Somehow, I inadvertantly missed this post before... thank you for looking into this Auriga design. Interesting, eh?

Uproar
 

A new design, the Uproar: I ran across this image of a rocket launcher toy that was a little outrageous & reminded me a bit of the Thunderbird kit that Fliskits offers.

This one - the Astrogator - already has a Semroc parts list ready for payday numero uno this Friday, so this virtual project list will get more real here soon!

For you OpenRocket users: I have put together several of my kit designs in ORK & have run them through simulations, and except for one flight sim (which I eventually did get a good sim from by merely changing where I had positioned the parachute) I keep getting good flights.
Now, I'm not going to poo-poo results like that but I have that nasty feeling of Something-Must-Be-Wrong-On-My-End. Granted, I have had a good percentage of good flights with my custom builds... but life is never that easy. Could ORK be too simple to get results like RockSim from? Can I trust the results from ORK for any sort of legitimate evaluation?

I'm loving the first one in the first post, the Classic. Does anyone have a technique for getting those curved ilnes that doesn't involve fiberglas?

Sol,

I'd do it using what, in 2-d space, is called piece-wise linear fashion. From the tail to the white ring, I'd use a cone, sort of like I did with this rocket. For the bulged payload section (above the white ring), I'd use a couple of rings on the outside of a tube (whose diameter is the same as the white ring). These rings would be placed 1/3 and 2/3 along the length. They would be such that they add only a slight increase in outside diameter. It might be best to simply make them using a few wraps of kraft paper glued around the tube.

Then I would form two cones - fore and aft - and a cylinder - middle - from kraft paper, glue these on to the payload section, and let them dry. Then I'd lightly sand it, then start apply FnF with a wetted finger to try to build the piece-wise linear section into a smoothed, continuous curve.

That's what I'd try.

Of course, sometimes, after I get a couple days into a project like that, I realize it's not gonna work and have to go back to the drawing board :o

HTH.

Doug

.

Thanks again for the interest!
Sometimes you just have to mimic the look-and-feel of what you're trying to achieve, and for this design I veered towards some sort of 'authenticity' and left it for the craftsmen (and women???) amongst us to give it a go.

But I expected to have to eyeball the right cutout sizes and positions on the balsa (or whatever, you sadists!) and use small NCs for the spaces. Then some Squadron Green Putty (or what-have-you) and some elbow grease and voila! you 1950's auto genius, you! I suspected perhaps some fluency in painting would be of help for the finish, but if this was a kit it'd have decals - although I'm certain thin balsa strips could be implemented to create that chrome trim along the body tube (and they'd look more authentic)... you'd have to paint that light-colored area between the trim strips, and it might be a little tricky to paint it and keep it off the trim. Or not. I wouldn't think it'd be beyond most of us here, though.

Semroc has a couple of ramjet NCs that would be suitable candidates for this build (if fact, seeing those cones prompted this design). I would think you could find something for a tailcone, too. I'd love to see updates!

Are you talking about the coke looking rocket?
Certainly those '50s style fairing on the fins can be made from nose cones.

Perhaps not the easiest thing in the world to do but hard foam is often able to be carved and sanded. As the author says, "sometimes just go for the spirt" of the model.

I've picked out my favorites that I'd like to try and build Brain. Do you have some shots of the designs with a ruler or some type of reference that I could see to get some idea of what size to build them? Or are you just leaving that up to each person to make it "their own" so to speak?

I know when I look at that Astrogator I think ping pong balls split in half and then "lengthened" to make the round bits...

I don't have any specific dimensions in mind. I do want to leave it up to the builder to decide how they want to realize it. Generally-speaking, though... some of these designs (being mostly LPR) will be slave to available parts sizes and hence it ought to be not too hard to do a little math with the orthographic views I provided earlier in this thread to figure out how long, say, the BT-50 tube ought to be on the Empress, for example.

As for the ping-pong balls: I anticipated painting the white stripes on the blue, but there may be other methods.

So, what you actually end up with could be a little different than what's pictured, and I expect that I will have to make the same considerations... but if they fly, they fly!