kelltym88
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- Joined
- Jan 18, 2009
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Well, with all the rain we had been getting here in Southern California (by the way, we got enough in 1 week as we normally do in a whole year), I decided to build a couple kits I've had in my stash.
One of them was the OOP Estes SWAT. I am surprised that there is not a biuld thread here or a review on EMRR. Guess I'll have to do that.
Anyway, the kit went together fairly easy. I did make a few mods though. The kit comes with an 18mm MMT. Uh, no, sorry. While I do not really care about how high my rockets go, I do want them to get off the launch pad. This kit just doesn't seem like it would attain much height on a "C" motor.
So, I happened to have some 24mm cr's that fit the BT-60 bt, I cut a piece of BT-50 to accommodate an "E" motor, added the engine hook and viola!, now this bird can fly on an array of different motors ranging from a C-11 up to an "F" using my 24/40 casing.
I also ditched the conventional elastic/glue down shock cord mount by adding some kevlar around the mmt and then attaching the shock cord to the end of that. Much like how Quest does it in their kits.
The instructions said to glue the fins on first, then after to join the the body tubes together. Again, uh no. I opted to go the route more commonly found, and that is to glue the tubes together first, so I could "roll" them out so as keep them as straight as possible. I also switched them around. The instructions called for using the longer 18" tube at the rear, I decided to use the smaller tube at the rear. The reason was that if I ever had to fix it due to some malfunction, it would be easier to cut the longer tube w/o the coupler being in the way.
The tubes didn't line up that well anyway, so I had to fill in the gaps with putty, so I'm hoping the fins will help to distract from that as opposed to being higher up on the model.
I have filleted all the fins, now I just need to sand, fill, and paint. I will post pictures later. Stay tuned...
One of them was the OOP Estes SWAT. I am surprised that there is not a biuld thread here or a review on EMRR. Guess I'll have to do that.
Anyway, the kit went together fairly easy. I did make a few mods though. The kit comes with an 18mm MMT. Uh, no, sorry. While I do not really care about how high my rockets go, I do want them to get off the launch pad. This kit just doesn't seem like it would attain much height on a "C" motor.
So, I happened to have some 24mm cr's that fit the BT-60 bt, I cut a piece of BT-50 to accommodate an "E" motor, added the engine hook and viola!, now this bird can fly on an array of different motors ranging from a C-11 up to an "F" using my 24/40 casing.
I also ditched the conventional elastic/glue down shock cord mount by adding some kevlar around the mmt and then attaching the shock cord to the end of that. Much like how Quest does it in their kits.
The instructions said to glue the fins on first, then after to join the the body tubes together. Again, uh no. I opted to go the route more commonly found, and that is to glue the tubes together first, so I could "roll" them out so as keep them as straight as possible. I also switched them around. The instructions called for using the longer 18" tube at the rear, I decided to use the smaller tube at the rear. The reason was that if I ever had to fix it due to some malfunction, it would be easier to cut the longer tube w/o the coupler being in the way.
The tubes didn't line up that well anyway, so I had to fill in the gaps with putty, so I'm hoping the fins will help to distract from that as opposed to being higher up on the model.
I have filleted all the fins, now I just need to sand, fill, and paint. I will post pictures later. Stay tuned...