Spring In Rocket City USA

It is a well known fact that spring in the high mountain valleys of Utah comes later than most other places. It is also well known that in mid to late June that a very unique kind of garden begins to bloom in a certain garage at a certain address in Midway. Alas it has been several years since the garden bloomed there but I have recently discovered a very similar garden beginning to bud in a certain garage at a certain address in Huntsville, AL. In fact it is probably fairly likely that one could find this type of garden in almost any garage at any address almost anytime of the year. Yes I am talking about the rocket garden. The typical rocket garden life cycle goes from kit/parts to assemble rocket to various stages a painting to the final finished product ready to leap free from the bonds of the earth.... ish. My current crop includes a few classic varieties that are well known along with three never before seen varieties.
Some of the classic varieties include Orbital Transport, Comanche III, SuperNova, Gemini DC, The Alien Invader and the very nearly impossible to lose Mighty Moe. The never before seen varieties include the Feather Weight, Star Fighter and an as of yet un-named rocket that we will refer to for now as Leftovers 1.

Feather Weight (pictured on Right)
Length: 5.5"
Diameter: 0.736"
Altitude: 760'
Skill Level 1 and a halfish

After I built my Estes SolarFlare kit I decided that I would like to try my hand at a ring tail design and this little guy was the result. The Idea is a motor with fins and a nose cone that will be light enough to tumble to the ground instead of having a parachute or streamer. Will it work? We will See.

Star Fighter (Front)
Length: 20.75"
Diameter 1.18"
Altitude 880'
Skill Level 3 or 4

To be honest I am not sure where I came up with this one, but I like the end result. I guess it is part jet fighter part x-wing part "ooh, this would look cool" all mashed into one rocket. The hardest part of constructing this was filling in the gap between the body tube and the cockpit. But I imagine the paint around the tube fins will be a bugger.

Leftovers 1 (pictured on left)
Length: 7.5"
Diameter 0.736
Altitude 600'
Skill Level 2

This as its temporary name implies is made from leftovers of other projects. From the time I sat down with the leftover parts to the rocket in finished ready to paint form was less than 4 man hours most of which was from 2 am to 5 am when the baby woke me up and I couldn't Sleep.

If this isn't an Addiction I don't know what is.

So I got to thinking about it the other day and decided that I needed to do an inventory of my rockets. I discovered to my surprise that I have over 50 of them, yes, I said 50. While I am sure that this is not a world record by any means it is more than I expected. I didn't really believe just how many rockets I have because they are spread out all over the apartment so I decided to try to put them all in the same place and this is the result.

If this isn't an addiction I don't know what is.

A flash of inspiration

Length: 21"
Diameter: 1.64"
Altitude: 1500'
Skill Level 3 maybe a high 2


And it came to pass that as I was working on my other rockets this past week a vision was opened unto me. And I beheld a Rocket, and the rocket was about one cubit in length. And I beheld that it had thre fins upon three tubes that rested within the bossem of the rocket.




And I beheld that I had the components for such a rocket. Therefore, I did open the program Rocksim and did create a new file. And I beheld the file that it did bring exceedingly great joy to me. Therfore I began to lay out the rocket and to cut the centering rings and to trace the fin templates onto balsa. And the workmanship was exceedingly fine for it was mine, or in other words it was good enough for who it was for. Wherefore it did enter into my heart to finish building this rocket that it may one day ascend to heaven and there deploy its parachute and descend slowly again unto the earth from whence it was taken and to then rise again and again and bring joy to all who behold it. And again I say unto you that if your faithful unto the hobby of model rocketry that this rocket will bring you joy and rejoicing all the days of your life. And thus it is. Amen.

I hope that wasn't to blasphemous.

Projects

So this past Wednesday I got a package from the wonderful people at Balsa Machining Service (BSM) which contained everything I needed to build Two rockets that I have been looking forward to building for some time now. The first is the Classic Orbital Transport.



I have wanted one for along time. Orbital Transport is probably the rocket that got me interested in rockets in the first place. I used to spend hours down in the crawl space playing with my dads model and just imagining it fly. Then I found the instructions and decals for it on line so I bought the stuff my dad needed to fix his, (I was not the one that broke it in case you were wondering) printed a new sheet of decals and finally got to see it fly. Then I found out that BSM sold the fins for it laser cut and everything so I decided I would build my own. I bought the fins well over a year ago when I got the parts to build The Dart and have been waiting for the next time I ordered to get the nose cones and other things which I needed. It just didn't make much sense to pay $6.00 shipping for $2.00 Nose cones. Anyway the result is below, ready for sanding sealer and paint. The above picture is of my jig to keep the fins straight while the glue dried. I knew those old text books would come in handy.



My second project is the rear ejection design mentioned in my last post. It was a good build that I wish I had taken more pictures of because certain aspects of it would be difficult to just explain.


The first step wast to cut the tubes to length and mark them and then cut out the slits for the ejection gases. Once that was done I realized that there would be a lot more to building this rocket than I had originally anticipated. The most significant challenges was how to mount the shock cord and then there was no room for recovery wadding. So I could make the rocket go up but the landing part wouldn't be pretty.


So here is my solution put a screw eye in the forward bulkhead attach the shock cord to that and then stick a BT-5 body tube around it until it is into the recovery payload tube. The above picture shows how I used a spent 13mm motor to attach the body tube. By the way if you like to design and build your own rockets I recommend keeping your spent motor casings and investing in a miter box and razor saw. They make great centering rings and tube couplers and thrust blocks and are a lot cheaper, but I digress. I then had to figure out a way to get the thing into position without gluing the shock cord to the side of the body tube. This involved another BT-5. The recovery wadding problem I solved by using a baffle made out of stainless steel kitchen scrubby pad stuff. Again I wish I had taken a picture.

Keeping the fins on the rocket and straight has always been a challenge. Again the text books came in handy. As a random side not I used my Statics &Dynamics, Space systems elements, Propulsion, Mechanics of Flight and Numerical methods books. To mark the tube I drew the angles on a pizza box and cut out a hole for the body tube.


And here is the final product. Ready for sanding sealer and paint. All in all it was a good build and I am excited to finish and fly it.

Rear Ejection

Length: 21"
Diameter: 1.64"
Altitude: 1000'-2000'
Skill Level 3

This one is easily my most ambitious project to date. This rocket combines two things that I have always wanted to try; Clustered motors and rear ejection recovery. What I did was put the parachute in the motor mount tube seal off a chamber a few inches above that and put two motors, one per pod, and pipe the gases into the recovery section.

This design provides a few very nice features. First off, by having the motor and recovery systems neatly packaged at the back of the rocket it leaves most of the length of the body for payload. It is completely isolated from the hot ejection gases so who knows what you could put in there. An additional feature that is more useful if you are more like me and like to just fly the rocket is the fact that because you have two motors you have a redundant recovery deployment system. If one motor doesn't do it the second one might.

I just ordered the parts to build this one a few days ago so I will let you know how it goes when I finally fly it.

UPDATE(12/25/2014)

So I flew this one back in October on two B6-4's with an altimeter on board.  It flew to 332 feet which was only 3 ft off of what RockSim Predicted.  This is quickly becoming one of my favorite rockets.

Super Ninja

Length: 23.1
Diameter: 0.976
Altitude: 2600'
Skill Level 2

The super ninja was suposed to be an upscaled version of the Ninja made by Estes. My younger brother got the Ninja for Christmas one year but since he wasn't into rockets very much at all he gave it to me. I liked it so much that I decided to try to make it bigger. The fins are an acurate scale but I had to make the rocket longer and add weight to the nose to get it stable. What I was trying to accomplish with this rocket as well was the ability to fly it on A-E Black powder motors. It worked ish. On the first flight I lost the adapter that I built and I think that since then the body tube got crushed. The short story here is that this one has yet to reach its full potential.

Drifter

Length: 23.83"
Diameter: 1.64
Altitude: 770'
Skill Level 1

This is another spare parts rocket that I threw together. I call it drifter because I put a 24" chute in it. I have noticed that my biggest strugle when comes to desiging custom rockets is the paint. I had this rocket put together for weeks and weeks before I decided how to paint it. What I eventualy decided on was silver with a metalic blue base that kind of feathered into the rest of the rocket. My wife really liked how it turned out. Again this one is a virgin as I have not yet had a chance to fly it.