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scale: 1/72 base kit: based on plans by Peter Alway in Scale Bash dimensions: dates: August, 2000 cost: $5 WAEC Rockets Space Racer SAM-66 Sunbird II Pi Sprint Leviathan Space Racer II Arcturus Mk. 1 Roswell or Bust! Brinley Short March Discovery XW-1 Apollo-LES Sprint II Lone Star Mercury-Redstone Shenzhou Saturn 1B More Information Special Projects and Miscellany |
 When
we moved into our new house in the summer of 2000, I realized that the
area behind our house had
an uncanny resemblance to White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Its
dry, sandy ground looked to me a great deal like the missile launching
site.
I thought it would be cool to build a scale, or at least sport scale,
model
of some significant rocket that flew from White Sands, such as the WAC
Corporal. Launching one out there would almost be authentic.
I considered getting a model of some such rocket at NARAM-42, but I
wanted
to save my money for some books.A week later I received in the mail two books that I had ordered: Rockets of the World and Scale Bash, both by Peter Alway. His book Scale Bash includes plans for a sport scale V-2. The V-2 flew at White Sands, and so I built a very small version of one to fly it the dry field out back. In 1997, I had tried building a V-2 from scratch, but it was, to put it mildly, abombidable. It was too ambitious, and I needed to be realistic with what I was building, and actually succeed in flying a rocket that I built from scratch before embarking on a scale job. But, over the span of a week in the summer of 2000 I built and flew my little V-2. The nose cone was a simple 3:1 ogive, like the one on the Estes Alpha, and the tail cone was a sliced-off 4:1 ogive. For the short section of body tube I used a length of BT-50 that I had cut off of my Alpha when I was converting it to be a first stage for Sprint (this later served as the first stage for Space Racer II, and it was renamed Alpha FS). The fins are little pieces of balsa that I had trouble cutting to the correct shape. The streamer was cut from a bag from Ron Jon Surf Shop. For most of the week surveyors had been scouring the field behind our house with their tripods, telescopes, and gray vans. It's a relatively featureless area of land, so I don't know why they took so long. But, the surveyors' presence meant one thing: they were going to start building something there soon, and I wouldn't be able to launch rockets when that happened. I didn't bother painting my V-2 before its first flight. I was going to paint it yellow with Ted's can of "Sunbird Yellow" (the same can my boost-glider Sunbird is named after), but the can was empty. I couldn't wait any longer, for fear that the construction workers would come by and start building soon. I had to launch it right away! On Sunday, August 20, 2000, I launched my V-2 in the White Sands wannabe behind our house. It was the first launch I've conducted in full view of our house, and my V-2 had the potential of being the first rocket of mine to land on our roof (besides Stomp Rockets.) I got the pad all set up, and called people out to come watch. I lowered the V-2 onto the pad, hooked up the micro clips, and announced that I was ready to launch. "T minus five, four, three, two, one.." I shouted, and pushed the button. The V-2 sat on the pad for a tedious moment, then streaked upwards on its little A3-4T engine. "Rocket away!" I shouted, and removed the safety key. V-2 #2 streaked upward, then at apogee ejected its streamer and came down, to land on the other side of the street. Ted ran over to it, and I followed after capping the launch rod. The little Venegance Weapon-turned sounding rocket had suffered no noticeable damage, besides very minor charring of the white streamer. Some time later, I painted the rocket in the distinctive yellow and black roll pattern. It has flown a few times since. On one occasion, it flew from a scale launch pad, which I built as one of the WAEC's Nine Objectives. V-2 #2 was the first scale rocket I built and flew. It wasn't the last. image: A complete shot of the rocket, shot in 2003. image: A detail shot of the fins. image: The V-2 on display in the WAEC Space Museum (with the 1/12 Nike-Smoke). image: The V-2 on the matching scale launch pad. image: An overall view of the pad and the rocket. image: The real thing. (from the White Sands Missile Range archives) |
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