Hello from South Florida!

[novahobbies]

Hi there! Getting back into the rocketry hobby after a very long hiatus. I was big into the hobby in my Jr High years in the late 80's/early 90's but fell out of it by HS. When the lockdowns hit in 2020, I needed something to do with the kiddo to keep her occupied a little bit that didn't involve other people. Although she'd never been terribly interested in my main hobbies (building sci-fi models), she took an interest when I ordered the re-issue of the Explorer Aquarius model and asked about launching rockets. We started with a simple model for her, and I began re-collecting some of the older models I remembered enjoying when I was a kid. Fast forward a couple of years and I'm starting to think about getting my level 1 cert and flying a couple larger models in the G-I range soon. But I'm still just as happy flying low power kits. I have a few projects on the bench at the moment. My Saturn V Skylab version and a Saturn 1b are both in the final painting stages and awaiting decals, and I have a second Saturn V (standard) that is in early construction, as well as a Launch Lab Rocketry Leviathan conversion and a Phoenix clone that I'm going to use as my first cluster with a 3x 24mm mount. Here's a few greeting pics of one of our recent launches out in Delray Beach:
20220719_095434 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

VideoCapture_20220719-102305 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

2022-07-27_12-28-09 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

VideoCapture_20220719-102855 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

And some of the WIPs:

20220811_224031 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

20220810_152932 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

20220810_230503 by Richard Rayl, on Flickr

 

[smstachwick]

Nicely done! Impressive detail work on the scale models.

Welcome aboard.

 

[Rob Campbell]

A Mercury Redstone and Star Trek! It doesn't get any better than that.

 

[scotte]

Having recently moved from Miami after 7 years there, I have sympathy for the degree of difficulty in building and flying HPR in your area. Trees and swamps make it hard to find suitable launch sites, bugs and heat make flying uncomfortable to unbearable, and humidity, humidity, and humidity make painting a royal pain. Your accomplishments are impressive on their own, but especially so under those circumstances! Welcome to the forum

 

[Adam3836]

Welcome to the forums

 

[novahobbies]

Having recently moved from Miami after 7 years there, I have sympathy for the degree of difficulty in building and flying HPR in your area. Trees and swamps make it hard to find suitable launch sites, bugs and heat make flying uncomfortable to unbearable, and humidity, humidity, and humidity make painting a royal pain. Your accomplishments are impressive on their own, but especially so under those circumstances! Welcome to the forum

I don't know how much HPR I'll ever be able to get into in this area, but I still want to at least get my L1 cert done. There's a pretty awesome group in my general area that flies once a month about 30 minutes north of me that I'm going to check out soon. I've heard some of those folks mentioning J sized motors so I suppose the park is big enough to handle at least SOME level 2 stuff, but I'm just going to focus on L1 for now and see where it goes. Got my eye on an Apogee Zephyr for an L1 flight, or maybe be stupid and just go straight for a Katana, but that's probably getting way ahead of myself.

 

[Adam3836]

Zephyr is a great L1 rocket

 

[Huxter]

Great paint jobs w the corrugated wraps on the Saturn 1B and V! I have alot of issue w my Saturn V right now!

 

[Hobie1dog]

to the forum. thanks for the pictures.

 

[novahobbies]

Great paint jobs w the corrugated wraps on the Saturn 1B and V! I have alot of issue w my Saturn V right now!

Thanks kindly, the 10-foot rule DEFINITELY applies to this paint scheme and camera angle always helps. ;-) But those are standard in most model hobbies, aren't they?
If I may: Are you hand-brushing, using a spray can, or an airbrush? I didn't do any special masking tricks here, but painting with an airbrush really makes this kind of project vastly easier. I used yellow frogtape for most of the masking, with some masking done with another off-brand low-tack tape I found on Amazon with different thicknesses. After I spray-bombed the white base coat, I used Vallejo Air black in my airbrush under 20psi pressure. You attack it angled IN to the masked spot, and make sure you don't angle out. Put another way, the airbrush spray is never ever pointed so it's aiming UNDER the masking. Only perpendicular or else angled inwards from the tape into the area to be sprayed. I was also nervous about all those corrugated bits and concerned I was going to get major paint bleed but as long as you use lower pressure and don't try to flood one area all at once, you'll be fine.
All that being said -- there's still quite a few little areas that need to be cleaned and refined. Like I mentioned in the beginning, the 10-foot rule absolutely applies to most all my projects. Heh.

 

[Huxter]

Thanks for asking! I use rattle cans - rustoleum 2x paint and primer. I cannot control myself tho, and spray too heavy coats that tend to run! I do use Tamiya (sp?) and froggy tape. I also spray the base color (white) when I paint the second color (black) .

Lesson learned (as you say) do not spray into that corrugated channels, but away. This specific piece, I would also paint upside down so my heavy coats will not run down the corrugations.

I picked up a can of Krylon Fusion black paint and primer - I got really great results when I used 2 quick coats. I think I will switch to the Krylon for a bit and see how it goes (on)!

I'll be brushing on all further coats of paint. I try to make my rockets look good from 6 feet, but this one is 10 foot+ def!

This is when I started drinking!