I wanted to scale something for the EMRR contest and what better way than to kill two birds with one stone and scale the Deuce for the Bash contest. I wanted to use 13mm engines so I divided 13 into 18 and figured the scale at 72 percent and rounded up to 75 percent.

These are easy numbers to work with until you think of one little thing, and that is I do not really want to build custom body tubes so the scale must be made from the available body tubes. I then took the size of the BT-60 and the BT-55 and got the ratio of 80.9 percent. I figured 80 percent was close enough.

I cut the fins out of 3/32 balsa to the following measurements:
Root=3.2”
Tip=1.6”
Width=3.2”

The body tube was cut to 14.4”

The nose cone is 2.5” long from base of shoulder to tip. As I had never made a nosecone before this was fun. I first thought I would mount a dowel in a different nose cone I had for BT-55 tube and then turn it down to shape, but how would I make sure the dowel was centered? I decided that I should start with a bigger block of wood and got a piece of 2x2x4” balsa in which I mounted the dowel. Then it was off to the drill press with some really rough sandpaper. This was slow! I have turned wood before the correct way but did not have any of these tools available to me at this time, but I knew it could go faster. I got a hacksaw blade and made a gouge out of it and was able to remove stock fast. I turned it down to 1.5” diameter and then switched to 100 grit sand paper and then finally 150 grit. I kept measuring with my calipers as I was trying to achieve 1.325 outer diameter. Once I got there I made a mistake and removed the cone from the drill press. I could never get it back in the same way and it was out of center. I had to do a little work by hand to get it to fit the tube correctly, but it turned out great for my first try and it even looked like the original Deuce nosecone.

The motor mount is a modified Fliskits EMK2-13-55. I sanded out the top ring to accept the canted tubes, cut a short wedge out of 3/32 bass wood patterned after the original and made a custom bottom centering ring out of 3/32 basswood. Now just follow the Deuces Wild instructions with these parts and you will have a .80 scale Deuces Wild.

I flew mine on A10-3’s and it flew great with a beautiful apogee ejection that I caught starting on film.

I hope you have fun too.

Matthew McFarland

		The Deuce Jr. on the launch pad
		And we have liftoff!
		Nose cone ejects at apogee
		to bring the Jr. back for a safe landing ready for another flight!