- Joined
- Feb 8, 2022
- Messages
- 462
- Reaction score
- 326
Back in 2022, I found this short kit for a very realistic high-power scale model of the AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missile on eBay.
It's been sitting around in a box waiting for me to build it. Finishing 3D-printed parts still intimidate me.
A few of you on here have this same short kit, which was just the nose unit pieces and fin can. You have to supply your own 29mm engine mount, retainer, airframe tube, recovery system and launch lugs or rail buttons. Mine didn't come with instructions. Some balancing instructions were in the eBay listing, which is no longer accessible as of this writing. Others have posted that this requires a 22" tube. Mine is less than 21", and therefore may require more nose weight than yours.
The Chinese Spy Balloon incident renewed my interested in building this. The newer AIM-9X Sidewinder is actually the missile that was used, according to reports.
In anticipation of tomorrow's launch, I finally bit the bullet and built an OpenRocket file. Looks like I will be adding 100g of weight, and with that it should fly stable on everything from an F50-6 to an H165-12.
My assembled, unfinished AIM-9L:
Here's the OpenRocket sim:
Color reference, photo from the National Archives (if you have more or better color references, and any scale data for comparison, please share them):
It's been sitting around in a box waiting for me to build it. Finishing 3D-printed parts still intimidate me.
A few of you on here have this same short kit, which was just the nose unit pieces and fin can. You have to supply your own 29mm engine mount, retainer, airframe tube, recovery system and launch lugs or rail buttons. Mine didn't come with instructions. Some balancing instructions were in the eBay listing, which is no longer accessible as of this writing. Others have posted that this requires a 22" tube. Mine is less than 21", and therefore may require more nose weight than yours.
The Chinese Spy Balloon incident renewed my interested in building this. The newer AIM-9X Sidewinder is actually the missile that was used, according to reports.
In anticipation of tomorrow's launch, I finally bit the bullet and built an OpenRocket file. Looks like I will be adding 100g of weight, and with that it should fly stable on everything from an F50-6 to an H165-12.
My assembled, unfinished AIM-9L:
Here's the OpenRocket sim:
Color reference, photo from the National Archives (if you have more or better color references, and any scale data for comparison, please share them):
