Only ten months left
 

Well, ten months until the 50th anniversary of manned space flight. And while this should give Estes enough lead time to reissue the 1/35 scale Centuri kit with special anniversary markings and a hopped-up price tag, those of us looking to commemorate Yuri's flight are in some trouble.

I wouldn't wish the Noris kit on my least favorite person. The only other kit I know of, the HPR Cosmodrome, is out-of-stock. I know Gordon (Sandman) can do the nose cone but I don't know if he has a kit. Even Dr. Zooch doesn't have a Vostok (although I bet the ants are working on the special nose cone right now).

So why do I bring this up? Well, I was thinking of scratching a sport-scaler with a BT-60 for the Vostok section. This would allow me to upgrade to a Soyuz later based on the beautiful Semroc Soyuz nosecone. Maybe if Carl sees this he might tell us what other Semroc parts were designed for the Soyuz build.

It'll take a while to work out all of the details and so I thought I'd solicit suggestions from the board brain-trust. I have the Rockets of the World page and a Minakov drawing that I found in an old NAR magazine. Although this should be roughtly the size of the Noris kit, I was shooting for 24mm power in the sustainer. Other than that, I have a blank sheet of butcher paper.

Any interest? Any suggestions?

G. Harry Stine wrote a 2 part article on the Vostok in Model Rocketry magazine. Pt 1 - July 70 p 23-27 and Pt 2 Aug 70 p 34-37. They are available online at Ninfinger's site

Hello Mark,

Well I loved the Dr. Zooch kit and you could go with a D-21 to fill your need for Mighty "D" power.

I built a Dr. Zooch kit for peanut scale for NARAM-51; I didn't go but I think if I had, it would have placed in competition. Why? Because I was planning the same trick that Chan Stevens did at NARAM-50 ... 17 motors, and a very good static build. Would you like to see pictures? I bet you do!

OK, I will provide them but lets talk about the Dr. Zooch kit:

Great starting point, but there is much UNSCALE about the kit. First the 'Zero Stage' boosters or strapons (don't know if the site's language filter will filter that?). They are just long cones ... very unscale. The actual boosters are made of a upper cone, attached to a mid section cone, attached to a short cylinder.

The fins, big and VERY unscale because he needs them for stability. I made scale fins and as a result, you guessed it, lots of buckshot in the nose second stage area.

I also added 4 motor tubes (Micro Max) in each booster.

Next, I redid the upper portion of the first stage so that it tapered inward (scale) and not the kit that was just a long piece of BT-20 with no change in diameter.

The result, one 'Kick Ass' ( can I say that?) peanut scale Soviet R-7 (Luna) model. There will be future peanut scale competitions ... for now, this bird just sits in my closet awaiting her call of glory.

OK enough talk, now we rock:




Lots of detail, all scale and 17 motor cluster ... to bad they made that new rule, thanks Chan, that limits motors to 6 ... curses!






Up close and personal with the 'business end' of things. A lot of hours went into this and to think some people think this type of work should only be DOUBLE a "B" streamer model contest factor... no way Jose! I take PRIDE in my modeling abilities and I want the rewards that come with it!


Your fellow Commrad,

Jonathan

P.s. the original R-7 wasn't olive drab as everyone thinks! I used a color photo from an early R-7 shot ... the Soviets didn't deviate much in their plans or procedures. As a result, the paint depicts the most likley color of the actual R-7 and its early varients. Also, no one REALLY knows what the actual color was! So you have to do a bit of interpolation to arrive at what the color was! But it wasn't olive drab!

That's a cool enhancement, Jonathan!

I don't follow competition rules, so I didn't know Chan's caused them to change the rules. Bummer.

Nicely done, Jonathan!

Greg

I love it
 

Have you flwn the thing? I have found mmx clusters to be a pain , it would take like 2 hrs to wire that thing up

Chan used a "spider" to ignite his MMX motor.

Basically it's a manifold made from a PVC pipe and little copper tubes going up to each motor.

O have a picture of it...someplace. :confused:

Chan used my Soyuz kit for that and I am working on some of them now. I even will offer some Vostok kits.

Here's mine!

The one on the bottom is a real one. :D

The second pic is a bunch of Vostok cones ready. The latis on the one on the left is laser cut cardstock that comes with the nose cone.

They are very hard to make!

Vostock
 

I have Zooch vostok , I cut out the parts but thats all the further I got , more of a winterproject

Spiders are a clean and more reliable way of using flash pan ignition. Simple flash pan ignition is nothing more than spreading some black powder underneath a cluster rocket and using the launch system to ignite the black powder. This results in the burning powder flying up into the nozzles and igniting the cluster. I've had good reliability with it, but you smoke up the aft of the rocket and it will char the underside somewhat.

A spider is hard to describe without pictures. A simple version would be similar to a cap or an inverted cup with individual tubes sticking up into each motor nozzle. The powder is ignited within this cup. This directs the burning powder into the motors without charring the back end of the rocket. IIRC, there has been a photo or two of spider ignition in Sport Rocketry Magazine, but I don't remember which issue(s).

Found some pics. Hopefully I can hotlink. It is from Josh's (Meatball Rocketry) website. He used it on a 1:59 Saturn I Block 2. The tall skinny tubes were for alignment, IIRC. He also used Pyrodex instead of BP, which is why the daylight test just looks like grey smoke.

Here is the link for the Josh's web site:

PVC Spider

He has a .pdf file on the site on how to make it.

Greg