Vander-Burn Big Daddy to Leviathan conversion

[novahobbies]

Just wondering... From the build photos, I couldn't tell.

Did you glue the 2 body tubes together before inserting the motor mount and fins?

I'm building one, and I'm going to leave them separate until the last moment. It's real handy to work with the smaller size tube, and I'm seriously thinking of cutting the tubes into 2 pieces on future builds of larger rockets.

I also ended up lining most of the body tube with couplers. There is one on top of the center motor mount ring, then the top centering ring is on top of that, and then another coupler. So the top ring is sandwiched. Then I put a baffle roughly midway up the upper body tube and lined it with couplers up to the baffle. Not going further up with them, though. Why line the tube? I've had other large Estes rockets slightly crush the tube right above the fins if the landing is a bit harsh.

Hans.

No, I'd actually done the body tube first and then did the motor mount and fins. Now what I DID do, though, was leave the lower centering ring unglued so I had access to make internal fillets between the fins and the motor tube, and then at the end I seated the lower centering ring and added the motor retainer.

 

[4regt4]

No, I'd actually done the body tube first and then did the motor mount and fins. Now what I DID do, though, was leave the lower centering ring unglued so I had access to make internal fillets between the fins and the motor tube, and then at the end I seated the lower centering ring and added the motor retainer.

I finished my Leviathan last month. I built the fin can completely including primer before joining it with the upper tube. That also made it easier to put the baffle in the upper tube. The body tube was lined with couplers epoxied in place. Weight including altimeter, chute, and JLCR comes out to 25 oz.

I also left the bottom centering ring off until the last possible moment. Did all the fillets, inside and out, with RocketPoxy. Probably overkill, but I plan on this being my L1 cert rocket, and I didn't want anything to break. Did a couple of ground tests of ejection charge size, settled on 0.9g. First flight was a couple of weeks ago on an E28. I wanted a very low altitude flight to observe the ejection event closely. It went very well, and I'll jump up to an F67 or F52 this weekend. Maybe even a G53 if winds and weather are good.

I kind of followed the original paint scheme, only swapping out the green for orange, and slightly repositioning things for better proportion.

Hans.