Estes Jupiter C
 

I picked this up a few years ago, but I've only recently decided to start it. Anyone build one of these in the past? How durable is the satellite section during flight? Would I be better off allowing it to be removed before flight? Anything I should be on the lookout for during the build? I built the K-41 Mercury Redstone back in 1978, so the fins on this project are going to be a major league blast from the past. (I've got a nose cone from an original K-41 kit, so that will also get built this winter. These fins will be practice.) :cool:

I've had one for probably 10 years, give or take a decade. :D

I flew it a bunch of times without breaking the satellite. The satellite finally broke when my wife ran into the freezer where it was sitting waiting to be loaded into my truck. It fell off and snapped when it hit the concrete garage floor.

I bought one back in '90, but never built it. Still got the transition out in a shop... somewhere...

The instructions say to remove the Explorer 1 probe for flight; the kit has an injection-molded plastic rendition with some nozzle detail, so it was intended to be displayable separately. My thoughts would be to build a second Explorer using a dowel, and permanently attaching it into the top boost canister. Keep the plastic version safe...

Those fins were the main reason I never finished building mine. They're laminated balsa, and the balsa in the kit was of less-than-optimum quality to begin with. Reminded me of what used to come in Carl Goldberg model aircraft kits of the late '60s and '70s -- raunchy crumbly over-dried stuff with an orange-ish tint to it. Warped badly when you touch it with glue, even ACC...

These really needed to be vacu-formed plastic skins over a balsa core, to achieve the wedge-shaped leading edges of the prototype...

What transition? Mine is just a solid BT-70.



Well, I haven't actually GOTTEN to the step where I READ the instructions yet. That comes after I screw something up. :rolleyes:
I like the idea of the permanent satellite. I need to go dowel shopping for that Mercury Redstone tower piece anyway.

Wives. Sheesh. ;)

The nosecone looks like a transition section between the main body and the rotating can at the top.

I call it a transition, but TBZEP is correct in calling it a nosecone; it's the whole upper section of the rocket, including the spin-up canister. The Explorer 1 piece slip-fits into a tunnel down the center of the canister, with just the upper portion poking out. Mine was a single piece of blow-molded (IIRC) plastic for the lower portion, with two or three pieces of injection-molded plastic being glued together to form the canister. They were harder than the transition, at any rate. This subassembly gets glued to the top of the transition...

Ahh. Gotcha. I just figured this was the nose cone since the recovery system hooked into it. I can see where it would be a transition.

Are you going to modify the fins to be a little more scale? The stabilizers are way too big and look funny sitting beside my Mercury Redstone. It's a shorter rocket than the MR, but a little extra nose weight might compensate.

I wasn't planning to. Are the fins the same on both models?