Goonies

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Greg Furtman said:
After reading this thread I am having the Gooney urge. What is most common BT size? Nosecone shape? All 13mm motors? Places to get parts? Thanks.
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The usual starting point is a Baby Bertha kit. Even that is up for dispute. The originals used the PNC-60L and 13mm power, but you can go whatever way you want with a Goon.
 
Greg Furtman said:
After reading this thread I am having the Gooney urge. What is most common BT size? Nosecone shape? All 13mm motors? Places to get parts? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Plans at JimZ's
Goony as you know is a genre.
The original Goonybirds had 5" long BT-60 airframes, PNC-60L nose cones, and 13mm motor mounts.
I kitbashed mine from Estes Jetliner kits. They were on closeout and cheaper than the Baby Bertha.
Don't know if they are still available but erockets had some laser cut fins for some of the originals.
The rest were traced from templates at JimZ's.
Decals were home printed, again from the scans at JimZ's. I cleaned up some of the decals.
Originals had stick on decals.
Also originals do not call for nose weight, but I added the two pats of clay that came with the Jetliner kits.
All the flights of the clones were straight.
Have fun!
 
I just checked & I can't find any JetLiners. AC Supply does have Mini Fat Boys for $8.39 which seems reasonable. Erockets still has some of the fins available. The stickershock website seems to be down or dead.
 
Greg Furtman said:
I just checked & I can't find any JetLiners. AC Supply does have Mini Fat Boys for $8.39 which seems reasonable. Erockets still has some of the fins available. The stickershock website seems to be down or dead.
Click to expand...
Mini Fat Boy will work great. The BT-60 tube is 5" so you won't have to cut it down.
I just checked the Stickershock website, it's up now.
Estes GOONY 6 PACK - STICKERSHOCK23.COM
Good luck!
 
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Greg Furtman said:
@kuririn Are all six original Estes Goonybirds the same size/same nosecone just with different fin layouts?
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Originals are all 13mm motor mounts, same nose cone, and BT-60 airframe 5 inches long.
Subsequent goonies are variations. Some have 18 mm mounts, longer airframes, upscaled, etc.
It's a genre, so as long as it looks shortened and stretched it can be called a goonie.
 
Over the years I did all six of the originals as BT-80 upscales. All are 24mm powered except for the Star Snoop, which is just a Fat boy with different fins. 18mm is fine for small field flying, but not very satisfying for cornfields. I've also done them in 1:1 with a mix of 13mm and 18mm. In the original size they are fine as 13mm, especially considering how much of the little recovery room is taken up by the 18mm engine mount. I flew them all during the 2020 flying season and had planned to do an All Goon launch, but that was before the All Max launch tried to kill me.

image-cbfbec8b-3f57-42c1-8da9-5d2d27be6d55jpeg-900-600-075320154113219.jpeg
image-frw-super-snooperjpg-900-600-100620205428340.jpg
image-goonybird-galaxy-guppymomentjpg-900-600-075320151326679.jpg
image-haerus-humongousjpg-900-600-102720204802465.jpg
image-image-zoomer-broomer-glamour-shotjpg-600-105011111905410jpg-600-055314181018213.jpg
image-mega-goon-sky-shriekjpg-900-600-084620232025815.jpg
 
Some of you might have already have seen this, but I recently completed a goony of the design that eventually became the Missile Toe. I worked off the original concept art from Estes which had all the goonies carrying various WW2 themes. The proto-Missile Toe was the German design, clearly intended to evoke some Der Red Max charm.

My version stayed fairly true to the original art, but I gave it a black nose to help with the Red Max family resemblance and threw in a few more markings of my own creation. I flew it for the first time last weekend and it did quite well on both A3-4Ts and A10-3Ts.
 

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Rob Caswell said:
Some of you might have already have seen this, but I recently completed a goony of the design that eventually became the Missile Toe. I worked off the original concept art from Estes which had all the goonies carrying various WW2 themes. The proto-Missile Toe was the German design, clearly intended to evoke some Der Red Max charm.

My version stayed fairly true to the original art, but I gave it a black nose to help with the Red Max family resemblance and threw in a few more markings of my own creation. I flew it for the first time last weekend and it did quite well on both A3-4Ts and A10-3Ts.
Click to expand...
Yep, seen it. Happy to see it again. Just never stops getting cooler.
 
Random thought while having my coffee this AM. Since we start building/designing Goonie versions of whatever or recreating the originals from Baby Bertha's. It struck me that the Baby Bertha is itself a Goonie. Stubby with oversized fins for it's size. Ya or Na ?

Cheers, Mark
 
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RokitFlyr said:
Random thought while having my coffee this AM. Since we start building/designing Goonie versions of whatever or recreating the originals from Baby Bertha's. It struck me that the Baby Bertha is itself a Goonie. Stubby with oversized fins for it's size. Ya or Na ?

Cheers, Mark
Click to expand...

That's some deep thought there Mr. Handey.

I just had an idea for one. Dang. Will have to order another Baby Bertha...
 
Did original estes goonies had waterslide decals or decals were stickers? From updated jimz plans it seems original decals were stickers.
 
@kuririn I have a question. Since all the Goonies are short & stubby was there nose weight that needed to be added? The reason I ask is that I turn my own wood nosecones and if weight was added I could just use a denser wood. (Balsa is sooo soft it is one of the most difficult woods to turn.) I have 2 basswood trees and I've pruned lower limbs and air dried it and it turns really nice. :headspinning:
 
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