Construction

For plans I downloaded the intructions for the Estes Bomarc from "JimZ."  I upscaled the outlines for the main wing, tail, and rear wings by 1.237 on a copier.  I layed the outlines on the 1/8" balsa, outlined them with a pencil, and then cut them out with an X-Acto knife.  All the pieces were glued together with Elmer's wood glue and allowed to dry.  When the glue was dry I rounded the leading and trailing edges of the wings and tail.  The ramjet extensions were cut to size then sanded to an airfoil shape.  For the raceway, I cut a 21" long by 1/2" strip from the 1/4" balsa stock, to which I laminated a 1/8" strip in order to make the raceway 3/8" wide.  I sanded a taper into the front and rear of the raceway, and then cut a strip from the center of the rear taper where the tail would slide in.  The raceway is the least scale like feature of this model, the real missile raceway has a halfround cross section whereas mine is basically straight sided.  Next time I will use a long tube sectioned lengthwise with shaped balsa ends.  The ramjet cones were created by making cones from copier paper.  Once the cone was formed I soaked the paper with super glue to strengthen it.  I constructed the ramjet transitions from thin cardboard by wrapping it around a pointed BT-55 nose cone and trimming by eye until it looked right.  I glued the cones into the transitions which were then glued to the end of the 6 3/4" tubes.  The plastic knozzles were super glued to the rear of the tubes.  The solid balsa nosecone was hollowed out inside with a power drill in order to provide room for nose weight which Bomarc models usually require.  In this case, the total weight of the nosecone is 5.5 oz.  Due to the heavy nose cone I was concerned it would stike the body tube after ejecting so I decided to have it recover on its own chute.  Later testing in the backyard showed that both the cone and the main body needed 24" chutes for slow recovery.  The body tube had been prepared by removing all the fins and the launch lug, then sanding the paint from the tube.  In order to ease the paint removal, I sprayed the tube with oven cleaner which dissolved the color coat and softened the primer.  With careful work and sanding the tube came out smooth and ready for assembly.  I used wood glue to attach the wings, raceway, tail, and ramjets to the body tube.  I made 3/16" launch lugs by wrapping paper around a launch rod and soaking it with super glue. (after removing it from the rod!)  I glued one lug under the rear wing and another under the main wing.  I added shock cords to the main body and nosecone using the common Estes method.  The cords don't need to be very long due to the seperate recovery, and I made mine from old shoe laces.  Although the Estes plans would have you add antennas to each of the main and tail wings, I opted not to add these as I feered they might snag the shock cords or parachutes resulting in a bad recovery.  Once assembly was finished I moved onto finishing.