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Old 04-12-2018, 11:35 PM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BARGeezer
Blackshire,
If you are looking to clone the Sandpiper (Jayhawk) then it might be easier using the Estes plans rather than the Vashon ones:

http://www.oldrocketplans.com/estes/est1389/est1389.htm

You can purchase the 3d equivalent of the PNC-50S nose cone here:

https://www.shapeways.com/product/F...tionId=42814278

Or you can save some money and go old school by gluing the canards on a balsa cone.
The BT-50 tube is 7.75" long and the BT-20 engine tube is 3.5" long (from John Brohm's reference list). You will need to draw up a custom shroud simulating the tail cone. There is a shroud generating program available here (paper cones transitions program):

http://www.rocketshoppe.com/tips.htm

"Sandpiper" was an Air Force project to develop a hybrid motor for the Jayhawk replacing the liquid hypergolic propellants with a solid fuel propellant and storable liquid oxidizer. Potentially much less problems compared to toxic, volatile hypergolics. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, I have this on my build pile as well.
Thank you! I hadn't remembered that Estes semi-scale kit (it looks like a BT-50-size near-duplicate of Centuri's semi-scale Jayhawk kit), but looking it up on the Ninfinger Productions website, I see why--it was only offered in 1983 and 1984, so it came and went quickly. A "hybrid" of this Estes kit and the Vashon/Estes Sandpiper kit (which was virtually the same diameter, 1.0" versus 0.976") would be a pretty accurate depiction, if it used Aerobotix's 3D printed BT-50S "canard-ed" nose cone (and the card stock tail cone from the Estes kit), and the Vashon/Estes kit's main wings and tip fins, and:

Such a model could depict either the Sandpiper or the AQM-37A by having either a single rocket exhaust orifice (Sandpiper) or the AQM-37A's two booster/sustainer rocket exhaust orifices (a removable-for-flight "display plate" would even allow either variant to be depicted). The Sandpiper kit illustrations in the Estes catalogs show it as being a yellowish green, but (guessing here, as I've never seen a color [or even black-and-white] photograph of a full-scale Sandpiper) I imagine the actual Sandpiper vehicles were the same bright orange or reddish-orange color as the AQM-37A vehicles.
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