Quest Payloader One Review (Sprint-ified!)

[jetra2]

I don't know if you can really call this a review of the kit, some very slight mods were made, but it was built according to the instructions.

I bought this kit last Thursday as something to do with Eugene since he came over to fly but we didn't have a flying field because of soccer players and winds were picking up. So we stopped by the hobby shop to pick up a kit or something to work on. I picked this kit up for $8, while Eugene decided to scratch build. I am buying a lot of Quest from now on. Their pricing is awesome! A similar sized Estes kit, say the Alpha, was up near $13!!

Besides pricing, the other reason I bought this kit was because it was a newer Quest kit and I wanted to check it out. I was not disappointed. I thoroughly enjoyed building this kit, except for the part where I forgot to attach the Kevlar to the MMT to make the Quest shock cord mount...so I came up with the attachment you'll see in the next post. Eugene came up with putting the launch lug there...thanks man! Besides that, I used a HPR building technique to increase fin attachment strength, and that was sandwiching the fins between the two centering rings. I simply marked the spacing thru the body wall to the MMT, then glued them in place. I also decided that I would make one more modification, and that was to Sprint-ify the rocket.

The way that I did this was to simply flip the fins around. Since the fin tabs only ran about half the length of the fin, I flipped them around with the tab towards the back instead of the front. This gave the Payloader One a slight boat-tail looking thingy that should help reduce drag.

I finshed the rocket with two coats of Kilz primer on the body and fins. The first one, I let it dry for about 24 hours, then sanded it. I then did another coat, then sanded it. The good thing about Kilz is that it has such a high-build that it'll fill in just about anything, including balsa grain. My fins are quite smooth, and the tube spirals are at a minimum.

TIP FOR THE ABOVE: Make sure to sand in between coats to make the valleys disappear, or you're just making the valleys bigger and bigger.

I then painted. I used Krylon paints, Almond Gloss for the body (kinda ivory-like) and then Pumpkin Orange for the fins. It came out nicely! The decal is a sticker, but I wasn't really expecting a waterslide for a SL-1 kit.

Improvements I would recommend:

1. Remove the glossy layer from the motor tube. This just makes normal glues not want to stick.

2. Change the color of the payload section. The red looks pretty goofy with the white, orange and black. I would go clear or orange. (more of a manufacturer recommendation.)

3. Longer launch lug. The one in the kit is pretty short at only one inch. I prefer longer ones, 1.5" or better.

That's pretty much it.

SCORES
Components: 9/10 (change color of goofy-looking payload tube!)
Construction: 10/10 (can't get much better for a Skill Level 1)
Finishing: 10/10 (easy!)
Flight: 9/10 (great LPR bird!)

Here come the pics!

Jason

 

[jetra2]

Shock cord attachment modification

The pitting is from a slight bubbling I got between the Almond paint and the Orange.

Jason

 

[Rob Fisher]

I like the fin modification-very cool! I've only launched mine once so far & I didn't have anything in the payload bay. This rocket reminds me very much of my Estes Icarus that I built back in the day. Do you have any idea of what you might use for cargo in the payload bay? It flies great btw.

 

[Rob Fisher]

Here's my Estes Icarus (built 1983) & my new Quest Payloader 1 (built 2005)
*notice the similarities*

 

[eugenefl]

Dang Jason - nice finish on that rocket! I think it'd be neat to pick up a tiny altimeter to do altitude readings.

 

[Rob Fisher]

I liked your idea so much Jason, that I had to go to Hobby Lobby & pick me up another Payloader One to Sprintify the fins as you did. I love this rocket cause it flies almost out of sight on C motors, yet I'm always able to track it. I think your mod only makes the rocket even better! I got it for about the price of a pack of motors with the H.L. 1/3 off sale!

 

[jetra2]

I'm glad you like the modification Rob. I was trying to give this rocket a more unique look than the standard 3FNC that it is stock, so I was playing around with having two of the fins up like I have them now, with one fin the "right" way, and then I tried it with only one fin up, but both of them looked REALLY goofy, so I went with this and I am very pleased. Post Pics!

Jason

 

[Rob Fisher]

here's the Payloader so far:

 

[Rob Fisher]

Here's a close up of the fin detail: I decided to airfoil the fins so I could get as much performance out of this rocket as I could squeeze. I normally don't ever airfoil fins cause I have had less than stellar results trying to do it in the past. I want to compare the 2 flights of my payloaders. The new one with the "boattail" & airfoiled fins vs. the stock build with blunt fins & fins at the bottom of the body tube.

 

[jetra2]

Lookin' good, Rob! Nice job on that airfoil/rounding.

I might just have to buy another one just to airfoil the fins, then buy a small altimeter and conduct some tests!

Jason

 

[Rob Fisher]

I'm gonna run a 12" Estes chute with the spill-hole cut out on the Payloader2. I think that 14" Quest chute is a little big if your not using the payload bay.

 

[Rob Fisher]

My finished "sprintified" Quest Payloader 1

 

[Rob Fisher]

I still need to clear-coat it. I launched my stock built Payloader on Saturday & still got a lot of drift with a 12" chute with spill-hole.

 

[Tucker5246]

Originally posted by Rob Fisher
My finished "sprintified" Quest Payloader 1

Rob it will be interesting to see the difference in performance. A drag race between the Sprintified version and the stock version would be soo coool! Nice Job BTW.

 

[Rob Fisher]

Originally posted by Tucker5246
Rob it will be interesting to see the difference in performance. A drag race between the Sprintified version and the stock version would be soo coool! Nice Job BTW.

A drag race..........that's a great idea!!! Now I'm gonna have another use for my clip whip! Thanks.

 

[Tucker5246]

Originally posted by Rob Fisher
A drag race..........that's a great idea!!! Now I'm gonna have another use for my clip whip! Thanks.

Keep us posted!...with pics of course.

 

[Rob Fisher]

Originally posted by Tucker5246
Keep us posted!...with pics of course.

I miss taking launch pics! My 3 year old chucked our digital camera on the floor a while back & broke the screen .
I can take pics with it still, but it's hard to gauge a launch pic when you can't look at what you just shot.

 

[Pippen]

Originally posted by jetra2
So we stopped by the hobby shop to pick up a kit or something to work on.

Boy that "or something" could get dangerous.

Thanks for posting this, Jason. My kiddo is awaiting his shipment from Quest as he's going to be building this kit for them as one of the traveling displays. He won't be sprintifying though.

Interesting about the tube color--it shows it clear at the image at the top but seems to be purplish-black in the kit description area:
https://www.questaerospace.com/pages/products_edu.htm

Is the almond and orange the suggested color scheme on the package? He's pretty much on his own for the build but *I* get to spring for the paint.

This sounds fun and easy--just right for the school year. He's not built a Quest kit before so this will be a first.

 

[jetra2]

No, almond/ivory is not the recommended color. The recommended colors are red/white. I didn't think that red fins would look good with the black/orange decal, so I basically color matched, and it came out nicely. HTH, Lisa.

I got the chance to fly mine last week. It flew GREAT. B6-4, no payload, it zipped right out of sight, probably 600 feet! I would like to pick up another one of these to build stock and then drag race them, so that's on my to-do list. I have edited the first post in this thread to include a flight score.

Thanks all.

Jason

 

[Pippen]

Thanks, Jason. His kits arrived yesterday and they looked like they were bulk packed kits. There's no color insert and interestingly these instructions do say gloss orange paint for that one fin. I agree red might be, shall we say challenging to the eye given how difficult it is to match reds.

My kiddo started yesterday and was a little frustrated with the motor tube on the first kit he pulled out. He was struggling to not crush it while getting everything in place. Hopefully the second one will go easier for him now he's done one.

Originally posted by Rob Fisher
I like the fin modification-very cool! I've only launched mine once so far & I didn't have anything in the payload bay. This rocket reminds me very much of my Estes Icarus that I built back in the day. Do you have any idea of what you might use for cargo in the payload bay? It flies great btw.

Why I do believe this rocket calls out for a highly advanced scientific observation device. We happen to have one on hand:

 

[Pippen]

My son has nearly finished building three of these kits (one for himself and two that go back to Quest for educational displays). Overall this was a fun and easy kit to build and with our 50% off coupon was certainly reasonably priced at $4.50.

A few heads up for if you’re helping out the kiddos (you big kids are welcome to take note too ):

Not having ever done a kit from Quest and having worked on slightly larger models the past few years my son went after it like he would have on bigger sturdier rockets and the result was a pretty mangled looking motor tube on his first try. On the others he spent more time stretching the centering rings and handling it all more gently and the results were better. So take heed that the motor tube is lightweight and easily crushed—the one that we purchased in the store was already dented in at one end in the packaging.

One other touchy spot for him on this was that the cord for the shroud lines kept unraveling as he was passing it through the hole and trying to tie it. He got the job done but it was frustrating even though he's done this plenty of times before. Otherwise this went together really smoothly.

The packaging does show a clear payload section but a change must have been made after that was designed because all three of these kits came in red. To give you an idea of the payload size it’s about the diameter of a quarter—no doubt keeping the size down keeps kit and flight costs low but things that they might typically think to use as payloads (action figures, Lego figures) won’t fit in here.

He painted one as suggested in gloss white with one orange fin. Personally I think Jason’s modification to the almond was a good one—it looks less stark to me and Rob’s looks great in yellow!
The other he did in a Darth Vader theme which turned out cool.

Thumbs up from our house! This was a fun kit to do and loks like it will be fun to fly.

 

[Pippen]

He did this in gloss black with one fin in Rustoleum hammered metal silver (hammered metal because that's what we had on hand in that color). The word "Vader" was cut out of a glossy cover of a poster book and was just stuck on with Tacky Glue:

 

[Pippen]

The other side of the silver fin has the Darth himself. It turned out a good Darth was hard to find. This one was cut off the cover of a cheapie coloring book from Walmart.

He had a lot of fun with these and they aren't even off the ground yet.

 

[Rob Fisher]

-My daughters pet firebellied toad "Cindy". Don't worry we didn't launch her, I was just seeing what we could actually fit in there!
She was later lost by my daughters in their room, which was so messy that it was nearly impossible to find her! We finally found her mummified body about a month later when we cleaned up the room.