Descon 5 Titan IV Original Design / Scratch Built

Scratch - Titan IV {Scratch}

Contributed by Ted Cochran

Manufacturer: Scratch
Style: MicroMaxx, Scale

 

1/4A Titan IVA
1/320 Scale
 

For 1 or 3 MicroMaxx Motors

The Titan IVA bridged the gap between the Titan IIIE and the Titan IVB. Since 1989, more than twenty have been launched from both Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, primarily to orbit military satellites.

I've never scratch built a scale model before, and this seemed like a worthy subject, in a manageable scale.

This model is built almost entirely from Styrene tubing, available in better hobby stores everywhere in size increments of 1/32". I used BT-5 and a modified Mosquito nose cone for the payload section. The steering propellant tank doubles as the launch lug.

The left drawing below is full scale, and shows the major components.

The right drawing shows some of the internal construction details, including a stuffer tube system for the nose cone that turned out to be unnecessary--the MicroMaxx ejection charge is plenty strong!

Some construction tips: Turn the nosecone by gluing it onto a mandrel and chucking it into a portable drill. Then run the drill while sanding on a belt sander. Similarly, the nozzles can be shaped by sanding some of the wall thickness away on the styrene. I intend to design decals and get them through RocketVision's custom service.

It flew this weekend for the first time, in a too-brisk breeze, but performed about as well on a single motor as the MicroMaxx RTF models do. In particular, the fins made the model very stable; I have no fear going to a MicroMaxx cluster. Sorry about the poor picture--there is only so much a digital camera can do with something that small!

comment Post a Comment