luke strawwalker
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Coming along nicely... KUTGW!!! OL JR
Oh boy the funky glue puttty part is comming up as well as the escape tower. Time for skill level 5 action packed adventure! Can't wait!
The basswood fins should look more "scale like" especially if you sanded in a nice wedge airfoil during construction... I usually round my fins and airfoil the trailing edges into a classical "teardrop" airfoil, but not on the Zooch kits... the flame fins I leave square (as cut) and the Saturn V I sanded into a classical "wedge airfoil" like the original. Sorta draggy but it looks just SO COOL...
If in doubt about the weight of the basswood fins vs. balsa, you could always cut a regular set of balsa fins out and do them like you were going to install them (sand to whatever shape you would use, paper em if you do that, fill them if you don't, sand, prime, paint (all one color would suffice, not duplicate the roll patterns) then weigh them with a scale and compare the difference between the set of basswood fins and the balsa ones. I doubt it'd amount to more than a couple grams, but it could be interesting to know nonetheless... after all there ARE EIGHT of them, so the differences in weight between them multiplies by 8...
Later and good luck... Looking great! OL JR
Found your next project, Rick...
I present-- the MORL Saturn IB launcher... (Manned Orbiting Research Laboratory-- sort of an adaptation/concoction of the Air Force's MOL program and Skylab for Apollo Applications... ) Serviced by Big-G and Apollo... (the silver one is a metal wind tunnel model of the Saturn IB that would launch the station (hence the straight payload fairing ala Skylab) that someone discovered and put on Ebay at some point....)
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Then there's the Saturn I/IB launched X-15 proposal... man that would have been a sporty ride!!!
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Later! OL JR
That`s a true work of art ,no doubt about that ! Plenty of patience needed to make all those small fins I would assume LOL
I agree ,I think the use of Basswood was a wise choice ,a thinner stock may be used ,a little tougher and easier to work with ,and something this small ,the basswood really shines !
Keep at it !
Sincerely
Paul T
Luke! very cool stuff!! where do you find this stuff? I guess the next step for me would be a scratch build...but I am not sure I am ready for that ... the x-15 ride would have been insane!!
thanks Paul! I hope to post some more pictures tonight...I hope to wrap up the H-1 engines tonight and get them on the booster...the engines for this kit are basically paper cones with thread turned around them for hatbands...I tried playing around with about 5 different colors or shades of aluminum paint and tried to use them almost like a wash....trying to bring out a little more detail with them by using the subtle color contrasts...I think they look a little better than simply painting them one overall color...hopefully it will be worth the effort!
OK....I was able to make the engines here...I actually made these about a week before I started the build...but I can't locate the pictures I took while making them....the Zooch H-1 engines consist of two paper cones that are trimmed form the supplied sheet and glued together One cone fits over the other and kind of recreates the heat shielding that the H-1's carried for flight. Thread is then wrapped around the upper portion to represent the hatbands of the engine. The best engines I have ever sen made are made by Luke strawalker and hcmbanjo (Chris Michaelson)..those guys can roll these things to perfection. I tend to struggle with them. A small piece of the supplied dowel is then trimmed to represent the turbine exhaust manifold...this is glued to the side of the engine and then the really neat fairing that blends this into the engine bell is made by creating something called funky glue putty. I was actually able to make this...for the first time thanks to a blog by Chris Michaelson and another thread on a Saturn V made by Mushtang....the trick is to put a small drop of glue in your palm and let it set up for a minute or so, then slowly roll the drying glue into a small putty like ball that you can then shape....normally, I simply end up smearing glue across my palm but this time I hung in there with it and was actually able to roll the drying glue into a small ball. as you can see from my engines, I have a LONG way to go...I find making these little engines to be a challenge....my turbine exhaust manifold kinda looks like a blob...
the instructions indicate to paint the engines an overall Steel color...in some of the pictures I have seen of the H-1 there are some small variations in color..so I basically used every shade of aluminum /silver/steel pain that I had here at home...View attachment 115905 I made a little color chart....what I was trying to do was bring out these little variations by using various shades on different parts of the engine...on the upper area where the hat bands were located, I used a Testors flat aluminum. The bottom part of the engine was painted using Testors metallic Silver. The inside of the bells were painted steel and the hat bands were lightly brushed with Tamiya chrome silver....
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at the end of the day...you are probably just better off painting them a flat steel color....
what I want too try to do is make a Boost Protective Cover (BPC) for the command module....I found these schematics online....the BPC protected the command module during boost and in the event of an abort...it has these crazy raised pattern on the exterior surface and I have no idea why this is so ...one would think that would be a smooth surface...but as you can see..it ain't!
Hey that looks pretty good... can you get a picture up REALLY close?? (does your digital camera have a "macro" or "super-macro" setting?? That will allow it to focus in REALLY close with the lens up close so you can get detail shots that nearly fill the entire frame...)
The trick to rolling those engines and other little fiddly cones on Zooch kits?? Use the tip of a mechanical pencil, put the glued-up cone (before you glue the different "pitch" halves together, upper and lower) over the tip of the pencil (or the rounded end of a Sharpie marker for the larger lower halves) and then roll it between your thumb as you press the surface of the cone against the curved pencil tip... if you have to, wrap your index finger partway around the cone and curl and uncurl your finger around the cone, turning it against the rounded end of the pencil... this will "relax" the stiff sections where the paper tends to want to naturally crease when pulled into such a tight curl (especially prone to do this on the upper sections of the rocket engines-- the lower sections are larger and thus more gradually curved, so they tend to come out much rounder naturally, but can still benefit from a little work on the end of a Sharpie marker).
Once the paper has "relaxed" into a round shape, you're all set...
Looking REALLY good! KUTGW! OL JR
Yeah, they were constructed out of a lot of parts... and they had to clear a LOT of parts of the CM... openings for the hatch, cutouts for the umbilical connection on the opposite side of the CM, openings for the thruster ports, etc... Plus the thing had to come off with the tower when it jettisoned, with 100% reliability. The thing was also covered with CORK which acted as an ablative surface from aerodynamic heating in the atmosphere during ascent (the surface of the BPC would heat up to around 400 degrees from aerodynamic heating on ascent, and they wanted to protect the CM from that... the foam on the ET serves the same purpose... and the early painted tanks served double duty to show burn patterns on the tank from shock wave impingement from the SRB nosecones and the orbiter nosecap, and hot exhaust gas recirculation at the base of the ET from plume impingement on the bottom during powered flight... the evidence was literally "burned" into the paint of the tank!
Later! OL JR
from this point on, I was trying to recreate the area where the hatch would be...there appear to be some covered panels for windows so I used 1/8" tape for that and then used various pieces of tape of either 1/32" or 1/64" to try to recreate the various supports that are built into a BPC around the hatch....honestly, this is at the limit if my eyesight down here...and I admit that I am a glutton for punishment by playing around with these little strips of tape...but I like the overall effect...the tape gives that raised panel line effect....let me know what you think?
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Luke...you raise a lot of neat points that I think sometimes get forgotten in a system so complex as Apollo...but what I think is fascinating is the engineering effort that went into EVERY component...you know that a bunch of guys just sweated out creating this BPC and hoping their system didn't fail...think about the guys that designed a swing arm on the launch umbilical tower...those dang things were like 50-60 feet long and had to swing out of the way so that they didn't hit the rocket...I think I read somewhere where they were designed to start moving when the sensed the first upward movement of 1-2 inches....I think some systems got all the "glory"..like a LM or the F-1 engines...but there are thousands and thousands of small systems that no one would ever think about that were just as critical, like a swing arm, BPC, Q-ball.....you have to sit back and just tip your hat not just to those engineers...but to that entire organizational structure that marshaled and directed all of those people, in such a tight time line....good lord, what a team!!
It looks fantastic... too bad you won't see it on the pad-- too far away... LOL But for DISPLAY... it'll look awesome.
I recommend hitting it with a good clearcoat once you have them all applied like you want to "lock them in place"... the adhesive on such tiny pieces of tape isn't particularly strong or permanent... especially with a 200 mph slipstream wind trying to rip them off! (not to mention landing in grass or dirt).
That's what I did with the tiny little stripes I cut out of Trim Monokote for the Explorer I Jupiter C I did for the USAF Space Museum at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station... https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...d-for-Cape-Canaveral-Air-Force-Station-Museum!
While the 3D effect is cool, I wonder-- have you tried the "detailed" paper wrap from roskoracer's detailed Saturn IB wraps on the capsule?? That's probably how I'm gonna go...
Later and good luck... OL JR
Quite true... The thing *I* would sweat the most?? The LES tower jettison explosive bolts that hold the tower and BPC to the top of the Apollo capsule...
That is one thing that ABSOLUTELY HAD to work, or the crew was dead, period... if that tower doesn't come off, the BPC can't come off. Can't jettison the docking probe and upper ring, and can't deploy parachutes...
I mean, there's a million things that HAVE to work, but that's just one of those things that would worry me... especially sitting in that capsule on the way upstairs... when you're pulling 4 gees, that 10,000 or so pound tower up there is pushing back on the capsule with 40,000 pounds of force, just in gees... not to mention aerodynamic pressure... sorta like sitting in a chair held up by four eggs, one under each leg, long end up...
You're right... it was a heck of a team... and they did it all WITHOUT the benefit of 50 years of hindsight and experience in what works and what doesn't, basically did it all with slide rules, and wrote the book while they were doing it. Now we can't even replicate it when we have the playbook right in front of us... even with all the advances in technology over the past 50 years and the experience they passed on down to us...
Really sad, IMHO... Just makes Apollo that much more amazing! OL JR
PS... you ever seen "Moon Machines"?? It's a great 6 part series that they show occassionally on satellite... I recorded them all on the DVR. The "suits" episode was pretty cool... the guys in charge of the suits were watching the moon landing, and they were on pins and needles (pun intended) watching Buzz and Neil on the first moonwalk-- they were sitting there just saying to themselves "just hurry up and get back in!" because they were afraid something would go wrong-- they knew those suits inside and out and they just knew all the things that COULD potentially go wrong... The guy they interviewed said they were just beside themselved watching some of the antics on the later moonwalks, especially when Jack Schmitt kept falling down on Apollo 17... they were so worried he might puncture the suit and die...
He said they were REALLY proud of what they did, but that was tempered with the realization of what all COULD go wrong if they had a 'bad day'....
The moon buggy and LM episode was very good as well, and so was the Saturn V episode... and yeah the CM episode was good too... (which covers them all LOL
Later!
Luke...I never thought about the LES as a crew death if it did not jettison ...you are exactly right...I know the Apollo team had great faith in pyrotechnics...I mean, I think I read that if the inter stage did not jettison on the Saturn V that was a mandatory abort....but each one of those little components, the ones that nobody even thinks about were critical! just amazing stuff!
and yes...my kids got me Moon Machines on DVD as a Christmas present...its excellent! I love the little remote control lunar rover that was made to sell the thing to Von Braun....its now 40 years old...still folds up and still working after all of these years. makes you wonder if they ever got up to the moon again...threw new batteries in the rovers if they would work??
Yeah... I'm sure they were triple redundant or something, but still... one of those things that MUST work, period!
Interesting you mention the S-IC interstage... on Skylab it DIDN'T jettison... apparently when the micrometeroid shield ripped off the Skylab, taking one of the solar panels with it, it struck the S-IC interstage in such a way as to disable the skirt jettison funtion on the S-II after staging... so the S-II/Skylab stack hauled it all the way to orbit.
Skylab was really a "miracle flight" that the thing survived at all... had that careening hunk of debris hit and punctured the side of the S-II LH2 tank, it probably would have destroyed the vehicle then and there...
Later! OL JR
speaking of Skylab....I bought a book on Amazon on the Skylab program...I haven't started it yet..I am currently reading Walt Cunningham's All American Boys which is actually a darned good read! when I am done I will head on to the Skylab book...but I agree with you....from the handout that Wes provided with his Skylab Saturn V...it really was a miracle the thing made it up there and that they were even able to use it and even though there was aback up, there was really no money to launch the backup...so it was very fortunate that they were able to save it.
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