Hi all
Almost finished with the Gnat I found this not at all collectible Skyrocket kit (if it even qualifies as a kit) on eBay.
At a quick glance it looks as the absolute opposite to the Gnat kit: It has a plan, but almost everything else is missing. Or is it?
A quick inventory shows that most of it is actually there, augmenter tube, motor mount, preformed engine hatch and hatch catches, wings, tailplane, part of the fin, keels, canopy and at least one of all body formers. The only things missing are the preformed body halves with jigs, and the nose cone.
Having a circular cross section this fuselage is much easier to cad then the Gnat, and here is the result:
Body on top of the plan
and from the other side, with nose cone.
I printed a 1 mm thick shell to se how it fits with the parts in the kit, like this:
Inside with formers and augmenter tube
and outside with wings and tail.
Next step is to print the molds and find a procedure to make new body halves. The Skyrocket seems to have less wing area than the Gnat, but seems to end up around the same weight. The last remark in the building instruction is:"Remember this is a model of a supersonic aeroplane, so do not expect duration type performance." Or in my interpretation, to make it fly at all, I'll have to use all the tricks in the book to keep it light. Maybe an ultra thin shell with carbon fiber reinforcement and reduced number of formers and keels?
Well, first the mold.
By the way, are there anyone that has the complete kit that kan tell me how the nose cone should be made. Is it thin vacuum formed plastic, like the canopy, or is it more like molded and 1-2 mm thick so it can take a hard landing?
Gunnar