Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Earl
That’s a thought! Ya know, it is actually kind of surprising that an upscale Citation Patriot has not been offered in the past. It would take quite a few square inches of decal material to do it right and possible the cost of that aspect has been a limiting factor for a commercial product offering.
But, as you are alluding, doesn’t stop the individual from doing it on their own!
Earl
|
I have a BT-80 scratch built version so I'm pretty confident I know why there has never been one.
1. I used a ton of balsa making a BT-80 sized nose cone for it.
2. It's a large rocket. Just a few inches shorter than the Colossus.
3. The fins scale up very large. I built them out of balsa TTW and scaled their thickness as well, so that it would be light and fly easily on a single D12 or whatever cluster I wanted (removable mount).
4. The decals are huge.
Add #1 and #4 together and you have a pretty expensive rocket before you even look at the rest of the components. A blow molded cone would be cheap if enough units are sold, but I doubt Estes thought it would be a money maker in years past.
With that in mind, I've just been talking about a BT-80 kit similar to a Colossus. If you go 3" that spells heavy tubing, thicker NC, ply fins. You would need a hard kicking E or better yet a good F motor. Until recently, Estes wasn't in that sort of business. Kits are just a means of selling motors and most people would have been shoving in Aerotech G motors.
Scratch 4" Red Max, Goblin, and Cherokee-D upscales were my staple high powered models back in my Ex days. We've seen what Estes had to do to keep the weight down on their Mega kit. Without those lightening methods, it would have needed an H motor. I flew my Goblin with altimeter recovery on a 38mm G Ex motor (with as much performance as we could get out of a single grain) and it was pretty low and slow.