My son and I have been working on a Patriot project. We used this weekend to paint and are now in a holding pattern for decals. His project is a Raytheon Patriot based loosely on the Estes Pro Patriot. Mine is an upscale of the Estes Citation Patriot. Both are 2.6" diameter.

I'll start with my son's Patriot. He has done everything himself on this one except the removable mount which we made to be able to swap between the two Patriots. I'll be adding some cluster mounts after I order some motor hooks for the longer E9 motors.

He used 1/8" TTW fins that he first laminated for strength, then he made cardstock diamond airfoils. They are a lot thicker than the Estes Pro Patriot, which shows off the diamond shape well. The thick fins are a theme for my upscales, as I normally use 1/4" balsa fins to make the rockets a bit more scaled and draggy for great demo flights.





Here's the business end. I decided I wanted to have motor mounts like the old Centuri Power System just for the heck of it. I used a BT-70 coupler to make the removable mount. I'll probably make double and triple 24mm mounts and I might make a single 29mm mount later.





In the rough...







Paint finished, waiting for decals. He made the decals in Gimp (open source graphics program) but we won't be able to print and clear coat them until the weather gets better.

Now for my Citation Patriot.

Business end with and without the removable mount.





We decided to use baffles since my other 2.6" upscales use so much wadding. Here's the one I made for my Patriot out of a coupler and scrap cardboard. My son's is constructed in a similar fashion.





I turned a new nosecone for this one. It looked shorter than the one I turned for the 2.6" Red Max and I couldn't figure out why. I then realized that I used an old Citation injection molded nosecone to measure for this one, and I used a newer blow molded cone for the other one. After measuring the two, the old injection molded cone is about 1/4" shorter than the newer version.

Here is the injection vs blow molded cone comparison:



Painted and waiting for decals.




The decals need a whole new thread.

I ordered them and a set for my 1:1 clone five years ago from Tango Papa. As I looked at the decals the other night, I noticed something that I never did before. There should be two sets of left and two sets of right red and blue fin decals. I have three of one and one of the other. I emailed Tom last night with photos of the decals and a photo of the receipt. I hope he will fix the problem. BTW, Fred, I didn't know anything about Excelsior decals back then.

I need another pair like the ones on the right hand sheet.

How easy is GIMP to use?

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Dave
Fire is the leading cause of fire.
Was once SAM#0132

Great looking rockets! That Sat V in the background is pretty sweet too!

Well, not real easy. It's a powerful program with a complex interface. But, there are numerous tutorials online for various features or common tasks... a little Google-fu will get you a long way.

And, it's hard to argue with the price.

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Once upon a better day... SAM #0076
My site: http://rocketry.gonnerman.org

Yep. Some stuff is pretty intuitive. Some are obscure or just different enough from PSP, Photoshop, etc. to bug you a little.

Thanks! Googling it would have been too easy.

As I was wasting company resources this morning, I downloaded a copy; and was just wondering if it was worth the price.

__________________
Dave
Fire is the leading cause of fire.
Was once SAM#0132

The two programs that I use are GIMP and Paint Shop Pro 7. I have noticed that there are some differences in the Linux version and Windows version of GIMP. Not a lot, but just enough to get a little annoying sometimes.

I still love GIMP regardless and use it as my primary decal editor. About the only reason I use Paint Shop Pro now is for the "Color Replacer" tool and a few other miscellaneous functions.

Helmet talk split off to the "Free For All" forum.

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