Thanks Scott, I will have to wait until I can get my Daughter to do the scanning for me.
Until then I have shot some pic's of the pages that I was going to scan, look and see if you think it worth the time to do any thing more with this material. Neal

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Stefan, I took some pic's of the FSI Instructions, they are posted on page 5.


Neal

It's cool to see this stuff!

I actually had a Dart and two of the motor sets, but I sold them off years ago, and lost the directions.

The Pershing instructions are interesting. I know the catalog listed conversion sets, but I didn't realize they customized the sets for each kit.

One of the guys in the North Shore Section must have used one of these with his Pershing. He once launched it with a FSI "Thunderbolt" motor!

Yes I see that now. In the time between my previous post and this one, I got to look over the #1003 Nova kit that Stefan sent me. A statement about the world record is right at the beginning of the instructions.

I built my clone of the Nova in November of 2006. It was the first model in my ongoing project to clone all 30 of the models that FSI released. I used the plans posted at YORF. I erred and used the 1.5" long BR-8F11L from Semroc instead of the 1.0 inch version, which they also had. Other than that I did pretty well in comparison with the genuine article. I can see that the late production Nova had a 9" long RT-8 upper tube, an inch longer than my early 1970s version, and the overall length of the #1003 is 19". The core drilled transition is pretty nifty. My clone's transition is balsa, not pine, so I didn't try to drill as wide of a passage through it. I made mine just large enough to fit in a short length of BT-5, which I added to it for support. And as a matter of fact, I had added a little bit of weight (a steel fender washer) to my clone's nose cone, too. I put a 24mm motor mount in it. My 12/08 review of it is here.

One question: when the upper section was lengthened, was the size of the fins also bumped up a little bit? I used the scan of the fins in the YORF plans as a template for mine. The fins in the #1003 kit are exactly the same shape, but are about 0.125" longer along the root edge and each fin is about 0.0625" wider in span.

The parts quality in my late production Nova kit is fine. Tubes are decent quality glassine-coated brown kraft paper, round and cleanly cut, with very superficial spirals. Fins are flat, uniform and also cleanly cut. The centering rings are made from a hard, stiff and very thin composite wood. They are correctly sized and fit well. The thrust ring is typical spiral-wound kraft paper. The small diameter bungee shock cord is a mere 20" long. The decal sheet is identical to the one in the YORP plans.

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SAM # 0011

Neal,

What I need for YORP is scans of the Thruster Kit. Also, have your daughter lay the fins for the thruster kit on the scanner to scan those as well. If you have a small 6" ruler, lay that next to the fins so we get the proper scale. Finally, I think you already took a pic of the thruster kit parts, including the booster motor and such. Please include that pic when sending me the other scans. Thanks!

I already have the plans/templates online at YORP for the Dart kit.

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WOOSH NAR Section #558

I thought they were Nova fins.

What was Nova fins, the fins on the Thruster?

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Scott D. Hansen
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WOOSH NAR Section #558

I sent a answer about the nova fins earlier this morning but must not have gone thru. I try to redo it. At least thru 1986, most of everything at FSI was still "hand made". Fins were cut out in 2" stacks. Multiples of three or four depending on the rocket. Strips were cut with a table saw and bound together in aprox 2" stacks. They were then cut with a band saw to shape and sanded to finish. All three of your nova fins should be identical. There was a master sheet metal form for each fin. Its like when your cutting a board, you mark it at 3' 2". Some people cut the line and some leave the line. Im guessing someone left the line on the bigger fins and did not check the master.
When George and his buddy designed the original models, they used 1/16" birch ply. I remember Lonnie telling me that always bothered him about the Estes die cut fins,"my friends an I always called them die crushed". The last 8 years I have worked with those type of dies and I'll safely say they did not replace them enough. I am guessing this was a Damon bussiness decision.

I am not positive. but I want to say they were. Maybe just my memory. You might check.

I never used 1/16" birch plywood until I started cloning FSI models. Now I see why so many kits, including all of the early ones, had plywood fins. For sport rockets in the sizes that we are talking about, using birch ply for the fins carries no weight penalty at all, or if it does, it is inconsequential. It's a great material to work with. The 1/8" plywood fins of the Hercules had appreciable mass, yet the rocket was well-balanced and flew beautifully. In fact, that's really the greatest thing about those designs: how well they flew. I love launching my FSI clones -- they always produce wonderful flights.

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