{"id":48,"date":"2015-03-14T15:23:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-14T15:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/?p=48"},"modified":"2015-07-16T02:26:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T02:26:41","slug":"building-your-apogee-saturn-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"Building your Estes Saturn V"},"content":{"rendered":"

History\"Kevon<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is a story about a BAR (Born Again Rocketeer) who as a child did not\u00a0afford a Saturn V. This may seem funny but I worked in a Toy store from\u00a01976 till 1979. That is what started my rocket career.<\/p>\n

You see, once upon a time there was this young lad named Tony. While he\u00a0was painting a fire hydrant for the upcoming 200 year anniversary of our\u00a0country, he took a break in a toy store near the hydrant. This lad noticed\u00a0that the model rockets were in bad disarray. He began organizing the\u00a0rockets. I, err I mean he was getting all the Mosquitos on the same hook\u00a0when an old man walked up behind him. “Whatch’a doin’ son?” he\u00a0inquired. I was raised in the mid west (Iowa) and I explained “These\u00a0rockets are a mess. I am organizing them.” He announced “You’re doing a\u00a0fine job, you want it?” “Want what?” I replied. “The job. It pays minimum\u00a0wage but that should keep you in rockets.”\"Box<\/p>\n

I\u00a0didn’t know anything about rockets then but soon I was buying all the\u00a0rockets I could. I read the instructions and few at my school. I never did\u00a0buy a Saturn V. I believe that I was scared of it. It was a big expensive\u00a0rocket. I had flown clusters before (3 c’s in the Eggpress egg lofter) and I\u00a0had flown taller rockets (Mean Machine) but I never did buy a Saturn V.<\/p>\n

Here and Now<\/strong><\/h2>\n

So now we get to the 30th<\/sup> anniversary Saturn V. As soon as I found out\u00a0that the emanate release of the Saturn V was not just rumor, I submitted\u00a0my order with Hobby Link.<\/a> Http:\/\/www.hobbylinc.com<\/a> Mine was\u00a0delivered December 26th<\/sup>. I had made my wife a promise that I would not\u00a0start building any new rockets until in installed her new floor in the\u00a0kitchen. Talk about a motivator. She now has her new floor and cabinets.\u00a0So then I got to start the rocket.<\/p>\n

It came in a sturdy NCR style box. Kevon was most impressed that it was\u00a0nearly as tall as he is. Once I opened the box, I was impressed by the\u00a0number of parts. I love hard to build kits. The more difficult the better.\u00a0Soon I discovered that not all the parts will be used. The Vacu formed\u00a0plastic wraps have duplicate hard plastic pieces that do not get used.<\/p>\n

Upon taking inventory of the parts, I was unable to correctly identify two\u00a0of them. The Main Body Coupler verses the Reinforcing Ring. (Shown on\u00a0floor back right.) I correctly decided that the Main Body Tube Coupler\u00a0was the longer (taller) of the two. I never did find a use for the Reinforcing\u00a0Ring. I ended up using it in the top of the body tube to help stiffen the tube\u00a0where it couples to the next stage.<\/p>\n

\"24-2924mm to 29mm Conversion<\/h2>\n

My next issue was that I don’t like flying to 175 feet. Long delay element and my rocket\u00a0hits the ground. I felt that a rocket of this size needs to fly at least 500 feet. I toyed with\u00a0the idea of just flying it in 24mm RMS. (Reloadable Motor System) rocket motors. That\u00a0would have met my goal. But after checking my parts inventory and I had a 29mm motor\u00a0tube on hand, well it just had to be. I got out my Dr. Rockets LDRS XVII\u00a0commemorative 29mm 240NSec case and made sure it would fit in my new motor\u00a0mount. Green is the Dr. Rockets RMS casing, the white is the new 29mm motor tube and\u00a0the kraft paper tube is the original motor tube. Now I’m really looking forward to seeing\u00a0his go up on a G33 or bigger motor.<\/p>\n

My next problem was re-cutting the centering rings for the\u00a029mm tube. Fortunately my wife Sheryl has a craft circle\u00a0cutter from Fiskar<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.fiskars.com\/memories\/prod_circle_cutter.html<\/a>\u00a0If you get one be sure to check it’s \"Cuttingscale. The metric scale\u00a0on our’s is off by a factor of two. So instead of a 31mm\u00a0(Outside Diameter of my 29mm tube) diameter, I had to\u00a0set it for 62mm. The hardest part was finding the original\u00a0centers so I could then cut my new holes.<\/p>\n

The next problem was to adjust my CG (Center of Gravity) for the new motor size. I put 1\u00a0ounce of BB’s inside the command module. I made this guess by building the rocket then\u00a0put a D motor in the rocket. I found CG and then replaced it with my 29mm 240NSec\u00a0case and a H220 reload. Then I added weight to bring CG back to the proper location. I’m\u00a0confident that this rocket will never hold up to an H220 but I might fly it on an H97 one day.\u00a0Want to watch?<\/p>\n

I had no problem with the instructions until I got to step 9. Cutting the Lower 1st<\/sup> stage\u00a0wrapper. It tells you to cut it 3″ long. But its not very specific about where to measure 3″ at. In any case it’s wrong. I’m going to\u00a0recommend that you got to step 11 first. Cut out the fairings but not the holes for the fins just yet. Return to step 9. Wrap a\u00a0piece of 120 or 220 grit sand paper around your body tube. Use that to sand your fairings to the correct shape. Carefully slide\u00a0them up and down the sandpaper on the body tube to get the correct curvature. Once you have them fitting the body tube it’s\u00a0time to pick out the one that is the longest. They should be close but one will inevitably be longer. I would then cut the lower 1st\u00a0<\/sup>stage wrapper as large as I could. Then tape it onto the body tube and use the long fairing to measure your final cut. Try each\u00a0fairing in turn to make sure your mark is accurate and you won’t leave the wrapper too short. If your’s ends up being too short.\u00a0Well, that is where I used Green Putty to fix my mistakes.<\/p>\n

I now have my rocket assembled and it’s first coat of primer on it. In the coming months I plan to put the new counter on my\u00a0wife’s new cabinets and paint this rocket properly. I also need to replace the chutes with nylon due to the added recovery weight\u00a0of the RMS and the 1 ounce of BB’s in the nose.<\/p>\n

References:<\/h2>\n

Essence Model Rocket Reviews<\/a> http:\/\/members.xoom.com\/EMRR\/reviews\/est_saturn_v.html<\/a><\/p>\n

The Apollo Saturn Reference Page<\/a> http:\/\/www.apollosaturn.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Real Saturn V Pictures<\/a> http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/CapeCanaveral\/Hall\/3641\/saturn.html<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History This is a story about a BAR (Born Again Rocketeer) who as a child did not\u00a0afford a Saturn V. This may seem funny but I worked in a Toy store from\u00a01976 till 1979. That is what started my rocket career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-tips-and-tricks"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}