Golden Anniversary of the second-longest running model rocket kit
 

Estes' K-25 - the Astron Alpha - first appeared in the 1967 catalog, so it has been in production for 50 years this year. Perhaps we should all build an Alpha with some kind of golden livery.

No, Estes Industries isn't doing a commemorative kit/livery - I already asked 'em.

Hmmmmmm......maybe we should have an Alpha gathering at NSL along with the already-planned V-2 mass launch.

Thoughts?


(Oh, of course the Big Bertha is the one that has been in production longer than the Alpha, in case anyone here didn't know that. It first appeared in the 1966 catalog, and was an MRN design before that.)

Good old Alpha. I'll have to pull out a vintage kit from my stash for the occasion.

I did a build of the 1969 catalog Alpha a few years ago:
http://modelrocketbuilding.blogspot...alog-alpha.html
Lots of home print decals on it.

Let's get designer Bill Simon on the thread to talk about his baby!

The Alpha was probably the first kit I built, or TRIED to build. My friends and I were able to buy motors from a couple of hobby shops, but didn't have the scratch to get rockets too. So we cobbled rocket-shaped things together and shoved motors in them. They often flew straight, surprisingly.

Eventually I mail-ordered the $2.25 "Here's a rocket, motors, and literature, go build your own launcher" outfit. I really horribly messed up gluing on the fins. I remember gluing on gauze reinforcement, having seen this in the technical manual, but that ended up making the crookedly placed fins impossible to remove. Poor first Alpha! I suppose I threw you away eventually, but your cone kicked around my parts box for a while. ( If my father had spent a an hour with me helping maybe it would have been flyable, but he was a neglectful jerk and I had to learn things on my own.)

I should build an original Alpha to commemorate the anniversary. I think eRockets has a all-balsa clone.

http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/70est008.html

I did mine based on an old Boy's Life ad about 10 years ago.

My first model rocket. B6-4.

Should have used B6-6.

1966.

I thought of that, too. I met him briefly at NARCON 2015 in Seattle and I know he lives in this general area....but I have no contact info and don't know if he gets on this forum or not. He helped me settle a big debate that was running on that other forum about what, exactly, was the real definition of the Alpha's fin shape...... :eek:


My first Alpha was probably my third or fourth model rocket (did a Streak and a Sprite at least before). I remember I finished it mostly with fluorescent orange Aero Gloss (yes, there really were fluorescents in the Aero Gloss line back then) but I left one fin the white base coat. I have no idea what became of it (or most of my models from that time).

The Alpha was my brother's first rocket and mine was another one of Bill Simon's designs the Antares.

The Alpha was my first rocket. My parents bought me the Alpha starter set for Christmas back in 1973. I love the Alpha, it's always a great performer. The current Alpha is actually more of an Alpha II. The original Alpha did not have die cut fins and the original had a balsa nose cone.

Just for fun, I just looked through the Estes 1973 catalog and there are only three kits from that year that have been in continuous production since '73, Big Bertha, Alpha, and Alpha III. Several others have been reintroduced as limited runs, such as the Sky Dart, Interceptor, Red Max, etc.

Thanks, guys and/or gals for posting your Alpha memories.

Other than my three human offspring, the Alpha is my favorite child. Pat Fitzpatrick gave me the heads-up that you were discussing this, which I appreciate, since I wouldn't have remembered when it first came out, and I'm certainly too lazy to do the research.

If you have any specific questions, I'll check the forum regularly for the next few days. Otherwise, you can email me at dirtcheapdesign@gmail.com . I check that account about once a week.

Bill Simon, Estes Employee payroll #00007

P.S. My favorite science fiction book: "The Stars my Destination" by Alfred Bester. It would make a great movie if someone like Tim Burton took on the project.

!! 7/31/2017 -- Corrected the typo on my email address. dirtcheapdesign@gmail.com

I never built an Alpha until I was in the hobby for about 20 years. Something like 1997.
I actually built a Maxi Alpha (balsa fins, NOT the Maxi Alpha 3) in the late 80's with a 29mm mount in it to be able to use Composite Dynamics full-80n-sec 29mm F engines.

My very first model rocket kit was the Astron Alpha that came with the Deluxe Starter Set in the summer of 1969 (height of the Apollo program). After at least a dozen or so flights, I retired it, and still have it in my display case along with all the existing built model rockets in my fleet. Lost the Electro Launch (it was molded red) somewhere along the way, but I still have several of the Estes Launch Control System (Catalog # 651-FS-5), the one that connects to a car battery.

[thread drift]....so now we know there is a connection between the Alpha and Babylon 5 (albeit a tenuous one) since the author of Bill's favorite science fiction book is the namesake of one of the B5 characters we all love to hate....and who was deliciously played by Walter Koenig) :) [/thread drift]

Now let's see someone make a flying scale model of David Weber's Dahak (Preferably full size)

Thanks for posting! #007 sounds better to me!

How about 1. why that tube length, 2. why that fin shape, 3. why that nose cone shape?

I got a Deluxe Starter Outfit for my birthday in 1977. It had the Alpha and all of the tools necessary to build it, paint included. I think we celebrated my birthday on Friday that year, and I spent Friday night and all of Saturday building the Alpha and attempting to build the Solar Launch Controller. The rocket turned out okay as I had the necessary skills by that point, but hand painting was obviously not a talent of mine. On Sunday my Mom took Dave, Jen and I to NKU where I had done most of my flying earlier that summer. It was calm on the ground, so I took for granted it would be calm up high and loaded the Alph with a C6-5. (At the time, C6-5 meant high power in my mind.) It flew like the BOOH I expected, arcing to the north a bit, but that was acceptable until the chute popped. It floated away in a hurry, landing deep into the tangle of brush that would later become one of the Scooby Do parking lots when I was in school there. I thought of the Alph every time I parked there. Didn't have another one for almost thirty years.
(BTW, I still have the Solar Launch Controller, the field box, hobby knife, Alpha Book of Model Rocketry and recovery wadding from that set. Never did get the launcher working.)

I never had the Alpha as a kid, but I ran a model rocketry program when my kids were in elementary school. I continued doing classes after they moved to junior high. During those 4-5 years we built a LOT of Alphas IIIs. Unfortunately, most were the Halloween-ish black and orange models. A little hard to customize by allowing paint or markers. :)

The last year we switched to the Generic E2X since it was all white, and the kids could color them easily.

I'll bet I have a couple of those Alphas in the boxes of kits somewhere in the basement, since we bought bulk packs I ended up with a couple extras.

I've always loved the classic lines of the Alpha. I bought a Super Alpha when they came out. I was irritated that mine had a non-scale plastic nose cone, so I turned one on my lathe. I seem to recall that the body tube was the wrong length, since the plastic nose cone was too long, I did replace the body tube as well. Somewhere I recall reading that a realistic balsa cone was offered, but not sure if that was before or after the plastic nose cone.

The first batch of Super Alphas came with a closer-to-scale balsa nose cone. And later Semroc offered one that was right.

But of course this, as well as the III (and II and IV) are all descendants of Bill Simon's original, which is the one that first appeared 50 years ago.

Let's start with (3), because that's where the design started. I free-handed that shape on the nose cone lathe in Vern's garage, probably a year earlier, just making a shape that I liked. Then when the call for a new beginner's model came down, I picked the nose cone up off my kitchen table, grabbed an 18" length of BT50, and (1) cut it in half (shipping considerations for the final kit limited me to 9"). and stuck the nose cont on one end. The fins (2); well, I wanted the CP back fairly far for max stability, so a swept design was the logical choice. Straight tips meant the fin would be easier for the builder to cut from the balsa sheet, and the taper was for appearance and structural considerations. I drew a shape, then changed it to get the look I wanted and poof--I had something Vern would like.

Jerry, I rather liked being Double Double O Seven. That's one double up on Bond, though at my age it's more like to be dribble.

Bill

So the very first Alpha used a BT-50 9" long?
The only one's I've seen (or built) were BT-20.
I'll have to scratch build one soon of a BT-50 version.
Do you have a part number or a BNC number?

BT-50 was 0.950 I.D., 0.976" O.D., at least up until I departed in 1977. That just happened to be the size of a stock mandrel that Euclid Spiral Paper Tube Company had. The nose cone was a BNC-50K.

I have an Alpha, in pristine condition, flown once, that is 47 years old.

"Gully Foyle is my name
Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination."

I had the pleasure of meeting Bester, at a SF convention in 1980. I feel very proud to have gotten a laugh out of him.

All the Alphas, Alpha III's and Alpha IV's are BT-50. You're just getting the numbers mixed up a little. BT-20 is the size for 18mm motor mounts (1/2A - C)

I just remembered my dad took a slide picture of my very first model rocket launch, that of the Astron Alpha along with the red Electro Launch pad. This was at the CW Ruckel Jr. High School in Niceville, FL (summer of 1969). Engine used was the 1/2 A6-2; I failed to use enough recovery wadding as the parachute was mostly melted. Before launch, my mom was so scared of the engine "blowing up" that she locked herself in the car. :chuckle:

You are correct.
I must be tired.

Interesting about the nose cone. The BNC-50K was already in use on the X-Ray, Farside (not X), Cobra and Drifter....or was that the already-in-stock nose cone that was closest to your free-handed one when you started looking at actually producing it?

I've located the instruction sheet from my first Alpha kit....but of course the SP-25 is long gone.

So just like the story GHS recounts in a couple of his writings of a stock firework tube setting the diameter of the most common model rocket motor (18mm), a stock mandrel drove the size of the next common size up (24mm) since the Estes "Mighty D" had to fit in BT-50, and I surmise (but don't know) that all the follow one motors (Estes Es and C11s, and 24mm composites) are all that diameter to be compatible.

I love how this stuff all connects together.

Thanks for stopping by, Bill, and enlightening us with the background of the Alpha.

Ooh, but a Mini-Alpha......... :cool: Might as well. It would go well with my Mini Wizard, Mini Red Max and Mini Rogue.

This got me thinking ... I bought a number of the Mini Honest Johns when Hobby Lobby was carrying them. I've yet to even get one done. That nose cone begs to be used on something else -- maybe a Mini Deep Space Transport? That would be a fun build ... make that challenging build.

Nice! I'm assuming those are homemade decals?

I keep thinking it is time to buy another inkjet printer. I have not had one for a long time. I've got a color laser printer, but it is useless for decals, and photos...

Yes. MicroMark decal paper and HP 6940 printer. Don't forget to set your printer to high or print quality. They look better in person than the old pic shows.

That is beautiful work!
I think your blue trim might be more accurate than my black and red stripes.

Thanks. I like the spacing you used around the Stars-n-Bars, and wanted to do mine that way, but decided to try to make it look as much like the Boys' Life ad as possible. I have no idea what color the ad represented, but figured blue would go better with USAF. IIRC, there is an Alpha two tone drawing in one of the early catalogs that used blue and white for the entire model, but for me, an Alpha nose cone has to be red!

That was my first rocket. I ordered one in 1968 after getting the catalog.

Good stuff. I really should build an Alpha some day. And a Big Bertha. :o

I have been working on a K-25 style Alpha also! I used the SP-25 fin template and a proper balsa nose cone and engine hook from Semroc. Just a little more sanding on the nose cone and it will be ready to paint. I am going to paint it in the "Prototype" paint scheme of white with red nosecone, one fin and panel. I have a current Alpha and it is interesting to see the differences, while both are clearly Alphas! :D

Big Berthas are a must! Easy to prep in that body tube, slow liftoffs, never gets too high, so it's pretty hard to lose one. I patterned most of my HPR activities to be Bertha-like. :)

I wanted to see all those Newton-seconds, and not just hear them! And I wanted to see deployment, and not have to walk miles for recovery. Granted, dual-deploy helped, but I was flying less and less each launch day, spending so much time prepping everything.

I finally decided to go back to just modrocs. :)