Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post - Scrounged-Up Designs 2006

I now have a prototype for the Antares (see my avatar, upper-left...) ready for priming. This is a larger model than I imagined, and should look right at home next to the SEMROC Taurus I picked up Friday. It's also a little heavier in the tail than I thought, and I may need to re-examine the RockSim specs to see if I missed something important.

After last week's loss of the original Stryker model, I had to whip up a set of wings for its replacement. The new Stryker is fully assembled and ready for primer.

After having the parts in a bag for at least three years, I finally put the fins to the tubes of my Centaur two-stage model. This design is from 2003, and is something of a derivative of the Estes Omega. Now, I just need to add launch lugs to it and to my Omega clone and start spraying primer.

My TZ-9 prototype (9" body length Tau Zero) is almost primer-ready. I'm adding those teardrop-shaped cannon fairings to the fin tips instead of the "production" treatments, just to see what the model will look like. FWIW, I think the "production" tips are a good compromise, as the amount of work I've had to do so far on the pods would discourage a lot of folks from finishing the model. Laser-cut parts would simplify the pods, but this is a scratch-job.

I have the parts to build the Andromeda now, and that should be my immediate-next project to start. This is also a larger-than-expected model, but I think it will look like it belongs next to the Antares, like a sibling; at least like a close cousin, anyway.

I'm starting to look for a digital camera, so that I can start shooting some pictures of these models. Several have popped up in the newspaper adverts Sunday, and I'm looking at a couple. A Sony with 6 MPix resolution is available through several places for about $150, and I'm not planning to spend over $200. If anyone has personal experience with some of these in this price range, shout out your opinions -- good, bad, or indifferent. The shots you folks have posted with your own cameras look so much better than anything I've used to this point.