satellite plain black, when in reality the front half (the instrument compartment) was covered with alternating black and white stripes for thermal control purposes (to keep the instruments from either freezing or broiling). The rear half of Explorer 1 was the solid rocket motor casing, which was white. Since the Explorer 1 in this kit is a 1/8 inch dowel, the instructions have your forego attempting to paint the stripes and simply paint the front half black. I figured I'd try doing the stripes, and if it didn't work, I could always just paint it black... I had some trim monokote, so I cut a ~1 millimeter strip off the end of the sheet, and cut each stripe individually, cut the forward end to a point (since they went up the nosecone to just below the rounded tip, which was white) and then individually fitted them. It's not the scale number of stripes (don't recall ATM how many there were and I'm not bothering to dig out the ROTW which would probably tell me) but I put five stripes on it, so it's got five black and five white. At least it gives the effect of how the real thing looked. It was also about the best someone could do at this scale with trim monokote anyway, because working with stuff this small is like doing hemorrhoid surgery on a gnat... or an ant, as the case may be... LOL
I papered the fins on the Jupiter C... the fins are built up from two seperate pieces-- the inner main fin section, with a wedge-shaped leading edge sanded in beforehand, and the outer rectangular steering fin, again with the wedge airfoil sanded into the leading edge beforehand, then each section is papered individually as mentioned in my other threads... then the fin parts are all trimmed of excess paper as shown in the Vanguard Eagle thread, and then lightly sanded along the edges to dress the edges of any paper hairs or dried excess glue. Then the outer steering fin is glued to the inner main fin. I painted the fins flat white, let them dry thoroughly, and then applied a thin layer of white glue to the fin roots for double-glue joints, and let that dry. Then I laid out the fins according to the painting guide and masked off the appropriate sides on two of the fins, which are black on one side and white on the other, and stuck them down to a piece of doubled-up tape sticky side out stuck to cardboard painting sticks to be sprayed black on the appropriate sides, plus one fin is sprayed black on both sides (and one fin remains white on both sides). This worked very well and gave the fins a nice, matching flat finish on both sides, something that wouldn't have been achievable brush painting them with black Testor's bottle paint. I applied a thin layer of white glue to the wrap where the fins would attach, and let that dry, then double glue-jointed the fins to the body tube. The launch lug was cut in half per the instructions, only I cut the ends at an angle to make them look better, and then glued them onto the model with white glue, on the back next to the main body tube wrap seam... Went back and put "microfillets" on them with white glue in a syringe...
Anyway, here's the pics... enjoy! OL JR
He asked me to do the EFT-1 with plain yellow flame fins, and the Jupiter C Explorer 1... I've done the EFT-1 beta build thread elsewhere here on the forum, and I have my own Jupiter C kit, but haven't built it yet... I'll do a build thread on that one when I build my own... it's pretty straightforward anyway, other than having to shape the nosecone a bit with sandpaper to make the adapters for the Explorer I satellite and the second stage motor cover...
I went a little beyond the instructions on the Explorer 1... the instructions call for the tip of the Explorer 1 satellite plain black, when in reality the front half (the instrument compartment) was covered with alternating black and white stripes for thermal control purposes (to keep the instruments from either freezing or broiling). The rear half of Explorer 1 was the solid rocket motor casing, which was white. Since the Explorer 1 in this kit is a 1/8 inch dowel, the instructions have your forego attempting to paint the stripes and simply paint the front half black. I figured I'd try doing the stripes, and if it didn't work, I could always just paint it black... I had some trim monokote, so I cut a ~1 millimeter strip off the end of the sheet, and cut each stripe individually, cut the forward end to a point (since they went up the nosecone to just below the rounded tip, which was white) and then individually fitted them. It's not the scale number of stripes (don't recall ATM how many there were and I'm not bothering to dig out the ROTW which would probably tell me) but I put five stripes on it, so it's got five black and five white. At least it gives the effect of how the real thing looked. It was also about the best someone could do at this scale with trim monokote anyway, because working with stuff this small is like doing hemorrhoid surgery on a gnat... or an ant, as the case may be... LOL
I papered the fins on the Jupiter C... the fins are built up from two seperate pieces-- the inner main fin section, with a wedge-shaped leading edge sanded in beforehand, and the outer rectangular steering fin, again with the wedge airfoil sanded into the leading edge beforehand, then each section is papered individually as mentioned in my other threads... then the fin parts are all trimmed of excess paper as shown in the Vanguard Eagle thread, and then lightly sanded along the edges to dress the edges of any paper hairs or dried excess glue. Then the outer steering fin is glued to the inner main fin. I painted the fins flat white, let them dry thoroughly, and then applied a thin layer of white glue to the fin roots for double-glue joints, and let that dry. Then I laid out the fins according to the painting guide and masked off the appropriate sides on two of the fins, which are black on one side and white on the other, and stuck them down to a piece of doubled-up tape sticky side out stuck to cardboard painting sticks to be sprayed black on the appropriate sides, plus one fin is sprayed black on both sides (and one fin remains white on both sides). This worked very well and gave the fins a nice, matching flat finish on both sides, something that wouldn't have been achievable brush painting them with black Testor's bottle paint. I applied a thin layer of white glue to the wrap where the fins would attach, and let that dry, then double glue-jointed the fins to the body tube. The launch lug was cut in half per the instructions, only I cut the ends at an angle to make them look better, and then glued them onto the model with white glue, on the back next to the main body tube wrap seam... Went back and put "microfillets" on them with white glue in a syringe...
Anyway, here's the pics... enjoy! OL JR
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