Saturn V Standing By

I buy a lot of my Estes rockets and motors from AC Supply. They discount most Estes stuff at around 40% off, and sometimes more.

I've been waiting... and waiting... for the latest release of the 50th Anniversary Saturn V 1:100 scale kit to show up on the AC Supply website. This new release is supposed to be even more detailed than the last, and comes with a lunar module (for display only - it doesn't fly!).

Still, I needed at least one spare Saturn V in case I make a major goof building the one I managed to pick up before they were discontinued early last year. But I didn't want to pay retail - rocketry is expensive enough!

The Saturn V 1:100 scale kit is finally available for pre-order on AC Supply! It's well priced at $53.99. It should ship in a few weeks' time.

AC Supply offers free shipping on orders within the continental US over $100, so... you know... you could order two of them and have them delivered free of charge! (I did - but it's my birthday, so if Mrs. N00b asks... this is my birthday present to myself.)

Here's the link.

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Stickershock Is Returning!

Mark of Stickershock23.com has decided, after many supportive messages, to return to business! This is excellent news.

On Stickershock's Facebook page, he posted:

I want to thank each and every one of you for the VERY KIND AND SUPPORTING WORDS
I would love to thank each person one at a time.. but I it would take us days..
I know I dont post here as much as I should.. I WILL TRY TO POST MORE OFTEN STARTING NOW!
Yes the go fund me page is still up and I BELIEVE its working. I have had many ask how they can donate and help.. That would be the way to do it..

https://www.gofundme.com/stickershock23

Thank you for all that have donated, it has been very helpful,

STICKERSHOCK23.com

Ok heres the big news.. I WILL BE OPENING THE STORE AND WEBSITE VERY SHORTLY.. (just gotta get with my webmaster to get it done) We will be back open for business hopefully within the next 24 hours.. thank you for your patience!

there will be some small changes.. again MOSTLY to how custom orders will be handled and Priced!

QUICK BREAK DOWN..

My design time will be $50.00 an hour (minimum 30 mins)

THIS WILL BE FOR ALL CUSTOM REQUESTS. I may ask for it up front, be prepared for that when contacting me please..

I HAVE THE RIGHT TO WAVE THAT FEE AT MY DIGRESSION.. (I will wave it for MANY things.. such as VERY simple changes, CUSTOMER HAVING ART OR ALL INFORMATION READY TO GO!!, IF its an item I would probably add to my website etc!! )

I will NOT charge for simple changes.. "hey can you make this decal... but in green instead of blue" Yep no charge.. " can you change the serial number to XXX.YYY" YES NO CHARGE..

PRINCES ON SMALLER ITEMS WILL REFLECT MINIMUM CHARGES.. they are NOT priced by size.. they are priced by DIFFICULTY to create and to make.. and the smaller things are the more difficult they are to make.. PERIOD! YES I love doing them for you.. but they will cost based on these things..

I WILL BE CLOSED SOME DAYS! I know I have always tried to respond ASAP.. I CAN'T continue to do that.. FIrst I gotta have some time off just to purge etc. PLUS I have to have days to do Doctors appointments etc..

WE ARE looking into some new machines so we CAN do some more specialty things.. such as print whites chromes and silvers.. THIS WILL GREATLY reduce the costs of SMALLER reproductions etc. BUT IT IS VERY COSTLY (YEP MORE THAN MY LARGE FORMAT PRINTER) so it might be a while.. but its in the works!

for now this about covers it,

again WE WANT TO THANK ALL OF YOU FOR THE SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT, I SERIOUSLY was ready to just be done with it.. but all of you have really helped me realize how much you like what I do and how much you support us in return.. THIS TRULY IS THE BEST HOBBY AROUND!

Mark and Marian..
"Never fly naked"

So, there will be some much needed changes. Someone who does the work he does deserves to get paid well for it, and a one-person business operator still needs a day off.

In my original post on his closing, I had mentioned that his wife Marian has had a cancer recurrence, as I and others had assumed this was the reason for going out of business. Later, he wrote that this was not the reason for his closing, and I then deleted that part of the post. Still, you have a chance to help by donating to Marian's treatment fund on GoFundMe by clicking here.

We're glad you're coming back, Mark!

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Stickershock Is Gone

Mark Stickershock23.com has closed shop permanently. It seems time has come for him to quit the business.

Mark did great work, producing high quality vinyl decals for all shapes, sizes, and styles of rockets big and small, and this is quite a loss for rocketeers.

This hobby is one with a few big players, and a lot of small family businesses. Nothing is permanent, and it's important to remember to appreciate the small vendors while they're around, because we may not always have access to that special thing they do.

Thanks for the great work, Mark. Take care of yourself.

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Great Planes Hand Sanders Back On the Market!

Just a quick post to let you know that one of my favorite tools - the Great Planes Easy-Touch Hand Sander - now appears to be back on the market!

This simple but really well-designed sanding block is a must have for hobbyists, including model rocketeers. They're lightweight, easy to use, and comfortable to work with even when sanding for a long stretch of time. I have three of them, so that I can quickly switch between coarser and finer grits of sandpaper.

Because you adhere sandpaper directly to the face of the sander, the sanding surface remains perfectly flat while you work, something you can't quite achieve by wrapping a piece of sandpaper around a block. You can either use standard sandpaper shot with spray adhesive, or self-adhesive sandpaper strips which come in long rolls. I get mine from Klingspor.

Earlier today, the Great Planes website was down, and I worried the company had gone under. It was one of the casualties of the big Hobbico bankruptcy, which had some of us worried about the future of Estes.

While it ended up working out better for Estes than anybody could have imagined, Great Planes seems to have taken longer to recover. I don't know who owns them now, but I can say that I've been watching their stock of tools for a while, and the hand sanders were on "back order" on the Great Planes website for ages, and couldn't be found anywhere else.

But the Great Planes website is now back online, and the hand sanders are back up for order there, as well as on Amazon.

So, if you see one pop up on eBay for an inflated price, save your money. Order one directly from Great Planes or Amazon. Heck, order two or three. This is a great tool for rocketry. Very comfortable to use, and you'll use it on every build.

While you're at it, check out my post on how to apply and remove self-adhesive sandpaper to the hand sander without having to spend an hour peeling off sticky adhesive.

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Build Series - The SBR Diablo - Part 1: Unboxing

Scott Binder of SBR sent me his latest high power rocket kit to check out: The Diablo. This is a simple, easy to build, short and fat (4 inches in diameter!) high power kit, as easy to build as a common model rocket - just bigger. Because it's a draggy rocket, it's good for small fields. With its light weight, it can fly on anything from an F motor all the way up to an I or maybe some J motors. And its small size makes it easy to transport to a launch even if you have a compact car.

I'm working on a video build series of this rocket to show how simple it is to put together. Here's the first installment, shot on my phone (sorry about the sound quality) - Unboxing:

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Built from Scratch - A Tale of Two Berthas - Part 1

I recently finished building two Big Bertha rockets - from scratch, rather than from kits. As a guide, I used the original plans, published by Estes in Model Rocket News in 1963, when Bertha was a free plan, before it was sold as a kit (the Big Bertha is now the longest continually produced model rocket kit in history).

I meant to build just one scratch Bertha, but ended up building two of them, almost by accident. I do this a lot.

I started this project for a few reasons. My original Big Bertha kit was one of my earliest builds, detailed a few years ago on this blog. I mention the Bertha a lot here, not because it's always been my favorite model rocket (it hasn't), but because it's so iconic, and simple, and with its large parts, it makes a good demo rocket.

But last season, I flew my now beat up Bertha for my final flight of the fall on a C6-3 motor. Our Launch Control Officer, Kenn, commented "There's no better combination of rocket and motor, folks!" and I thought, you know what, he's right. That is a great rocket!

The Bertha is such a pleasure to see fly. I always brought it to a launch as a kind of afterthought, thinking I should take something that doesn't fly too high, just in case. But each time I flew it, it was just... fun! It goes up relatively high, but you can still keep your eye on it, and it floats gently back down on its 18 inch parachute, and... Well, I guess I just have a soft spot for the Bertha. So, I wanted another one.

That was reason 1. Reason 2 is that, while it does fly really well on C motors, I've always wanted to put a D12 in it, but I built the Bertha kit before I knew you could upgrade these things. The Berthas I've seen fly on D12-5 black powder motors are really fun. With its large fins, the Bertha is plenty stable, and can handle extra weight at the back. So, I decided to build a Bertha with a 24mm diameter motor mount, for those Estes D12 motors.

Reason number 3 is that I always wanted to build one of the plans from the old Estes Model Rocket News. Back in the 1960s, many of these early newsletters featured rockets either designed by Vern Estes himself, or by readers of the Model Rocket News, who'd send in their own designs, which used Estes stock parts. In those days, it was pretty common for model rocketeers to have a fleet which was at least in part built from scratch, rather than from kits.

I figured the Bertha would be a good place to start. No odd, out-of-production tube sizes or nose cones to buy. Just a BT-60 tube, some 1/8 inch fin stock, and a stubby elliptical nose cone. Speaking of which...

Reason 4: I had always wanted to try turning my own nose cone from a block of balsa.

 The plan was to see how hard this could be, using a hand drill as a kind of lathe. From what I'd read in both the Model Rocket News and the Handbook of Model Rocketry, this was supposedly not only doable, but not all that difficult. I wasn't sure that was true, but I wanted to try my hand at it.

It's been a while since I've done this kind of Rocket N00b stuff where I try to figure out how something is supposed to be done and then publish it here. I thought this would be a good place to start, and it would save me having to buy a cone. I wanted to keep this Bertha cheap, if I could.

Spoiler alert - it turned out pretty nice!

So, despite my promise to myself to finish building everything I'd been working on for a year and a half before starting any new rocket builds, I began working on the Bertha. Then I ended up making a second one. More on that when we get to it.

The next few posts will detail my scratch build of the two Berthas.

Click here for Part 2 - The Plans

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Zero Ns in 2018

Hello, stranger. How've you been?

For the past few year over on The Rocketry Forum, there has been a thread each year where people can log the Newton-seconds they've burned flying rockets that year, called the Newton Tally Thread (here's this year's). I can never participate in this thread, because I always quickly lose track. I'm not one of those rocketeers who diligently record the details of every flight, though I should be.

This year, however, it's been easy. I have flown exactly 0.0 Ns to date in 2018. What with the birth of Little N00b and our current lack of a car, I haven't been able to attend any launches at all. And I'm really itching to get out there and fly.

Mrs. N00b and I have plans to get a decent vehicle, and we've got plans to go to at least one launch this year, even if we have to rent a car. The last annual FlisKits launch, run by CMASS, celebrating Jim Flis' 16 years in business, will be on September 15 in Amesbury, MA. It's going to be a big one.

The FlisKits launch was my first club flying experience three years ago. There's cake and food, and hundreds of flights in one day. If I only get to attend launch one this year, this has to be it.

So, I haven't flown anything, and if you follow this blog, you know that I haven't written much in the past few months, but that doesn't mean rocketry has completely been on the back burner for me. In addition to doing The Rocketry Show podcast, I've been building.

It's gone much more slowly for me recently, since I don't get as much time to myself. If Little N00b needs something, the rocket has to wait. But I've been chipping away at it, and have finished a number of builds I'd like to share.

A lot of my progress has already been posted on Instagram (you can follow me @rocketn00b), and some on Twitter, and a little bit on my Facebook page.

Since I don't always have the time lately to do little experiments or research a topic to write up something for this blog, I'm going to start a few build series. I've got a few rockets I'm pretty proud of - and some which I learned I should have done differently. I have a good backlog of photos, so there's plenty of potential material there.

Look for the first one soon.

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