Estes Skywinder

helicopter recovery sport model

At the July meeting of WOOSH, we decided that our October competition meeting will include C Helicopter duration, so I picked up one of these to be sure I'd have something to compete with in case I didn't finish my Apogee Rot-a-Roc (which I didn't).
This is a very good introduction to helicopter-recovery rocketry. It builds quickly and easily.
I started on a Friday evening and was done by Sunday afternoon (and I'm a *SLOW* builder ;-) ).
I used 30-minute epoxy for connecting plastic pieces to cardboard or tubing and liquid plastic cement when building the base unit and attaching the fins.

The only building hiccups I encountered were:

The rotor did not spin freely -
easily fixed by using some 220 grit (or finer) sandpaper to open up the hole in the rotor, SLIGHTLY.
I forgot to secure the nose cone with masking tape before the first launch.
This was ENTIRELY my own fault. It's right there in the instructions and I just forgot to do it.
This omission resulted in the nose cone popping off and failure of the rotor blades to spin.
Fortunately, this is a pretty tough rocket and the only damage was a nick in the end of one fin when it landed in the gravel of the parking lot.

Built:	August, 1997
Launches:	11/12 October, 1997 - MWRC-97 Midwest Regional Competition
	23 August, 1997 - family launch 9 August, 1997 - ECOF-97 Eat Cheese or Fly
Repairs:		none, yet

Rognlies of Racine
home page

Alan's
rockets

Current
models

Past
models

Projects
and repairs

future
models

Last Updated:	19 February, 1998
Author:	Alan Rognlie
Email:	arrognli@execpc.com
© Copyright 1997, 1998 unless otherwise noted, all images are copyright © 1997, 1998 by Jeanne Rognlie - all rights reserved