ASP Micro Jayhawk is back!

[kuririn]

First time it's available since I became a BAR. Was waiting for the Semroc MX Jayhawk but it's been taking too long.
Ordered from Jonrocket, also available directly from ASP.

(stock picture from ASP website).

 

[Lawndart]

Got mine delivered today.

 

[neil_w]

The size of MX stuff blows my mind.

 

[kuririn]

How bout a quickie?
Instructions and parts:

Fins are cut from plastic sheets.
Half round plastic for the conduit.
Slotted nose cone.
Plastic angle tool and decal sheet.
Split lead shot fishing weights.
Keeping all the small parts in the plastic bag. You know why.

Templates and alignment guide were copied from the instruction sheet and cut out.
Fin templates were attached to the plastic stock with double stick tape and fins/winglets/canards were cut out.


The kevlar was tied and crimped onto the lead sinkers


And the nose cone and coupler were glued in locking the weight.



Wings were glued to the airframe. Don't know who came up with this but I saw it on Chris M's blog. A toothpick glued on the centerline of an expended engine casing helps in visually aligning the wing keeping it perpendicular to the body.


Winglets were glued on perpendicular to the wing.


Conduit was shaped and glued on the alignment line. Lugs were also glued on to the wing/tube joint.


And assembly is done.


Update pic will be posted when finishing and decals are complete.
Probably a few days, working on completing earlier builds right now.
Cheers!

 

[kuririn]

Sad to see an otherwise perfectly fine kit ruined by lousy decals.
After letting the basecoat dry, I started to apply the tiny decals.
First decal, the black squares started disintegrating as I was applying it.


So I took a closer look at the decal sheet and found this:


When I touched the upper three bars with my DRY finger it smudged!

This is not the first time I've received lousy, uncoated decals in an ASP kit.
Therefore I cannot recommend purchasing this kit.
VERY DISAPPOINTED!

 

[Ulexis]

That's a bummer. I was about to start building one. Can decals like that be saved if you put a clear coat on them?

 

[kuririn]

Yeah, if you know they're bad ahead of time by all means try clear coating. It just might save them.

 

[Ulexis]

Will do. Sucks for you though. I will need to keep this in mind if it's a problem with all asp kits. I have a few.

 

[kuririn]

No worries, I have some larger Jayhawk decals I can downsize. Same thing happened with my micro RP3. Dang, Andy should fix that, it really sours me on his kits.

 

[AfterBurners]

That is kind of neat. I honestly didn't realize such small kits existed? What do you fly them on?

 

[kuririn]

Micro Maxx motors (1/8 A).

 

[kuririn]

OK, after cooling down a day I'll have to tone back the criticism a bit.
Contacting Andy Jackson at ASP and he is sending me a set of replacement decals.
We'll see what they are like, and go forward from there.
These things happen, I'm keeping an open mind.

 

[Doug Frost]

The Best Jayhawk Kits Ever provided are from Frost Rocketry.com. The 1/8th Scale Kit is $95 plus 20% shipping. The bigger one is 1/5th Scale for $125 plus 20% shipping. I spent $1500 on the Master Decals to have them Drafted. The Website needs to be updated. You can E-mail me at: [email protected]. I can give you all the details. Doug Frost, NAR #3446, TRA #1007

 

[kuririn]

I stripped off the bad decals and reshot the orange basecoat a couple of days ago.
Received two sets of new decals from Andy at ASP yesterday, and applied one set this morning.
While much better than the previous set, there were still some "issues".



Note that the black letters in "NAVY" are starting to wear off.
And I was careful not to handle it too much.

I took a close look at the second set, looking at the reflection of the light from the windows coming off the gloss topcoat:


The colored areas are glossy, but the black areas are flat.
So they were applied OVER the clear coat.
Why? Who knows.
But I give up.
No thumbs up or thumbs down on this one.
You can make your own decisions.
Just my personal experiences, warts and all.
FIN.

 

[AfterBurners]

The Best Jayhawk Kits Ever provided are from Frost Rocketry.com. The 1/8th Scale Kit is $95 plus 20% shipping. The bigger one is 1/5th Scale for $125 plus 20% shipping. I spent $1500 on the Master Decals to have them Drafted. The Website needs to be updated. You can E-mail me at: [email protected]. I can give you all the details. Doug Frost, NAR #3446, TRA #1007

I might be interested hard to decide if I don't see a pic of them