Mercury Little Joe I

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Got the exterior trim paint on the fins, I need to mask again for a white base and then orange on the airframe panels...then I hope I can take a break...

Mercury Little Joe - I painted upJPG.jpg
 
I promised the wife a vacation, so after tomorrow, I'll be off to the smoky mountains for a week...(that should get me some "green stamps" to go off and do some fall launches later...).

I hope to be back in time to get the finishing touches done for a the fall launch at Culpeper...maybe Red Glare after that....

(In the meantime...I just couldn't resist posting this one.......)

Rocket Row.jpg
 
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My wife never misses a lauch and never will. Since Shepard. Me too.

But she thinks they are pretty and likes rockets. She likes my planes too. And the battle ships and sail boats. But the Submarines? She shakes her head at those,

Steve
 
The decals are on and it is looking good.

Removable escape tower nose got drilled and the nose weight installed.

Cut the electronics bay hatch, and the conduit for the Xavien FIST is in.
Pull Pin ground tests went A-Ok.
 
What is weird was that the Little Joe rockets were nothing more than flying trash cans. Cobbled together as cheap as possible. From what I have found out is that they were basicly 6,7, or 8 solid rockets held together by corrugated tin.

But they work wonderfully and allowed NASA to test the escape towers for Mercury and Apollo.

Andrew
 
What is weird was that the Little Joe rockets were nothing more than flying trash cans. Cobbled together as cheap as possible. From what I have found out is that they were basicly 6,7, or 8 solid rockets held together by corrugated tin.

But they work wonderfully and allowed NASA to test the escape towers for Mercury and Apollo.

Andrew

<Cobbled together as cheap as possible>

Not too far from the reality of my situation....both of my "Joe" projects used a lot of stuff I just happened to have around the shop...foamcore board, posterboard, and what ever balsa and spruce stock I hapened to have on hand at the moment.

The Apollo Little Joe did require buying a bundle of basswood stick to do those corrugations ...
 
What is weird was that the Little Joe rockets were nothing more than flying trash cans. Cobbled together as cheap as possible. From what I have found out is that they were basicly 6,7, or 8 solid rockets held together by corrugated tin.

But they work wonderfully and allowed NASA to test the escape towers for Mercury and Apollo.

Andrew

I wouldn't say cobbled. There's a lot of stuff under the skin.

453-86-3G.jpg
 
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I wouldn't see cobbled. There's a lot of stuff under the skin.

When I did the initial sketchs and dimensions for this project - I was going to try and replicate the base structure shown in the photo, inc. the fin root attachment points and the structural ribs and rivets etc. ( I had a photo with a slightly different view...where did you get this one?)

Once I decided to do one central motor in a non scale position for a bit of insurance for stability on a cluster flight - I kind of gave up on the idea....
 
The last orange panels on each side of the airframe were applied...and the decals from Sandman went on smoothly and really add a nice touch...

LJ-1 elec bay 1.jpg

LJ -1 Elec bay.jpg
 
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The hatch for access to the internal electronics bay is cut and the Xavien board fitted in the compartment...

I have motor retention and empty motor tube blanks to do, and the recovery system hardware, and the aerospike on the escape tower rocket.

I think that's about it.

I'm watching the weather for the Culpeper launch tomorrow and Sunday...I may get a maiden flight in this weekend....hope it is a treat and plays no tricks on me.

LJ-1 decals.jpg
 
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When I did the initial sketchs and dimensions for this project - I was going to try and replicate the base structure shown in the photo, inc. the fin root attachment points and the structural ribs and rivets etc. ( I had a photo with a slightly different view...where did you get this one?)

I paid Boeing a lot of money. They have North American Aviation's archives which contains over 150 photos of the Little Joe booster being built and assembled. They charge about $25 each for a high resolution .tif of the photo. Since I'm on the wrong coast to go look at them I bought 9 representative pictures that they picked out for me.


Once I decided to do one central motor in a non scale position for a bit of insurance for stability on a cluster flight - I kind of gave up on the idea....
That's certainly understandable. That's too nice a model to take a chance on a cluster failure.
 
The last orange panels on each side of the airframe were applied...and the decals from Sandman went on smoothly and really add a nice touch...

That does look sweet!

You have to admit that is a strange stencil they used! That is not a font, I had to "draw" each individual letter1
 
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That does look sweet!

You have to admit that is a strange stencil they used! That is not a font, I had to "draw" each individual letter1

When I first saw the pics of the real thing in this thread, I thought "giant dot matrix printer" :D
 
Wow thats incredible! I have a 12" Mercury little joe I have been playing with for quite some time. I think you just inspired me to finish it!
 
Well, that's what we're here for - in the build threads...

When you get around to doing it, post some pics of your progress!
A 12" Little Joe...sounds real good.
 
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Yeah, as most of you know I have a 10" Mercury Redstone I fly, this would incorporate the capsule and tower from that. so all I have to do is build (how did someone describe it) a cheap tin can booster LOL

I have the tube, centering rings motor mounts fins all cut. its just time putting it all together..

thanks for inspiration !!!! yours looks outstanding!

Can't wait to see launch photos.. that cluster should be AWESOME!

I was planning on 4 54mm's two white and two long burns. to get that real scale flight.

Will something like that be possible in the scale you built? I can't think of any motors like that off hand. accept maybe like 2 c-slot motors and two bates grain motors...
 
Yeah, as most of you know I have a 10" Mercury Redstone I fly, this would incorporate the capsule and tower from that. so all I have to do is build (how did someone describe it) a cheap tin can booster LOL

I have the tube, centering rings motor mounts fins all cut. its just time putting it all together..

thanks for inspiration !!!! yours looks outstanding!

Can't wait to see launch photos.. that cluster should be AWESOME!

I was planning on 4 54mm's two white and two long burns. to get that real scale flight.

Will something like that be possible in the scale you built? I can't think of any motors like that off hand. accept maybe like 2 c-slot motors and two bates grain motors...

Well, I'm looking for ideas...(I won't be doing any 54mm in this one of course, but the long burn idea sounds good).

Like the scale airplane guys, I think some scale rockets look better with "scale" flight...which on some scale projects means slow liftoffs...

My Apollo Little Joe II took off nice and slow on a central H97, but it was so slow ... the electronics wouldn't trigger the outboard airstarts.

On the last flight , the H123 did the trick and I got the airstarts via the G switch, but it took off a little too fast for my taste.
I'm going pull pin timer now on these projects and I want to try a few cluster motor combos...for maximum flame effect.
Thinking of a central Sparky and whatever - on some of the outboards...

LJ-II airstart.jpg
 
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After this "Joe" I may not know what to do...I've run out of "Joes"....

1/6th scale
1/2 scale
FULL SCALE (same size as a certain saturn that flew)
Projecy HIGH FLIGHT

I mean really, why are you into rocket modeling? dig deep, the answer is "I want to be an astronaut".
 
Well, you made a Big Little Joe..Now time to make a Little Little Joe? Or even a Little Little Little Joe in MMX scale?:roll:
 
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