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tbzep 05-18-2008 09:37 PM

Alpha Info...Need Help From Old Timers
 
I've built another Alpha, this time with a balsa cone for a more vintage flavor. I plan to paint it based on an old Boys Life Magazine Estes ad. Unfortunately, the ad was small with a low quality B&W drawing and I'm not sure what the original ad model looked like.

I've settled on one of two designs based on the ad drawing.

Option one is white with bright red nosecone and blue stripes with a standard stars & bars decal. It would make sense to have some blue and a regular stars & bars decal since it's a USAF themed rocket.

Option two is white with a black nosecone and black stripes with just a circled star instead of stars & bars.

Here's the ad and the decal designs. Do you guys think that there is a stars & bars decal and the image quality is just too poor to show it, or do you think Estes designed it with just the circled star? Old timers that may have seen higher quality ads, please speak up. Opinions from everyone else are welcome also. :)



If the blue USAF decal is used, the fin stripes will be changed to blue to match it.


Mark II 05-18-2008 11:32 PM

I think that your first scheme is much closer to the real thing. Estes often slapped USAF insignia on their catalog models. As you probably know, the original K-25 did not come with decals, nor did it have a suggested paint scheme. But in most of the literature that I received when I got my Alpha Starter Set in 1967 showed the rocket with a white body, a glossy red nose cone, and two red fins and one white fin. The picture of the Starter Set on page 7 of the 1968 catalog shows that paint scheme, and that was how I painted my Alpha. (I brush-painted it with butyrate dope.)

It might be easy to confuse pictures of the Alpha with the USAF insignia with pictures of the Sky Hook, which was almost the same size. The Alpha was always shown with a red nose cone, though. It was the Sky Hook that had the black nose cone, red fins, and a single black stripe that rolled around the body from the top of the tube to the fins.

Estes showed other paint schemes for the Alpha, too. If you look closely at the picture on the back page of the 1967 catalog, the Alpha is the second rocket from the left, in between the Apogee II and the Falcon. It is painted a bright red or flourescent orange all over, with a black stripe around the top of the body tube and at least one black fin.

To see a much better version of the B&W picture that was in the Boy's Life ad, look at page 11 in either the '67 or '68 catalog, and also at the picture for the Alpha Starter Set in those catalogs. There is also actually a color picture of an Alpha with that same color scheme on the inside back page of the 1968 catalog. It is the rocket sitting on the table in the lower left photo. You don't see the side with the USAF insignia, but you do see the stripe. (There were two vertical stripes positioned 180 degrees apart on the body tube, but only one of them was broken by a USAF stars and bars insignia.) A slightly larger version of that picture (or a better scan of it) is on the inside front cover of the 1969 catalog. The Alpha is shown in another color photo on the back of the '69 catalog. In the lower photo, it is the rocket that is on the first pad on the left (and furthest away from the camera, unfortunately).

Estes Industries didn't provide decals for many of their kits in those days. Instead, they sold sheets of decals that you could use to "dress up" your rocket in any way that you wanted. (Model car kit makers often did the same thing in those days.) You can see pictures of those decal sets on pp. 70-71 of the 1967 catalog, and on pp. 42-43 of the 1968 catalog. Estes employees used those very decals when they built the rockets that were shown in the catalog. (The rockets were used as models for drawn illustrations of the rockets in addition to being used in photos.) If you study the drawings and photos of the rockets in the Estes catalogs from 1964 to 1969, you will see many examples of stars and bars and other Air Force insignia being used. See, for example, the pictures of the Astron Space Plane and the Astron Falcon in the 1964 catalog, and just about any picture of the Astron Cobra from any of those years.

On the decals page, the description for the sheet of color stripes states that the sheet had stripes in black, red and yellow. Judge for yourself, but to me (on my computer monitor), the stripe in that paint scheme appears to be black in color. That is also the color that I remember it being in the color photos of the Alpha that were in other pieces of literature I received from Estes. The stars and bars insignia is, of course, red, white and blue.

Hope this helps.

Mark \\.

Leo 05-19-2008 03:08 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
I've built another Alpha, this time with a balsa cone for a more vintage flavor. I plan to paint it based on an old Boys Life Magazine Estes ad. Unfortunately, the ad was small with a low quality B&W drawing and I'm not sure what the original ad model looked like.

....


If you look closely you will notice that the standard stars & bars decal is a little larger than the stripe running down the rocket.

If that is all the info I would have I'd take a normal standard USAF stars & bars decal, paint the nose cone black including the stripes and the letters USAF.

mojo1986 05-19-2008 07:59 AM

I believe your best clue is with that 1968 catalog shown in the ad. If you get out your '68 catalog and open it to page 1 you will see the exact paint scheme shown in the ad............and there is clearly a 'star and bars' decal set within the longitudinal stripe. As for the color, I don't believe the light blue shown in the catalog matters..............Estes was always printing their catalogs in a limited number of colors and simply printed in colors they felt were most attractive. I agree that the old Alphas were quite consistently shown in white with a red nosecone. If I recall correctly, I believe the stripe was black, but it may have been red.

Joe

gpoehlein 05-19-2008 09:58 AM

Looking at the '68 catalog, it looks like the nose cone is red with a black stripe around either the base of the nose cone, or more likely, around the top of the BT. It looks like the stripe from the USAF forward might be red, while the rest is black. I'd say, based on the catalog pic, that the fins are white with a black stripe. There also looks to be a black stripe circling the aft end of the BT. Stick with red, white and black (except for the stars and bars) and I don't believe you can go wrong.

By the time I got my first alpha ('73), the "standard" paint scheme was red nose cone, white BT with a black stripe longitudinally, and one black fin, with the section of BT to the right of the black fin also black.

Greg

Rocketking 05-19-2008 10:38 AM

Re: Alpha in 1975 catalog
 
From Ninfinger's site (best collection of old catalogs!)

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/rock...75/75est10.html

This year didn't display stripes on the fins, however.

barone 05-19-2008 06:49 PM

Red nose cone.

White BT and fins.

Black vertical stripe with USAF stars and bars.

Black horizontal stripe at both ends of BT.

Black accent stripes on one side of two fins, either side of vertical stripe.

Reference page 11 of '68 catalog (and some imagination :rolleyes: )

Leo 05-20-2008 03:26 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by barone
...

Reference page 11 of '68 catalog (and some imagination :rolleyes: )


Well, my imagination tells me it could be an orange nose cone, if the Alpha was built with "Assembly Special" :rolleyes:

Alas, we are all guessing :)

Mark II 05-20-2008 05:27 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by barone
Red nose cone.

White BT and fins.

Black vertical stripe with USAF stars and bars.

Black horizontal stripe at both ends of BT.

Black accent stripes on one side of two fins, either side of vertical stripe.

Reference page 11 of '68 catalog (and some imagination :rolleyes: )

Well, Tim, I think that we are starting to reach a consensus here, with Leo being the lone dissenter. (Sometimes a lone dissenter turns out to be right - remember the movie 12 Angry Men? - but not here, IMNSHO. :D )

Seriously now, I distinctly remember the color scheme as previously described in the posts from Joe, Greg, Don and me. I built only five rockets when I was a kid, and only one of them was an Alpha. I painted mine to look like the Alphas that I had seen in the literature that Estes enclosed when they sent my first catalog and, subsequently, in the literature that was included with my Starter Set, and that color scheme was red and white. I did want to add the stripes and the USAF insignia to it someday, but I never did because I never bought the decals. If you want to paint your K-25 clone to look like vintage Alphas from the mid to late 1960's Estes catalogs, then that is the color scheme you should use. I will swear to that on a stack of Bibles. There are few things in my early adolescence that have left me with such vivid memories as those that I have of building and launching my first model rocket. It was because of those memories that I finally resumed my involvement in model rocketry after 33 years.

Mark \\.

tbzep 05-20-2008 08:23 PM

It gives me plenty to chew on. :)

It's been sitting solid white for a while now. Hopefully I'll have time to do something with it this weekend. I appreciate everyone's input. :cool:


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