Building Tips

Tips to help build better rockets

Tip	Description	Submitted By:
1" Body Tube Chart	Chart showing all 1" and near 1" body tubes and their manufacturers.	Doug Sams
Body Tube Ratio Chart	Chart to allow you to easily Up or Down scale your favorite kit.	Doug Scobel
Canaroc Parts Conversions for Cloning	Chart showing the Estes or BMS equivalent to clone Canaroc kits.	Fred Talasco
Centuri/Estes/Semroc Body Tube Ratio Chart	Chart the shows the different Estes & Centuri body tubes along with Semroc equivalents to help with up & down scaling your rocket designs.	Jay Goemmer
Cockpit Canopy for Estes PNC-50BB/V Cones	A template for making a canopy to put on a Skywriter nose cone for cloning the Soaring Eagle, Falcon Commander, Starhawk and Argosy. This canopy allows you to clone a PNC-50SP cone.	Greg Poehlein
Estes 3 or 4-Fin Alignment Guide	A handy guide to help you align your fins with various size Estes tubing.	Clive Davis
Estes Body Tube/Kit Reference v3.1	An extremely comprehensive list showing body tube specifications for almost all of the Estes kits.	John R. Brohm
Estes Fin Can Reference v2.0	A list showing part numbers and info for fin cans in all Estes kits.	John R. Brohm
Estes & Centuri Motor Lineage	Excellent breakdown showing all of the Estes & Centuri Motors and they were available.	Doug Sams
Estes Nose Cone Reference List v10.1 (Original Full-Size)	Chart showing what kits used the different types of Estes cones. Great for cloning projects.	John R. Brohm
Estes Nose Cone Reference List (Condensed Version of old v9.1 list)	Chart showing what kits used the different types of Estes cones. Great for cloning projects.	Original By: John Brohm Condensed By: Greg Poehlein
Estes Nose Cone Pictures	Pictures of practically all of the Estes nose cones along with part numbers. Goes nice with John's Reference List.	Arley Davis
Estes Two-Stage Nike-Apache Conversion	Plans showing how to convert an Estes Nike-Apache into a two-stage rocket using electronics.	Bob Wiersbe Special Thanks to: Sven Knudson
Estes Two-Stage Terrier-Sandhawk Conversion	Plans showing how to convert an Estes Terrier-Sandhawk into a two-stage rocket using electronics.	Bob Wiersbe
Igniter Continuity Tests	Extremely in-depth paper that looks into "safe" current levels for various igniters.	John Brohm
Micromaxx Scaling Calculator	Helps you scale your Estes kits down to Micromaxx size.	Jim Flis
Paper Cone Transitions Program	A program written by Joe that lets you create paper body tube transitions.	Joe Spiegel
Scale Data Chart	An Excel spreadsheet used to aid in determining the sizes of scale models.	Michael J. Mangieri
Semroc Balsa Parts	A nice listing of all of Semroc's balsa parts in PDF format.	Buzz Nau
The Geometry of Engine Clusters	A paper that helps you determine the cluster size that can be used in any given airframe.	John R. Brohm
The Mathematics of Flat Parachutes	An excellent paper that deals with the geometry and math behind flat parachute canopies.	John R. Brohm
The Properties of Model Rocket Body Tube Transitions	A paper that explains the mathematics behind making transitions.	John R. Brohm
Transition Template Maker	Make templates for paper transitions.	Steve Humphrey