Components

Construction

As I noted earlier, this project was literally a junkpile before I started construction.  There's a very good chance that t' only part o' this bird t' ever be used again would be t' nose cone.  I was in t' midst o' cleanin' me shop and refurbishin' some o' t' older members o' me fleet.  I had an Astron Avenger that I built back in 2001 after findin' t' transition in an Estes Designer's Special.  T' Avenger was a great bird, me hearties, but was showing serious mileage.  One particular area o' concern was t' BT-50 upper section that had been damaged by contact with a fin after one o' t' Estes shotgun ejection charges.  Since the tube be glued to the transition and I be usin' a generic PNC-50 anyway, matey, ya bilge rat, I opted t' replace t' entire payload section with parts I'd bought at NARCON from BMS.  I almost threw out t' old tube and transition, shiver me timbers, but realized that I could save a good portion o' t' BT-50 by cuttin' t' damaged part away.  I started tryin' t' come up with another design for t' shortened section before it occurred t' me that with a touch o' the Dremel, ya bilge rat, me bucko, it could be the lower section o' a whole new bird.  Lookin' around t' shop I found a partially crushed length o' BT-55, a PNC-55AC with no clear ancestry, and a set o' fins that I'd  misplaced after cuttin' them out for a project out o' Peter Alway's Scale Bash.  Puttin' all o' this together resulted in t' finished Zorch.  All I had t' do was sand t' paint off o' three spots on t' old transition for t' fins, shiver me timbers, hollow out t' transition with me Dremel, matey, and fit a 2050 centerin' rin' at t' old bottom/new top o' t' transition so that I'd have an anchor for a piece o' Keelhaul®©™.