Brief:
My first attempt at a plastic model conversion (PMC). It is a 1/35 scale V2 rocket by Dragon that was easy to build and flies well.

Construction:
The plastic kit comes with three sprues, detailed instructions and decals (except my kit didn't contain the decals). Since I wanted to fly this kit and not have it sit on a shelf, I was not too worried about the missing decals.

The kit itself is for a V2 rocket sitting on a launch pad. This means that you can get rid of most of the parts straight away. The parts of the kit you need are:

• 2 B1 upper body tube halves
• 2 B2 lower body tube halves
• 2 B3 middle body tube halves
• 4 B6 fins
• 1 A6 lower nose cone
• 1 A9 nose cone tip
• 1 A4 vent ring
• 1 A5 motor mount plug

To covert this to a flying rocket, you will need:

• 1 launch lug
• 1 Estes SCM-50 shock cord mount
• 1 Estes 18 inch parachute
• 2ft length of elastic
• Snap swivels (optional)
• 1 spent 18mm motor
• 1 18mm engine block
• Kevlar® thread

To build the kit I used:

• CA gel glue
• 90 second epoxy
• Model knife
• Aluminum oxide sandpaper
• Variable speed rotary tool with cutting and grinding attachments

All the plastic parts snap off the sprues easily and contain a lot of detail. The panels of the V2 are marked and the vent ring is there, which is a nice touch as it is absent from some kits.

The first thing to do is to make the motor mount. The A5 plug has to be cut down to accept a BT-50. Using the rotary tool, this was easy to do as the rough edges were smoothed down using a grinding disk. Do not glue the BT-20 to the plug yet.

Glue the body tube halves together then the two nose cone parts together. CA gel works best as it bonds quickly but does not run like normal CA glue. Glue the fins to the lower body tube. [Note: The fins have an attachment rod on the lower part. This is to attach the V2 to the base stand. I removed these with the grinder.]Glue the middle and upper body tubes together. Glue the A5 vent ring to the lower body tube.

The V2 is nearly complete now with the exception of the motor mount and recovery system. However, I did not want an ejection charge going off inside the V2 for a number of reasons:

1. Plastic melts.
2. There is a reasonably large volume inside, and sometimes the drop in pressure stops the nose cone from being able to separate.
3. You would have to use loads of wadding and this can get pushed aside by ejection charge and melt the parachute.

To get around this, I decided to have the motor mount tube running the entire length of the rocket with a plug fixed to the top of the V2. This would allow the ejection charge to blow off the top half of the V2 (splitting it at the vent ring) with all the hot gas ejecting clear of the recovery system and plastic.

The plug that was glued into the top of the rocket was made out of the bottom half of an 18mm motor. This was cut using a cutting disk and cleaned up. I then slid the plug into one end of the BT-20 and applied epoxy to the end of the plug. Next, I slid the BT-20 up through the bottom of the V2 until the 18mm engine case plug touched the top of the V2. After 30 seconds the epoxy had set enough for me to remove the BT-20, leaving the plug in place. [Note: Use the A5 motor mount ring made earlier to ensure that the BT-20 is aligned correctly.] Make sure the glue is set before the next stage.

Slide the A5 motor mount ring over the BT-20 and then offer up the tube inside the V2 so the top of the BT-20 slides over the plug. Next slide the motor mount ring up the BT-20 until it sits flush with the bottom of the V2. When you are happy that everything is aligned, glue the motor mount ring, BT-50 tube and V2 together. Finally, trim the protruding BT-20 down until it is flush with the rear of the A5 mount.

Even though the top of the nose has yet to be glued on, leave this off for now as the model may need weighting at the top to raise the CG. I decided to have the rocket recover in two halves. There is no real reason for this and you could easily use the normal Estes style recovery on an 18inch parachute.

The light top half of the V2 had an Estes card shock cord mount and two foot length of elastic attached. (I normally avoid this like the plague, as I have lost too many rockets to elastic burn out). There should be no heat anywhere near the cord so there isn't any need for Kevlar®. I used an Estes 12inch plastic parachute with a snap swivel. The bottom half had a snap swivel glued and Kevlar® tied to the BT-20 then a two foot length of elastic with a 12inch parachute and swivel was used.

A launch lug was glued to the middle body tube of the V2. This spoiled the look a bit and I suppose that I could have used an internal lug, but that would have taken a lot of time.

Finishing:
I went for a camouflage pattern instead of the black and white scheme. I used spray can paint and went for an original design that I rushed. It was not the best finish that I've done. This is my first PMC I didn't want to spend hours finishing the rocket to see it possibly destroy itself first flight. Also, I sprayed the body tube fluorescent green so I could see it in the grass because camouflaged rockets are hard to find! As I mentioned above, there should have been decals with the kit but my box did not have any.

Construction Rating: 5 out of 5

Flight:
Before prepping for flight, I did a swing test to check for stability. Surprisingly the rocket needed no nose weight to be added for stability so the top of the V2 was CA glued into place. At over six ounces, this rocket should be flown on a D motor, however, an 18mm motor is the biggest I can use. A C6-3 should lift it.

For the first flight on March 13, 2006, two parachutes were dusted and packed with the top parachute below the bottom parachute. Wind conditions were not good as there were gusts over 20mph. Normally I would not fly in these conditions, but I was eager to see my new project in the air. A standard Estes 3mm rod was used. The V2 lifted slowly off the pad, on a C6-3. At about 50 feet up, a gust hit the rocket causing it to weathercock to near horizontal. It continued to fly at about 15 degrees above horizontal for about 100 feet and then coasted to ejection.

Flight two was on 3 days later and wind conditions were 5-10mph. It was a good but slow lift, grabbed a height of about 250 foot under boost, arched over at coast phase, and then deployed the parachute with the nose pointing down and starting to gain speed. It recovered quite fast but there was a 50 foot drift so the parachute size is okay. There was no damage to the rocket this time although one of the parachutes shroud lines had snapped. I will replace the chute with an 18 inch parachute with a smaller spill hole, Kevlar® thread shroud lines, and a slider tube to slow down parachute opening.

The third flight was a day after flight #2 and had 10-20mph winds. It was a slow liftoff again that weathercocked into the wind and flew nearly horizontal. Ejection was too late and the V2 was traveling at such a speed that the Estes shock cord mount was ripped clean out by the deceleration of the 18 inch parachute (even with the slider attached). The nose cone fell to earth as the bottom of the V2 drifted off and landed softly. The nose cone had split down the seams but was easily repaired with epoxy this time. The shock cord mount was replaced by a bigger fishing snap swivel epoxied into place.

Recovery:
At ejection, the top half deployed her parachute and returned to earth quite fast. The bottom half's parachute failed to open and it fell really fast. On inspection, the BT-20 was bent and a fin had snapped off. The tip of the nose cone had snapped off and was lost as the wind dragged the top half and parachute a good 60 feet from where it landed.

The repairs were simple: the fin easily glued back on and I added a hard wood strut to hold the BT-20 back into place. I fashioned a new nose cone tip out of a 13mm dowel rod and some wood filler. A quick paint touch up and it was nearly as good as new. The recovery system was not good enough. For the next flight I joined the two halves together with one length of 2 foot elastic and added an 18 inch parachute with a large spill hole cut out.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
This is a nice rocket. Even though it had a few teething problems, I'm sure that she will fly much better on a calm day.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5