Estes Black Brant III, Part 1 Parts Research I've always liked the looks of the Canadian Black Brant series. This one was an Estes kit #1293, now OOP. The Estes Crossfire ISX uses the same nose cone and tail cone nozzle as the Black Brant III kit. I bought two Crossfire kits. The engine mount, nose cone / tail cone section and parachute will ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 2, Fin Drawing I found the instructions and fins at Old Rocket Plans HERE Buzz McDermott submitted the plans and placed a ruler reference below the fins. TIP: If you ever submit plans to a website, place a ruler in the picture for size reference. The fin picture was copied and dropped into Corel Draw. I drew a ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 3, Decal Draw
The colors and type fonts of the Estes kit decals at www.oldrocketplans.com didn't match up to the Alway drawings in ROTW.
The Black Brant III drawing was scanned and dropped into an new page in Corel Draw. I enlarged the Alway drawing until the body diameter was .976" or the diameter of ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 4, Engine Mount and Nozzle
TIP: You'll find it easier to cut the engine hook notch if the nozzle is left attached to the nose cone. There is just more to hold onto. Remove the back end off the nozzle. Now you can score the raised area that opens up into the hook movement relief. Don't cut to the edge but go a little ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 5, Fin Shaping Prep Sanding accurate scale fin tapers can takes extra time and some preparation. Some of these techniques were shown in an article I wrote for the Apogee Peak Of Flight newsletter HERE In addition to the leading and trailing edge taper, the Black Brant III fins were wider at the root edge and tapered ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 6, Fin Taper Sanding
Use your thumb as a "stop" against the high point lines. (For clarity I left the pencil shading off the surface of this fin.) Sand a few stokes and take a look at the black ink left on the leading edge. Turn over the fin and sand some on the other side. Always check back to the ink on the ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 7, Tube Fill, Fin Primer
This replacement BMS BT-50 had the tightest seams I'd seen in a while. Normally I'll run a mechanical pencil down the seam rut so it's easier to see when applying CWF. The pencil kept slipping out of the seam. Still, if you can feel it with a fingernail it gets CWF and primer.
The front ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 8, Reinforcement Coupler
Lately, BT-50s in every build have buckled after recovery. Even with a soft landing the BT-50 crimps down the inside spiral above the engine mount. I made an interior coupler from Crossfire BT-50 tube. 1 1/2" was cut and slit straight down its length. The tube was overlapped and slid into the ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 9, Engine Mount and Launch Lug
The fit of the mount was loose in the BT-50. With a glue stick, one wrap of copy paper was glued around both green rings.
Glue was applied inside the tube using the dowel pencil line from the last step. The coupler was quickly inserted and pushed in place using the engine mount up to the ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 10, Nose Cone Lug Tip
The Estes Black Brant III instructions don't mention clearing the plastic from the nose cone attachment lug. This tie point is square and the sides aren't that thick. Normally I'd use a #11 X-Acto blade and cut out the square center. I didn't want to take the chance of ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 11, Fin Gluing
Good thing I checked back to the Black Brant III instructions at: www.oldrocketplans.com The "rear edge of the fins are even with the rear edge of the nozzle section." I'll leave off the nozzle until after the model and nozzle are painted. The nozzle is flat black, the only black on the model. ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 12, NRC Logo
After searching through a hundred fonts, I couldn't find anything close to the NRC logo shown in Alway's ROTW book. I'll have to draw something close. Here's how it looks side-by-side in Corel Draw. The NRC letters were traced over the book art with straight lines. Then using the shape tool, ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 13, Mask and Paint EDIT: Boy did I screw this one up! I read the Peter Alway ROTW drawings wrong. I painted two white and one red fin. The Black Brant III has a long white stripe between two of the three fin positions. There is a reason Estes only included one white stripe decal. You can't apply the two opposite ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 14, White Background Decal Problems Thins don't always go as planned! Mistakes sometimes lead to solutions and better techniques.
That's better! Two red fins and one white fin. I did another mask down the root edge fillet. I thought I would do the white vertical stripes using a clear decal sheet sprayed with white paint. ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 15, Decal Fix? Part 1
The model sat for a month until I put in another order of decal sheets. This time my ordered included "white" decals. These are meant for decals that need a white undercoat or border. I thought these would be much thinner than the clear sheets I sprayed with white paint. They were - almost too ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Part 16, Decal Fix? Part 2
The rivets and panel decal were re-drawn from a scan of Estes kit decal sheet. It doesn't match up to the Alway data but this was supposed to be and Estes clone so compromises were made. The inset picture shows how the overlap was trimmed. The screw spacing matched up very well.
After ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Paart 17, Decal Re-do Again, Fixed
I didn't like how the white decal strips came out. They were translucent and looked like a light pink color, except where another layer of white was set over it. I realized all the white areas would take two layers of the white decal, just like two coats of white paint to be opaque. All the ...
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Estes Black Brant III, Final Finished
Fixed! This is much better. The double layered white decals weren't that hard to do, it just took extra time. The double layer of white isn't thick or too high off the surface. The black NRC meatball logo shows a little transparency, but I can live with that.
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