A breath of life into a dusty ole Wizard
 

Way back in 2002, :rolleyes: I found myself with an excess of BT-80 laying around. It seemed that I had an idea for a project when I bought it, but whatever it was slipped the gaps in the teeth of my steel trap mind. I also had plenty of 3/32" basswood, centering rings and Estes E hooks, so I took it upon myself to build a BT-80 Estes Wizard upscale.



Easy project. I made the mistake of building it during my brief fascination with epoxy putty, so the fillets are a bit large and tumoresque, but YOU WILL NOT NOTICE THIS IMPERFECTION!!! ;) All went well with the project until I got to the decal. The original Wizard decal was a masterpiece of simplicity that perfectly suited the two-color rocket. I tried to simply upscale the original, but it turned out extremely fuzzy. I made several attempts at redrawing it, none of which turned out.
In the end I got tired of seeing the big bird sitting around, so one night before a launch I slapped on a couple of launch lugs and fired away with the remains of the can of purple that I'd used on an Alien Invader clone. It didn't turn out perfect, but it wasn't supposed to, and it DEFINITELY suggested WIZARD.



The lone flight to date came in September of 2006 on an Estes E9-6. It was a great flight with a slow, majestic liftoff, just like I'd hoped it would be. Oddly enough, it didn't hit the road on recovery, rare for my rockets at VOA at that time.





Never got the decal situation figured out. Until now. A couple of weeks back, I wrote Gordon at Excelsior to ask about a decal for the Centuri Python Fighter. He didn't have it at that time, but did have it ready in a matter of hours. :cool: While looking through his list of available decals, I was shocked to find the BT-80 Wizard listed. That also became a part of the order, which arrived today. As you might expect, there will be more to this post as the weekend rolls and the paint flies.

That's a great looking rocket, I never built a Wizard but I really like it after seeing it upscaled that size. Can't wait to see how you finish it. You have sold me, I am ordering the parts for the BT-80 Estes Wasp upscale I have been wanting to build.

I notice the launch rod used for that flight is barely taller than the rocket. Is the longer body just inherently more stable?? After losing my Big Daddy on an E9-6 because of it turning horizontal I figured I would need a 4 or 5 foot launch rod before trying to build any more larger size rockets.

I'm already envisioning a keychaing cam launch with the camera mounted just above the WIZARD decal, looking down. :cool:
Love the idea of the WASP upscale. :cool: :cool:

I have decals for the BT-80 upscaled WASP too! ;)

Really tough to tell, but this is the BT-80 Wizard. Decals by Excelsior, body just excavated and dusted off from 2002 before getting a fresh paint job. If I hadn't treed my clone a few years ago, I'd have something to sit next to it to give an idea of the scale, but I didn't anticipate this. :rolleyes: I do have a 1:1 clone in the making, so I should have a side-by-side on the way in the not too distant future.

Well that thing came out sweet, I like the older paint scheme and decals much better than the one they currently sell. I have an Executioner on the way which I plan to kit bash to make the Wasp, although because of the nose cone it would be easier to make one of these instead. Hmmmm.....

Looks real sweet!

Bring it to NARAM and display it at my booth, please.

Oh...and fly it too!

Nice job. Love it.

:o I'll be bringing it, and I'll be flying it, but if you want to display it, you'll probably want to put it at the back of the booth. I did the fillets using epoxy putty and they look a bit......crappy. :D Should be perfect for those fifty foot lift-off shots, though. :rolleyes:

Very nice Bill!