Components

Construction

As I noted earlier, this project be 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 be a great bird, 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 was glued to the transition and I was usin' a generic PNC-50 anyway, 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, matey, 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, me hearties, hollow out t' transition with me Dremel, 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®©™.