stealth6
insert witty tagline here
The first of my winter builds is finished and ready to fly. I've actually been working on a whole bunch of projects simultaneously, and this one is the first off the line. For your viewing pleasure, I give you - "Phantic".
This is a semi-kit bash of a older Hawk Mountain Raptor I picked up for a good deal off E(vil)bay a ways back. It's a pretty cool kit that's different from most of the other offerings out there. The first thing is that it's pretty old-school - molded fibreglass nose cone (that almost seems more resin than anything else), translucent orange/yellow glass, no dual deploy, very thin kevlar flatstrap rather than cord or tubular webbing, an oddball swivel, etc.
It's billed as a "minimum diameter" rocket, but it's not really. There IS a motor mount tube, and it's OD is not quite as large as the ID of the airframe. Instead of centering rings, you are supposed to do a couple of wraps of masking tape around the motor mount, and use them as "CRs" when you glue it in. There are fin slots as well. So, while the fins are technically "through the wall", they only pierce the airframe the thickness of the tube wall (which is nice and thin) and one or two thicknesses of masking tape. I think it's pretty cool.
The airframe's OD is actually right around 32mm, which just happens to be exactly the same OD as a Slimline motor retainer. So with this construction, you can have a "minimum diameter" rocket that still uses a standard retainer. Again, pretty cool (and what I opted to do).
All that said, I wanted to do the motor mount a bit different, and I also wanted to do a standard dual-deploy setup, so I needed tubing that had an OD that matched the ID of the airframe (an actual coupler). I just happened to have a bit of glass/carbon sleeve left over from another project, and I simply used that to wrap a standard 29mm motor tube, and voila - a perfect fitting motor tube that I didn't need CRs for, AND a length of "coupler" for a Featherweight 29mm AV bay. Since the Featherweight AV bay requires a 2" length of 29mm COUPLER, I was able to glue that inside a longer section of the glass/carbon wrapped 29mm regular tubing, and therefore have more gluing surface in the payload airframe section - nice. I of course cut the actual airframe in two to enable the dual deploy setup.
As per usual, I reshaped and profiled the fins too. Nothing too radically different, just a bit more of my "style", and the ones that come with the kit are a bit too large anyway.
I really liked the look of the tubing and nose cone (a raw, thin, orange/yellow translucent), so I opted to leave the whole rocket raw with no paint. That glass/carbon wrapped motor mount and AV coupler that I made happened to be orange and black, so that looks kinda cool showing through. All my recover harness, chute blankets, and chutes are all yellow and orange and those can be seen through the airframe as well. I also foamed the nose cone, which again happens to be yellow. So it all comes together and looks kinda raw, mean, and cool I think.
Hawk Mountain doesn't seem to be much of an active player these days, but they ARE still in business and the DO still offer this kit along with lots of other options. Their old-school vibe is kinda cool I think. That said, my particular kit was an older "vintage" one, and I'm not sure their latest offerings are exactly the same. Still, they are worth checking out if you want something unique.
I'll hopefully get this up in the sky soon - sims show anything from an 900' on an F40, to 7500' on an I243, so a pretty versatile flyer. I did NOT build this with extreme altitude in mind, but I'm sure lots could be done to eke out a bit more altitude if that's what you were after. With this in mind, I did install rail buttons which makes it a lot easier to fly.
Anywho, here are some pics for you, hope you like:
peace and rockets,
s6
This is a semi-kit bash of a older Hawk Mountain Raptor I picked up for a good deal off E(vil)bay a ways back. It's a pretty cool kit that's different from most of the other offerings out there. The first thing is that it's pretty old-school - molded fibreglass nose cone (that almost seems more resin than anything else), translucent orange/yellow glass, no dual deploy, very thin kevlar flatstrap rather than cord or tubular webbing, an oddball swivel, etc.
It's billed as a "minimum diameter" rocket, but it's not really. There IS a motor mount tube, and it's OD is not quite as large as the ID of the airframe. Instead of centering rings, you are supposed to do a couple of wraps of masking tape around the motor mount, and use them as "CRs" when you glue it in. There are fin slots as well. So, while the fins are technically "through the wall", they only pierce the airframe the thickness of the tube wall (which is nice and thin) and one or two thicknesses of masking tape. I think it's pretty cool.
The airframe's OD is actually right around 32mm, which just happens to be exactly the same OD as a Slimline motor retainer. So with this construction, you can have a "minimum diameter" rocket that still uses a standard retainer. Again, pretty cool (and what I opted to do).
All that said, I wanted to do the motor mount a bit different, and I also wanted to do a standard dual-deploy setup, so I needed tubing that had an OD that matched the ID of the airframe (an actual coupler). I just happened to have a bit of glass/carbon sleeve left over from another project, and I simply used that to wrap a standard 29mm motor tube, and voila - a perfect fitting motor tube that I didn't need CRs for, AND a length of "coupler" for a Featherweight 29mm AV bay. Since the Featherweight AV bay requires a 2" length of 29mm COUPLER, I was able to glue that inside a longer section of the glass/carbon wrapped 29mm regular tubing, and therefore have more gluing surface in the payload airframe section - nice. I of course cut the actual airframe in two to enable the dual deploy setup.
As per usual, I reshaped and profiled the fins too. Nothing too radically different, just a bit more of my "style", and the ones that come with the kit are a bit too large anyway.
I really liked the look of the tubing and nose cone (a raw, thin, orange/yellow translucent), so I opted to leave the whole rocket raw with no paint. That glass/carbon wrapped motor mount and AV coupler that I made happened to be orange and black, so that looks kinda cool showing through. All my recover harness, chute blankets, and chutes are all yellow and orange and those can be seen through the airframe as well. I also foamed the nose cone, which again happens to be yellow. So it all comes together and looks kinda raw, mean, and cool I think.
Hawk Mountain doesn't seem to be much of an active player these days, but they ARE still in business and the DO still offer this kit along with lots of other options. Their old-school vibe is kinda cool I think. That said, my particular kit was an older "vintage" one, and I'm not sure their latest offerings are exactly the same. Still, they are worth checking out if you want something unique.
I'll hopefully get this up in the sky soon - sims show anything from an 900' on an F40, to 7500' on an I243, so a pretty versatile flyer. I did NOT build this with extreme altitude in mind, but I'm sure lots could be done to eke out a bit more altitude if that's what you were after. With this in mind, I did install rail buttons which makes it a lot easier to fly.
Anywho, here are some pics for you, hope you like:
peace and rockets,
s6
