V2 ESTES Model Rocket kit – The single launch experience.
As many rocketry enthusiasts know, the V2 is one of the first combat rockets built. It was invented and commonly used by the Germans in WWII to reach London. Our rocket will not be reaching London, but we will give everyone a very honest review and video of this rocket and its details.
The ESTES V2 model kit contains all the pieces needed to build the rocket and outfit it with your choice of C class, or D class engines. D class engines and above are where model rocketry begins to undergo some extreme forces that require additional structural reinforcements on the rocket, such as stronger materials that will not collapse under intense G-Forces such as 9g’s during a lift off.
Our particular model did not use the standard paint scheme that the model calls for, and we decided to use our team colors instead, black and red/orange. For this particular model we opted for the dark red and black, mainly because its easier to see over long distances.
This rocket is impressive. It is big, it has the traditional shape we grew up seeing in the cartoons and love. This rocket is very easy to build and has an average cost of about $25 usd each.
Build time on this rocket was less than an hour, with a drying time of 24 hours. After drying, we decided to paint our team colors; black and red.
Why use black and red a team colors?
The answer here is very simple. CONTRAST and VISIBILITY. The contrast these colors provide make it easier to see with the sky as backdrop. These colors do make it hard to see in the ground once it lands. If you are going to use these colors make sure you see where it lands otherwise you are going to spend a long time looking for it once it lands.
About the launch of this particular model
Although this launch was successful i will say that we were unable to recover the rocket. For more details see the video below.
What happened?
Several things that we should not have done, we did.
First we launched the rocket at minimal light. The Sun was going down. This made a dark colored rocket incredibly hard to see. The rockets path was visible, the burn was visible but when chute deployed nothing was to be seen. Further analysis of the video did not yield any additional answers as where the rocket could have landed.
To see the video of this launch see below.
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