Rocketry Planet

One man's quest to honor America's Saturn V rocket

On April 25, 2009, history will be made.  At Higgs Farm in Price, Maryland, Steve Eves will enter the history books as the person who flew the largest scale model rocket in history. The rocket will weigh over 1,600 pounds, it will stand over 36 feet tall and it will be powered by a massive array of nine motors: eight 13,000ns N-Class motors and a 77,000ns P-Class motor. The estimated altitude of this single stage effort will be between 3,000 and 4,000 feet and the project will be recovered at apogee. In a special to Rocketry Planet, author Mark B. Canepa and ROCKETS Magazine wish to share Steve Eve's story with the readers here.

HJ101: Turbocharging the Estes Maxi Brute Honest John

This edition of the Rocketry Planet How-To Classroom is based on the Estes Maxi Brute Honest John, a 1/9 scale model of the venerable ballistic missile used by the United States Army. This class covers the Estes first edition Maxi Brute kit #1269 released in 1975, the Estes second edition Collector Series kit #1269 released in 1993 or the third edition Maxi Brute kit #2166 released in 2000.This kit is approaching collector status, if it hasn't already, and you can still find them occassionally on eBay for reasonable prices. This class project features dual deployment with an altimeter bay, fiberglass airframe reinforcing and fiberglass fins to replace the thin styrene shells that come in the standard kit. In fact, of the original kits, we are mainly using the styrene fin canisters and the two-piece styrene nose cones while replacing most everything else — this is imperative to be able to fly these kits on 38mm and 54mm motors.

D-REG101: Building the Estes D-Region Tomahawk

The Estes D-Region Tomahawk is back for its final segment in this How-To Classroom Series. Sporting a traditional white paint job with black, red and brown trim, the D-Region Tomahawk makes a great statement in scale model rocket kits. Follow along as we finish out this final lesson.In this edition of the How-To Classroom, we are focusing on building a hardened version of the new Estes D-Region Tomahawk (#2037). This kit is 38.8" long, 1.8" in diameter and comes with a 24mm motor mount. I got my Tomahawk from Belleville Wholesale Hobby for just $24.49. Features of the kit include a very detailed blow-molded nosecone, a very detailed fin and fin canister section, a twist-lock motor retainer and a rip-stop nylon parachute.

First Look: Giant Leap Rocketry's brand new Crossbow

Recently, I had the opportunity to get my hands on Giant Leap's new Crossbow, a 4" diameter rocket with what looks like a Talon-inspired theme.  In reality, the Crossbow is more akin to its cousin, the Nuclear Sledgehammer, with three fins plus a pair of mini-wings and forward canards.At any rate, the Crossbow looked liked something I would enjoy building and I was happy to get my hands on this kit. In September, the UPS man arrived and I was off to the shop.The Crossbow comes standard as a 55-inch long kit carrying a 54mm motor mount with a dry weight of four pounds, and the list of standard features makes it well worth the price.