Little Joe II - Rebuilding the body tube (Part 3)

Tunnel Covers: The next step in rebuilding our booster is to add the tunnel covers. There are 2 on this rocket, 1 short and 1 long located on opposite sides of the rocket. On the original Estes kit, these were just flat paper strips, but since we are using styrene, we can vary the thickness of the material and make the small humps that go over the lower/upper booster demarkation line stand out more.

First we glue down a piece of .010" x .125" strip approx 3.30" long.

Next I glued down two shorter pieces of thicker .020 x .125 strip material for the raised portions of the tunnel cover. The lengths I used were intended to match the Estes lengths more so than to be exactly to scale. They were approx 0.25" long on the rise between the upper and lower booster and 0.35" on the rise at the base of the booster. Notice also that the ends of these small pieces are sanded to an angle. This more closely matches the prototype and was a primary reason for using the thicker stock.

Then we repeat the process for the shorter tunnel cover on the opposite side. This tunnel cover uses the same strip material as the long one and is approx 1.35" long. One reason I kept the original (ruined) Estes booster was to assist in aligning these tunnel cover locations in relation to each other and also locating the fins correctly.

The lengths of the small raised portions on the short tunnel cover are the same as for the long one...

Now that weve completed the tunnel covers we can compare them with the original kit. I think adding the adding the styrene wraps and tunnel covers vastly improves the overall appearance of the model.

Here is a comparison of the short tunnel cover with the original Estes kit. My goal here was simply to improve the appearance of the model while still maintaining the flavor of the Estes interpretation of the original. Had I wanted to enter this model in a scale competition there would have been more time taken to match the dimensions to that of the prototype.

Overall, I think I was able to turn a blunder into an actual positive improvement to the model. Once again, I want to thank members on YORF (Ye Olde Rocket Forum) for their help and advice. If it wasn't for them I probably would not have attempted this rebuild, but would have spent $40-$80 on a new kit and would have ended up with a less attractive model. Next up, re-attaching the fins and building our paint test mock-up...