stevem
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Over the past week or so I have been working on a approx 1/40 scale of the Delta III. The exact scale factor I used was 1/39.6 - Thanks to Silverleaf who has some nice drawings of the Delta III on his web site. These sure made the job easy!
Upper airframe is 4" bt I got from A2Z hobbies and lower bt is bt-80.
The nose cone was the biggest challenge for me as I have always made them out of balsa. I didn't have any balsa big enough to turn a 4" nc so I decided to try and make it out of cardstock. I used the VCP software to print the nc shroud. I cut a 4" circle out of 1/8" ply for the base and I used a 2" styrofoam ball for the rounded tip. I filled the styrofoam with Elmer's Fill-n-finish and then I gave the whole thing 2 coats of West Systems epoxy. A bt-80 coupler is used as the nc shoulder.
The lower airframe's bt-80 runs the length of the entire rocket and the nose cone mates to that.
At the beginning of this project I thought about making the boosters separate but after beginning I decided that I didn't want to make this that complicated. The 9 boosters are all solidly attached.
This rocket will fly (I hope!) on 4 24mm D's (1 in main and 3 in boosters) and 6 18mm something or other in the remaining boosters. Should be fun getting a 10 motor cluster to light!
Upper airframe is 4" bt I got from A2Z hobbies and lower bt is bt-80.
The nose cone was the biggest challenge for me as I have always made them out of balsa. I didn't have any balsa big enough to turn a 4" nc so I decided to try and make it out of cardstock. I used the VCP software to print the nc shroud. I cut a 4" circle out of 1/8" ply for the base and I used a 2" styrofoam ball for the rounded tip. I filled the styrofoam with Elmer's Fill-n-finish and then I gave the whole thing 2 coats of West Systems epoxy. A bt-80 coupler is used as the nc shoulder.
The lower airframe's bt-80 runs the length of the entire rocket and the nose cone mates to that.
At the beginning of this project I thought about making the boosters separate but after beginning I decided that I didn't want to make this that complicated. The 9 boosters are all solidly attached.
This rocket will fly (I hope!) on 4 24mm D's (1 in main and 3 in boosters) and 6 18mm something or other in the remaining boosters. Should be fun getting a 10 motor cluster to light!