07-13-2005, 11:07 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Hillsboro, OR
Posts: 2,850
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In Primer
The weather has been nice lately, so I decided to complete building some new projects and start finishing some old ones.
As a result, I have a whole bunch of models "in primer" right now.
I hope to have these painted for launching next month. Some will have quicky paint jobs, others "catalog" finishes.
The attached picture shows, from left to right:
* A mostly-original Estes ARCAS, which I first built in the late 70s. I did a terrible job, as was typical of the time. The paint looked like house paint, applied with a house paint brush. I stripped off the fins, boat tail, and paint; de-kinked the body tube with a coupler; and repaired and reinforced the split front edge with some silkspan and yellow glue.
I used basswood for the replacement fins. They are not totally scale, but they're close.
I still have the original decal!
* A Semroc Jaguar. Nice kit!
* A home-brew recreation of the Jaguar. If you look carefully you'll see that the fins are thicker. Very close to the original design and materials, although I used Kevlar cord rather than a steel cable for the shock cord anchor. Also, the fin reinforcements are fiberglass.
I started buying parts for this recreation maybe three years ago, when I started on my other Centuri "large scale rocketry" clones.
* An identical Jaguar. One of these will fly on small "safe" motors; the other will go up on an E9.
* A Semroc Scorpion. This one would have been tough to clone, because of the oddball body tube size.
* Semroc Astro 1. Amazingly, I never bought an Astro back in the day. I had at least two Microns and a Javelin, but never this one. Built this in an afternoon last week to unwind.
* An upscale Ranger . . . or maybe an upscale Big Bertha with a cluster mount. It doesn't have a payload section. Three 24mm mounts. I got the finless tube with mounts from an OROC member who was cleaning out his closets. I added the fins and cone.
If I feel really ambitious, I might decide to retrofit it with a payload section so that it will be a true Ranger upscale.
Not shown: A painted Estes Deep Space Explorer, waiting for decals.
Stefan
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