Estes Star Wars Y-Wing Starfighter
 

I picked one of these up on Ebay for an almost scary good price. It arrived today, and what I thought was just a rocket turned out to be an RTF launch kit that included a pad, rod, and........SIX B4-2 MOTORS!!!!
Can anyone hide me if I have to go underground? I can sleep in a shed or under a deck. :rolleyes:
One thing I found interesting was the message on the back of the motor package. It says that the igniter plugs are reusable, and that you should pick them up and keep them as extras if you find them on the ground after a flight. :chuckle: I showed this to my son when they arrived today and he instantly remembered what I was referring to. I've always saved my igniter plugs if I could find them, so Sam picked this habit up when he was going with me to QUARK launches. Our club president saw him picking up plugs from the ground and putting them in his pocket at one of our earlier launches with the club. He asked Sam what he was doing and Sam told him. Well, Mark told Sam that they were only good one time, and Sam, who was almost eleven at the time, told him we reused them all the time. It escalated from there, with Mark, who was 40-something at the time, doing everything but stamp his foot and hold his breath during his "NO, YOU CAN'T!" part of the "discussion". Sam just held his ground and kept insisting that "Yes, you can," because he'd been seeing it done for several years. It was like they were reversing roles, and myself and several other flyers were watching and laughing into our shirts during the whole scene. When I saw the package today, my first thought was that I should scan it and send it to Mark. :D
As for the Y-Wing, it's a pretty sharp looking rocket. Anyone ever fly one with any regularity? It seems a bit fragile, and I already know I'm swapping out the shock cord, but is there anything else I should look for when I fly it?

Yes. You should look for the used igniter plugs. :D



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Wadding is reusable too.


Bill

Which reminds me of another story. There's a picture of Sam and his Estes Bail Out at one of our local fields around 1995 or 96. The rocket is on the pad, and right next to the range box is a roll of toilet paper that I was using as recovery wadding. :eek:
What can I say, it's what we used on the asphalt parking lot at NKU in 1977. Part of the fun was watching the sheets come back to earth smoking. Luckily I discovered dog barf when I got back in for real in 2001.

It's a bit heavy, and the chute has a tendency to not come out. I think I got 4 flights maybe.

kj

The Y-wing is reusable too - if you don't put too long of a delay in it.

My little brother (OK, 40-something), is on his third Y-wing, I think. The first two went up, came down too far and kissed the earth, then ejected. The third is a shelf queen, as a memorial to all the Y-wing pilots that perished in a too-heavy-for-the-mix-of-thrust-and-delay.

It can memorialize kevinj's Y-wing too.

Bill, don't fly the Y-Wing over an Asphalt Parking Lot. Your B6-4 field would be a better choice.
Also don't fall in love with the little plastic guns on top cockpit. I think they get ripped off
by the shroud lines or the shock cord. still one of the coolest flying hunks of styrene ever
molded.

I wish someone would clone this design using standard balsa and BT parts. Or #110 paperstock.

Don't worry... they didn't score much better at the Battle of Yavin... :chuckle:

Later! OL JR :)

Yep, reuse old wadding all the time.

When the club was flying out here regularly, Betty and Keira and I would go for a walk down through the launching field the next day and I'd return with a pocketful of used ignitor plugs and spent wadding...

The ignitor plugs sorta rain down around the pads... the densest concentration is right around the deflector, and they gradually thin out as they move outwards... Think the furthest I've found one from the pad was about ten feet away... (not that they don't go further, but there's a LOT of ground surface for them to get lost on the farther away from the pad you get, so you're probability of finding them goes WAY down...)

I got some funny looks loading burned and spotted wadding with holes in it into my rocket, topped by a sheet of new wadding... I always load the most badly burned pieces first (since they're going to take the hardest hit at ejection and thus won't be fit for another flight anyway, and it saves the newer, less damaged wadding to be recovered and used again...) Any particles that get past the ratty burned wadding just burns a hole in the stuff further up and make it ratty to be used next to the motor on the next flight...

Arguing that you can't reuse plugs... that's just SILLY... So long as it's not melted beyond recognition, OF COURSE they're reusable...

Most irritating thing was when I picked up a fistful of spent Estes ignitor wire thrown down around the pad after a launch one time... that stuff is BAD... that wire would play heck with the mouth and digestive system of our cows... So I had a discussion with the club advisor who did the setup and teardown, and he apologized and agreed to put out a couple five gallon buckets next to the pads for folks to toss spent ignitors and shooter wire into when they went to hook up their rocket for the next launch... and he made sure to bring it to everyone's attention to USE THE BUCKETS and not toss ignitor wire on the ground...

Later! OL JR :)

I always picked up the wires because B6-4 Field also gets used as a football/baseball/soccer field and the thought of some kid getting a knee ripped open by one just haunted me. Then at NARAM 47 I saw Bunny, then NAR prez, walking around picking up the spent wires :cool: and I made it a point to do it whenever I loaded one onto the rod whenever and wherever I flew. If it's good enough for the Prez, it's good enough for me.

I pick up wadding and igniter wires at club launches and schoolyard launches.
I use crepe paper wadding and it stays together after ejection. It's stiffer than the Estes TP.
The crepe wadding piece closest to the top of the engine will have a hole burnt in it, but the other higher set pieces are always fine and reusable.

Igniter wires are always picked up. I don't want the school kids to find them and come up with any reason why I can't launch rockets there.
At the schoolyard I use an standard Estes 6 volt controller. If I launch a MMX model, those MMX igniters don't burn through and can be used over and over again.

EXACTLY!!!

I pick up wadding on walks back from recoveries all the time. So I always have plenty.

Plugs - of course they're resusable. And a partly melted pink/purple plug (B6/C6) is great for using an Estes igniter in a Quest motor.

Igniters on the ground - ugh. We use the red plastic coffee "cans" (Folgers) here at the pasture that hosts "Pasture Blaster" (going on this weekend). Since I don't drink Folgers but my son did consume lots of Nestles Quik I use those (Costco-sized) Quik containers for igniters at BEMRC launches.

Not to worry Bill. I make my own wadding with a roll of toilet paper and some boric acid. I mix the Boric acid with water in a spray bottle. Hanging ten square lengths of toilet paper from the clothesline, I spray it down with the solution. I haven't found the best ratio of water to boric acid yet, but am working on it. I'm using something around one tablespoon per pint of water right now. if the "wadding" isn't used in about a six month period, the acid tends to condense and flake off the toilet paper.

When my daughters were younger, I told them if the neighbors had any questions, they were to tell the nosey SOB's that we were so poor we were reusing our toilet paper. :chuckle: :eek:

All in all, a roll of Scott tissue single ply (don't bother with two ply) at around $1 a roll and the bottle of Boric Acid at around $4 dollars (and lasts a long time) and you have enough wadding to last quite a while and a cheap price. :)

Today, in the interest of Y-Wing preservation, I sliced away the original shock cord at the spot where they had it attached in the body tube, then glued in a length of Kevlar using the Estes tri-fold method. Everything fits back in, so I'm hoping to try flying it sometime over the upcoming holiday weekend.

I like to see a few pic's (close ups) of this puppy, please.

And our two clubs pick up after ourselves, igniters and plugs. I reuse wadding when I can. Plugs, not so much.

A Y wing was one of my earliest rockets when I got back in. My flew very well 4 times. On the 5th, it arced over and hit the ground under power.

I still have the carcass around someplace. I figured I would do something with it eventually.

Sorry, I missed this. I'll take some pics this afternoon.

I've got a couple of these NIB starter sets sitting in the basement that I picked up at Kaybee Toys or Toys R Us years ago when they were blowing them out for under $10. It's a cool looking rocket.

Still kicking myself for not clearing out the KayBee in Georgetown, KY of all of the Quest Star Trek starter sets that they had for $.99. :(

Thank's Bill.

It's bigger than I thought.

Do you think it's clonable using standard, off the shelf rocket materials?

One question?

Is the R2 unit suppose to be on the bottom?

I thought it went on top?

This one is all plastic. but it should be doable with regular tubes and the cone from the Asteroid Explorer.
I think the R2 was an option only on the X-Wing.

Yours has the older R2 unit as seen at the beginning of Episode IV (Star Wars) where Owen buys the R2 unit with the bad motivator instead of R2D2 from the Jawas at the beginning of the film...

Here's the pic...

The second one is just for fun... LOL:)

Later! OL JR :)