Introduction and materials
A 1/50-scale version of the vehicle used to test the LES system for the Apollo spacecraft. The particular vehicle modeled is A-001, BP-12, flown on May 13, 1964. Each of the Little Joe rockets was slightly different in order to test various aspects of the LES system under different flight parameters. The model rocket is constructed using commercially available components. The service module section (SM) is a LOC 3î diameter body tube. The booster portion is LOC 3" coupler tubing sections. Bulkheads are 1/8" lite ply. The capsule and LES tower are constructed in the same fashion as on my Saturn 1b. The fins are made from 1 3/8" aileron balsa strip stock. The corrugated body wrap is vacu-formed and made by a good friend, Paul Graf. Paul used Evergreen scribed sheet styrene sized to fit the circumference of the coupler tubes for the master mold then vacu-formed them from .015" sheet styrene. He made the basic sections and I cut them to size (Paul also has some excellent body wraps for cloning the 1/70 scale Estes Saturn 1b if anyone is interested). The various conduit and tunnels are made from strip sheet styrene. The motor tubes are stock Estes BT-50 body tubes.

Construction
Construction was fairly easy and straightforward. The centering rings were hand cut from lite ply since there were none available in the motor configuration or diameter required. I built the capsule and LES tower first because I had experience from the S1b. I added a little more epoxy to the cone tip for nose weight to keep the CG where it needed to be based on the RockSim calculations. The vacu-form wraps were applied using 3M77 spray adhesive and the conduits were applied using CA. I used the pattern sheet from the Estes 1/100 LJII (after correctly sizing on the copier) for making the tunnels/conduits and to mark the fin locations. The fins were epoxied in place and given a light coat of finishing resin to add strength and help seal the grain. Launch lugs were made from 3/16" I.D. aluminum tubing. The ëUNITED STATES' marking were made by myself on a Xerox machine. The ink on the Microscale decal paper is easily scratched off so I sprayed the printed decals with a clear fixative. This sealed the ink and caused no problem during application.

Finishing and recovery system
The only parts requiring sealing prior to paint were the fins and fiberglassed capsule. The booster was painted using Krylon's silver. The SM body tube was finished using white monokote trim sheet wrapped around the body tube. The capsule and LES tower were painted with Krylon gloss white. The black roll pattern markings were made from trim monokote and applied using the patterns found in the Estes kit. Since there is not much room in the body tube for the shock cord, parachute and wadding I opted to use Pratt Hobbies Nomex® protector and do away with the need for recovery wadding. The 4" square Nomex® cloth slips over the Pratt Hobbies Kevlar® cord loop tied to a screw eye in the bulkhead and takes up almost no room. The parachute is 24" ripstop nylon and the shock cord is a 3 yard length of 1/2" ribbed elastic.