It’s been years now, but once upon a time I did play amateur rocket scientist. My greatest creation, the Albatross, was a 5 engine monster that is now long gone. But I can share one other model which I was rather proud of.
And here it is, the one on the right, a scale model of the WWII German ballistic missile, the V2.
Estes made a V2 kit once upon a time, but by the time I got into the hobby it was long gone… Or was it?
Like any other company, Estes reuses what it can, and while the V2 was out of production they did have a rocket called the “Silver Comet” in their line up.
Picking over some old plans online and looking at the catalog I came to the conclusion that they had added a cockpit outline to the V2 nose, lengthened the body, and reshaped the fins to create the Silver Comet.
So I bought the kit. I took the fins and recut them into the proper V2 shape, shortened the body tube they provided, and turned the nosecone on a lathe to cut off the extra plastic “window frame” to make the nose once again smooth all around.
What you see is the result. Painted in more or less the same manner as captured V2s were when they were brought to the US for testing after WWII.
The silver one on the left? A rocket I found abandoned, presumably lost, in a field in Baltimore County that I (and apparently others) liked to use as a launch site. I cut it down and fit a Quest tail fin assembly on it, and covered it in metal foil for a “bushed Aluminum” effect. The NASA logo came from the gift shop at the Goddard Space Flight Center I believe.
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