If you want to recover the rocket(these are infamous for getting lost) you can add a short Kevlar shock cord. Here is Nick Goodwin's mod for that. "Many people wonder how to NOT lose a Mosquito or Swift... the reason you lose them is at apogee when the motor ejects it shoots the rocket horizontally a great distance, rather quickly. This is my hack for tiny rockets that use tumble ONLY (only motor eject) recovery. Move the thrust ring back 0.5" and attach a short shock cord with epoxy inside the nose cone. LOOSE fit your motors. It provides a perfect launch, ejection and true tumble right back down instead of a side ways rocket. I did this one better. I moved the thrust ring a little further back, used a Kevlar shock cord and was able to wrap a small streamer in the nose cone. Now I can actually see the blasted thing and not get zonked on the head with an engine casing!" I also paint the fins on mine fluorescent orange.
You are right! I remember reading about a bit Estes rocket meet, and they had a "swarm", a whole bunch of people fired off Mosquitos at the same time, and lost about 1/2 of them. I built three as a kid, all lost. I built one exactly as it appeared in the 1970 catalog (yellow with a single black fin as show in this video as well) as an adult and lost it as well, and I am an advanced rocketeer, flying since 1969. Interestingly, I have a Quark, which is almost as small, that I have flown dozens of times with no issues. I now have a perfectly built Mosquito that is in my Estes display case and will never be flown.
Exactly what I was looking for! I reconnected to the hobby with my son younger than when I started decades ago. Cheers.
Never bought the kit but built many of these from scratch back in the day. I'd give them to the neighborhood kids to have.
Nice!
you should do more videos like this
this was my first rocket kit too, until some other kid decided he wanted it and stole it. I love these tiny rockets, so much fun to build and fly!
Before doing fins use the markers on the checker to draw positions on tube 👍
You forgot the most important mosquito building tip: "Don't spend too much time on this bird--You'll never see it again."
Mosquito + A-3 engine = Rocket (recoverable)
Mosquito + A-10 engine = Projectile (bye bye)
If you want to recover the rocket(these are infamous for getting lost) you can add a short Kevlar shock cord. Here is Nick Goodwin's mod for that.
"Many people wonder how to NOT lose a Mosquito or Swift... the reason you lose them is at apogee when the motor ejects it shoots the rocket horizontally a great distance, rather quickly. This is my hack for tiny rockets that use tumble ONLY (only motor eject) recovery. Move the thrust ring back 0.5" and attach a short shock cord with epoxy inside the nose cone. LOOSE fit your motors. It provides a perfect launch, ejection and true tumble right back down instead of a side ways rocket.
I did this one better. I moved the thrust ring a little further back, used a Kevlar shock cord and was able to wrap a small streamer in the nose cone. Now I can actually see the blasted thing and not get zonked on the head with an engine casing!"
I also paint the fins on mine fluorescent orange.
You are right! I remember reading about a bit Estes rocket meet, and they had a "swarm", a whole bunch of people fired off Mosquitos at the same time, and lost about 1/2 of them. I built three as a kid, all lost. I built one exactly as it appeared in the 1970 catalog (yellow with a single black fin as show in this video as well) as an adult and lost it as well, and I am an advanced rocketeer, flying since 1969. Interestingly, I have a Quark, which is almost as small, that I have flown dozens of times with no issues. I now have a perfectly built Mosquito that is in my Estes display case and will never be flown.
thanks for the tip! I love these tiny rockets, now I know how to get them back! lol!
Very nice video!! Subscribed!
I find that using super glue, then spraying it with activator spray works really well if you want to finish the fin very fast.
I always used yellow construction glue, let it get tacky, THEN put the fin on and align it, let that dry, then fillets.
If you use more than a 1/4A3, you'll lose it. 1/2A3 if you use the kevlar hack.