The Winnebago from

Spaceballs

The Movie

"I'm a Maug: half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend."

The rules say you can have two entries so this is my second entry. This makes a total of eight rockets that I made from one kit! 

 

This one was made from the face card stock and a few scrap pieces of balsa left over from the USS Grissom kit bash in my other Descon 12 entry. There's no denying that this one gets the full mission points! The face card was folded and scored to make the shell seen in the first picture. The back was left open to accommodate three MicroMaxx motors. Again, I rolled my own MMT from Grissom instruction stock. The glue tabs and all of the remaining assembly were secured with wood glue.

The fins were made and sized with a bit of balsa left over from the kit. Proportionally, they are a bit narrow but that's the widest I could get from what was left over. The fin assembly was surface mounted but the bits of cardboard made for a strong bond. These two views show how I made the engine pods.

 

Here you can see the home-made engine tubes. 

Strength was added with bits of left over balsa. 

The completed assembly. I was hoping that the back wheels would stabilize in that direction. I wasn't sure if we were allowed to use something for weight outside of the kit, so I stacked and glued pieces of the the hang tab together about 1/4 inch thick and glued it inside the nose area for ballast.

The seams and other areas received a few applications of Fill 'N Finish. A coat of primer and some light sanding got it ready for paint. I used my wife's acrylic paints to paint it. (Hey, she has hobbies too) The stripe down the side is "metallic copper" and the head lights are made with a pearl white with "micro glitter" mixed in. The picture doesn't show it but the head lights look pretty good. ;-) I didn't know what to do with the back end so I left it "almond". I used seven colors for the complete paint job. 

Front and back views of completed model.

Below are some launch pics.  I tacked on some card stock for flight to ensure it would be stable. The lift-off weight was 18 grams. The wind was about 10mph but that made for a 13F wind-chill factor. All three motors lit and the flight was perfect. Max altitude was about 40 feet. The recovery was "soft-snow-impact" as you can see. The 10" of snow the day before helped here.