F1 Rocket

Vince Frazier, the main spar at Team Rocket says he’s about done moving (finally) and looking forward to building some (more) F1 and F4 Rocket parts. For sure his year-plus transition from Evansvillle to Cutler, Indiana, along with lingering Covid disruptions, a limping supply chain and all the rest have put a bend in forming Rocket bits, but Vince was sounding pretty enthused about getting down to supporting his line of sleek, go-fast aluminum hot rods.

He has a new 6,000 sq. ft. shop to do it in. It’s right next to his not quite finished new house, which is across the yard from his sister’s place—she’s taking care of the clerical joy of Team Rocket—and for the first time Vince has an employee in the shop.

What’s in the shop is the still developing tapered wing. That wing prototype was on display last year at AirVenture, but this year it stayed home as lately it’s been securely bolted to its tooling fixture.  Vince has been concentrating on forming the leading edge, which didn’t go so well when farmed out to pro metal shops so he’s brought the job in-house by making the big leap to building his own stretch forming machine. It’s a huge effort, but once sorted out will churn out nicely formed 12 ft long leading edges along with many other small parts.

Inside the wing Vince has been prototyping brackets and such via 3D printing as, “just because you can draw it in CAD doesn’t mean it will actually fit.”

Looking very handsome in the F1 booth is the new Darryl Hudec F1 Rocket out of Stone Mountain, Georgia. Jammed full of unique finishing touches it seems destined for some sort of judging glory this year.