Ariane 44P H10-3 ISO Recolor

[sreinmann]

Greetings Space Fans. As for my currently underway project of building out the ISO infrared telescope and its launch vehicle I am working on recoloring Niels's Ariane 4 paper kit. After a few variations of searching, the best/only image I have of the craft is .
Other than reconfiguring the solid booster configuration, I've got some work ahead of me modifying what Niels created as the V-22 version.

The first difference begins at the interstage reduction between the 1st stage core and the 2nd stage. Later craft in a similar configuration has this panel as shiny-silver although this night, plume illuminated picture looks gold. Does anyone know whether its silver for sure? Also, this modeled version has ESA logo and the mission number V-22 imprinted. From the photo I think I see the logo, but I have no idea if ESA continued to number their launches (this launch was V-80.

Next up is the fairing itself. There's a logo for the ISO mission on what I can only guess would be both halves. But zooming in looks like its more than just the letters in blue. It looks to me like there is an image in the background. Does anyone have or can help locate an image that I can use in my recolor?

Thanks much. I'll try to get some pics as I build. Especially since I got the first stage alignment wrong and had to start over.

[sreinmann]

Nothing dramatic on these first stages. Having built the Arian 1 a few month's back, I know what to look out for. Although, I'm going to need to modify the design here and there as I go due to the scale reduction. These parts at least are fairly straight forward.

[sreinmann]

A bit more work and a bit of a setback on this build folks. I feel good about my recolor but I'm going to wait to post pics until I'm sure I got the scale right. In the meanwhile, I added the support structure for the 1st stage engine skirts with minor modification to the design. My advice on laying the skin over the structure is to follow the directions which have you glue down one side of the skirt. And then, once dry, wrap over to secure the other side. After that was the engines themselves and the turbo pump exhausts. For these, rather than use the kit parts, I rolled properly sized tube that was 15cm long and then trimmed the .5cm exhausts and formed the angle. This was much easier for me than rolling out each individual part. I'll paint them later to match the grey color. Similarly, for the separation thrusters, I used toothpick tips to form the nozzles and painted them white. This is much better than I could form from paper at this scale. But here's where you see my mistake? When I cut out the tube, I failed to cut it where intended. Think I caught it though ... nope, not yet. Then I added the piping and wire chases, and interstage fairing. Wait, that doesn't look ... ugh.

Can I trim it? Or scrap it and rebuild? Or accept that I'm not a rocket engineer.

Oh, by the way, you might also notice, though Niels's design allows for his Ariane fleet to be shown with all stage engines (I did build the Ariane 1 in parts) I am not going to do that for this build. I will therefore cement all stages together in one stack.

[sreinmann]

Ah, the mistakes continue.
Today I present what was a few days work on the solid rocket motors. The Ariane 4 in this configuration had 4 solid rocket motors. So I reprinted the designated pages to make them.

Following the directions, I glued several components to card and applied the connectors and strips to the back side of the rocket bodies. Rolling and forming went smoothly. Part I has a colored interior. Part J is colored on both sides. I think in retrospect, I should not have tried to laminated these parts as the instructions stipulate. Remember, I'm at 1:144 scale and so my parts are 66.67% smaller. This made it challenging to roll these parts smoothly and effectively. This leads to my nozzles being the wrong color. I might come back later and repaint the exterior. One other area that I think I may have not referred to correctly was the angle of the nozzle. There's a slant to them, that might be by design, but I don't know if I have mine angled the right way. Just somethings for you to consider if you work on Niels's design especially if you resize like I did.

[sreinmann]

I finished up the 1st stage by adding the solid rocket motors to the main stage. Since this design is intended to be a 44LP, including 2 liquid boosters and 2 solid, we need to adjust the position of the struts that hold the boosters on two sides. But really this isn't that much of a challenge.

I rolled the strut cylinders and then slid the struts inside as the instructions required. Securing the struts to the main stage and then mounting the boosters was a fairly straight forward process from that point all.

[sreinmann]

Onward to the first recolor. As you'll note from my earlier questions, I found through photographs of other Ariane 4 rockets, that they had shifted to a bare metal finish on their 2nd stage rocket body. I had to dig for the rocket company logo and match the font of their number designation. I think I managed to get the polished body well enough by zooming out on texture images.

The 3rd stage body is unchanged, so I built that out as directed. I am forgoing the motor nozzle designs, since I am gluing the whole rocket together. Therefore the interstages came together easily and were glued in place once all components were finished. But, pay attention to the assembly of the connecting pieces for these stages and intersages, especially if you do build out the motors. Prior experience on the Ariane 1 served me well and I knew that some dry fitting and test connections were necessary to get the trim right. The tolerances are tight and you could be making more work for yourself if you're not careful.

[sreinmann]

The fairing comes last and understandably has some eliminations from the designed kit. Niels's design includes the option to display the three satellites launched on the designed version. This and the lower extension of the fairing is to be omitted. I therefore built the bottom flare section first and then followed that with the rest of the fairing from top down. Thankfully, I didn't have any miscuts or misshapes probably due to good design rather than any skill on my part. I'll post some glamor photos of the completed rocket hopefully by this weekend.

PS: a bit of late researched revealed that the third stage included an elongated fuel cell. But, the reality is that it only stretched the section by 30cm. Okay, that's a bit small for me to redesign that part by just about 2mm. I'll leave that bit off and we just won't talk about it anymore. :P

[sreinmann]

Okay, Job done. So, as I noted, there were some problem areas. But I really liked the way it turned out. Keeping with my theme of "Space Telescopes and their Launch Vehicles" here's ISO with its Ariane 44P. Hope you enjoy the glamour shots.

Scot

[sreinmann]

Neils was generous enough to confirm permission to post my recollection, and so you can now find the new parts here in our unmanned real science space section. Thanks again.