NAR 60 Year Reunion, Part 14 - Lee Piester at the Podium

The next member of model rocketry royalty to give a talk was Lee Piester, the man behind Centuri Engineering.

Lee gave a very interesting speech, relating the story of his conversion from amateur rocketry to model rocketry after visiting an early NARAM, his entrance into the model rocket manufacturing business with the founding of Centuri, and his friendly-rival relationship with Estes Industries.

One of the highlights of Lee's presentation was his showing an enlarged photo of the famous "Great Saturn V Duel" between he and Vern Estes. 

Betty Piester circulated through the meeting room with another copy of the photo so that everyone had a chance to see it up close.

Lee received the second long ovation of the evening as he stepped down from the platform.

FlatCat Boost/Glider Build, Part 8 - The Pop-Pod

This post covers the assembly of the FlatCat's 'Removable Propulsion System Housing', a.k.a, the Pop-Pod.
The heart of this sub-assembly is a 6 inch length of BT-20 or similar tubing.
Before any cutting and gluing begins, this is a good time to break out the CWF and fill the spiral seams.

The next procedure is to attach the motor block and retention system. 

A standard externally mounted regular motor hook can be used as shown in the plans, but I prefer to go with my internal hook system, which consists of an 18mm motor block ring and a length of .020 diameter music wire.  As illustrated below, a hook is formed to fit over the block after which the assembly is glued into place in the model's body tube. Note the slot cut in the outer edge of the ring to accommodate the thickness of the wire.



Once the assembly is dry, an expended motor casing can be inserted into the body tube and the wire bent over the end and clipped.  Here is a pic of the completed assembly.

Now it's time to make the pylon.
Another 4 inch piece is cut from the 1/4 x 1/2 balsa stock, and the ends cut to a 45 degree angle as shown in the plan diagram.

Now for a little bit of shape-sanding work. The first procedure is to round-over the leading and trailing edges.

Next, a piece of sandpaper is wrapped around an expended motor casing, and a concave curve is sanded into the long edge of the pylon.  This provides a much better contact surface for gluing to the body tube.

Which, , of course, is the very next step of the build.

Killing two birds with one stone (has anybody ever really accomplished that feat?).

The Piece-X is double glue-joint attached to the pylon at the position, and orientation (!) specified in the plans.  At the same time, some glue fillets are applied to the pylon.  The whole assembly is set aside to dry.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the pod pylon will get the usual application of CWF to fill the grain.  Gotta keep things pretty, you know.

Finally, the launch lug is attached.  This is a 1-1/2 length of 1/8" lug, with seams filled.  Yep, I do that even with boost gliders. 

When I became a BAR a couple of years ago, I promised my significant other that I would not clutter up the house with 'junky' looking rockets like I did back in the old fleet days, so every project I build now gets cleanly crafted and finished.

The pop- pod assembly is ready for primer and paint!

FlatCat Boost/Glider Build, Part 7 - Slapping The Glider Together

OK, so I don't really just 'slap' my models together.  I am a careful modeler!

The FlatCat's wing and tail sub-assemblies are completed, so now it's time to glue them to the fuselage to begin making something that resembles a real glider.

The tail is first.
After carefully marking the center of the horizontal stab and the fuselage, the unit is attached using a double glue joint. Careful attention is paid to getting precise longitudinal alignment.
The assembly is weighted down on the workbench to dry.
Here is the assembly after the glue has dried.  I've also added small glue fillets to the horizontal-vertical stab joints and the tail-fuselage joint.

While the tail fillets are drying, I move on to attaching the wings.

Using some wood blocks to support the model fuselage, the wing is attached in the precisely aligned position using a double glue joint.  A couple of other blocks support the wings in the correct 'roll' orientation.

A block of wood is marked at 2-1/2" to provide a guide for setting the wingtip heights referenced from the bench top  (1/2" for the fuselage height, and 2" for wing dihedral).

Back in my old fleet days, I would introduce a slight tilt to all of my competition glider wing assemblies to cause a wide turn in the glide path.  With this build I am going with mounting the wings with identical tip heights.  I will be relying on trim clay to introduce whatever turn needs to be added.

Glue is now dry and the glider main assembly is complete.

The next step is to go over the fuselage with a medium grit sanding block to round over all of the square edges.



This is followed by an overall sanding with fine grit paper to smooth out all of the fuselage, tail, and, wing surfaces.

Finally, some thin glue fillets are added to the wing/fuselage joints to add a little more strength.

The FlatCat glider construction is now completed and the bird is all ready for finishing.



FlatCat Boost/Glider Build, Part 6 - The Tail Section

The beauty of building a boost/glider is that one can construct any of the several sub-assemblies while waiting for the glue to dry on all the others.
This post deals with the FlatCat's tail section.
This particular design features a 3-piece assembly - one large rectangular horizontal stabilizer, and two vertical stabilizers.
The various pieces are cut from a sheet of 1/16" thick C-grain balsa stock .  The specified dimensions are quite simple to lay out.  As with all model rockets, paying attention to specified grain direction is  important.
Here are the freshly cut parts:



The next step is to shape sand the vertical stabs.  Since this build is strictly for sport flying, and not necessarily for high performance, I'm going with just rounding the leading and trailing edges, followed by surface smoothing with 400 grit.  I'm not going to do any sanding on the horizontal stab until the entire assembly is complete and attached to the fuselage.  This will prevent me from accidently rounding the edges of gluing surfaces.

Now, the vertical stabs can be glued to the edges atop the horizontal stab using the double glue joint technique. Must remember that they are to be orientated in the same direction! (I have to constantly remind myself of these kinds of things - senior moments, you understand). The model would still fly with one stab turned the wrong direction, but it would just LOOK stupid!

A handful of LEGO bricks helps keep things aligned and at a precise 90 degree angle. (Where's THAT in the Handbook of Model Rocketry?)

Once the assembly is dry, I can apply some light glue fillets to the inner side of the h/v stab joints for added strength.  With a glider, it's best to go easy with this, since excessive amounts of glue does tend to add more weight.

The final step for this sub-assembly is to sand the corners of the horizontal stab to match the vertical stab round-overs.  This is just an aesthetic touch that's not spelled out in the published plans.

Here's the completed assembly, all ready for gluing to the fuselage.

NAR 60 Year Reunion, Part 13 -More Fine Displays

Another one of the display tables held a large collection of early Canaroc model rocket kits.  This presentation was provided by Mr. Denis Lufkin (NAR 96987).

On yet another of the tables was a display by John Chatham of the SAI (Space Age Industries) model 'da Judge' mounted on a MMI style wood launcher.

SAI was also well-known back in the 60s and early 70s for their 'Hen Grenade' egg-lofter kit.

Right next to John's display was a small slide viewer provided by Tom Pastrick (NAR 2276)

where attendees could view pictures of early NARAMs.

NAR 60 Year Reunion, Part 12 - Vern Estes Takes The Stage....

The second speaker of the evening was Mr. Estes, who gave a nice talk on the early NARAMS and his history with them.

Amazingly, Vern has been to 58 of the 60 NARAMS!

During his speech, Vern stated that he wasn't sure if the first National Championship meet held in 1958 was actually called  NARAM-1.  He has never seen any documentation that specified that.

At that time, Bill Stine got up and approached the podium and handed Vern a piece of paper. We never heard what was in that document, but it might have held the answer. Perhaps we will find out at a later date.

On the humorous side, Vern was describing the early use of the standard NAR lead payload weight.

"That was before these were invented."  he said, holding up an egg!

At the end of his speech, Vern stated that he and Gleda were finding it increasingly difficult to travel across the country to attend model rocketry events.  He told the assembly that NARAM 60 will likely be the last one at which they would be present.

I can only speak for myself, but I am pretty sure that there was many a moist eye in the meeting hall following that announcement.

When he was finished with his talk, Vern left the podium to the accompaniment of an extended ovation from the attendees.....

FlatCat Boost/Glider Build, Part 5 - Some Mighty Fine Wing Assembly

Preparing the wing root edge for gluing…

The MRm instructions say to bevel the root edges.  This is done to provide a better gluing surface to join the two halves of the wing.   One can get by with eyeballing and free-hand sanding this bevel with a sanding block.  Being a careful modeler (yeah…right…), I like to be more precise.

I prop each wing half up to the prescribed dihedral angle – in this case – 2 inches root to tip, and sand the bevel with a vertically oriented sanding block.  It’s all about control, my friends.

TIP: Again it is wise to pay attention to which wing is being worked on, and sand the proper bevel angle.

ANOTHER TIP:  Use of a courser grit sandpaper is recommended here.  The idea is to produce a rougher gluing surface to better ‘grab’ the glue.

 Gluing up the wing…

 As pointed out in the MRm article, a double glue joint is used to join the two halves of the wing.

TIP: It's always wise to use a piece of waxed paper to lay the glued-up wing assembly on, otherwise the bench top becomes a permanent part of the wing.

The instructions say to prop each wing tip up to the specified 2 inches for the dihedral angle.  I prefer to perform this step by laying one wing flat on the table and propping the other wing tip up to 4 inches.  I also place a small weight on the ‘bench top wing’ as an extra measure to keep things from moving around. 
In my workshop, any item that just happens to be sitting around within reach gets pressed into service as a construction jig!

I'll let the assembly dry thoroughly before moving it.

Once the wings are dry a flat, wider gluing surface must be sanded into the bottom of the joint.  Again, courser paper should be used here to help the glue to grab better.

The wing assembly is now ready to attach to the fuselage.