Gooney Pup

With all the talk about going Gooney, I decided to build my version of a Gooney rocket. I love the lines of the Bull Pup so I figured I could “Gooney” it pretty easy. The goal was to build a stable rocket that will fly on anything from an A8 to a C6. I took a little finagling to get it right, but I finally did and am able to fly it on the full range of motors available in the Blast Off pack from Estes.

You have to start with the obligatory Baby Burtha kit and work from there. The hard part was going to be building the boat tail. That turned out pretty easy and the look is spot on what I envisioned.

I cut out all of the parts and used the full size Estes Bull Pup kit for the basic dimensions for the fins. The fins are laminated with paper and the rest are kit parts. I was even able to use the fin stock from the BB kit.

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In the first picture, the kit parts are laid out. You can see the extra bulkhead for the boat tail and the shroud on the bottom left.

Since the boat tail was going to be 1.25 inches long, I cut that much off the BT.

When it came time for building the boat tail, I used the engine mount as a jig (or fixture or what ever) to make sure the tail was square and fit the MMT. I used .010 styrene for the tail and .020 for the bulkhead. Tenax does a great job gluing it all together.

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To make the NC shorter so the parachute would have extra room and to add weight, I cut off the bottom of the NC.

I then made a new bulkhead out of .020 glued it on once the 1 oz of nose weight was added……….:surprised:

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Once all the accoutrements were added, the final rocket was ready for paint…….

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Good stuff! Keep 'em coming Bravo52. The Bullpup is just such a cool rocket anyway.

Ok. Now for the flight test. The finished rocket weighted in at 3.3 oz with the lead. I started with a heads up flight on a C6-4 with the 1 oz of lead in the NC……. The rocket took off with a roar and weather cocked into about a 5 mph wind. Almost going vertical at about 150 feet, the ejection charge fired and the rocket proceeded shred the shroud lines (say that ten times fast)! The Rocket was still moving pretty quick when the eject charge went off……..

Not to be dissuaded, I crammed a B6 in it and a new nylon chute and it flew a lot better but still way over stable. Good recovery.

Put an A8 in it and launched it into a nice little arch into the ground…….man I need to shed some weight on this thing…….

I did the same routine with a fresh NC with no lead……..you can imagine the results…… this thing looked like and Ohio State class room when someone threw a bar of soap in there…….. it was all over the place……..:rotflol:

I figured I had the problem bracketed at this point so I added .25 oz of lead with a little epoxy in the NC and now it flies perfect on the full range of motors….. yea…..

GREAT Goony! And especially nice work on the boat tail.

Great Goon!

Nice job!

Doooood,

Great Goon! But that thing needs more cowbell. 18mm RMS D21? Possible to get that 18mm mount out of there so you could put a 24mm mount and D12 power?

That looks pretty darn awesome! Thanks for the inspiration.

I love goonies, and here's another one to add to the build pile.

That's a very nice Goony, Bravo. I may have to add that one to my list as well. The boattail looks like it came out pretty well.

I found when testing my Sprint Goony that it didn't really need all that much nose weight to make it stable (about a 1/4 of an ounce did the trick). Really not a lot of difference between it and your Goonpup.

Bravo52 said:

I did the same routine with a fresh NC with no lead……..you can imagine the results…… this thing looked like an Ohio State class room when someone threw a bar of soap in there…….. it was all over the place……..:rotflol:

…..

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You must be thinking of some other school..U of M perhaps?

Oh bother, another rocket to build.

Great rocket. When I can build it I think I will use some of the original
Bull Pup or other types military stickers for a missile look.

Thanks for posting it.

William