My first new one since 04, a modded Super Neon XL

My wife bought me a kit. An Estes Super Neon XL. It was on sale from Estes for $9.

It is a 36" machine that they recommend either D or E series motors.

After we got it, I realized it was too complicated for something that will probably get lost in our woods after the first launch. We recently have launched 3 old homebuilts with C6's, loosing two and sticking one in a tree.

I compromised by not installing the 6 tubes around the base and cutting out my own fins larger but in the same style as the ones in the plans but making only 3 instead of 6.

I put some vertical lines with my 1"x1" angle iron. Punched a few holes at the insertion point so that the Elmer's wood glue would stick better. My new fins are 3/32" thickness and temporarily held on with some straight pins. The area of each fin is about 4x the area of one of original fins. Of course I am not using the extra rings or the 6 original fins.


Once it cured I made some micro with the same glue and made fillet to improve the strength of the fin and to possibly decrease interference drag.



Basically micro spherical balls that displace the glue and decrease it's weight. I have not tried using it with wood glue before today. Seems to work. It can be smoothed with a wet finger even when fairly dry.


I got the 24mm motor mount installed and it weighs 100 grams. Still needs some finishing and paint. I got some hot pink/hunter orange type of color.

We looked for an alarm so that we might better find it, once launched, but came up negative.

I'll post more pics later.

I like the fins, kinda remind me of a Blue Bird Zero.
I've never used Micro baloons with wood glue, only with epoxy, good to know it works.
When built stock the Super Neon XL is a nice "low and slow" flight on a D 12-3 and really rips on an E 12.
You could fly it on a C 11 for a "heart attack" flight.:y:

That sounds more complicated than stock to me.


Kirk

I sprayed it with primer and thought, oops forgot the guide rod mounts. The instructions menitioned a 3/16" rod but I have a lot of 1/4" steel so I looked around and found an old aluminum arrow shaft and cut a couple of pieces off and glued them on. A bit of cyanoacrylate glue to hold the bits in place and some shoo_goo for a permanent adhesive.


A bit of hot pink fluorescent spray. Hanging to dry. I have a bit of crazing in the finish. Near the fins. I bet the wood glue was not cured fully. Will resand the affected areas and another coat.


I need to mount in the recovery parachute.

I resprayed it and got good coverage. The crazing was due to not having the primer dried hard enough before applying the hot pink.

Am hoping that the rocket will fly further than with the original ring and short fin design. All of those side tube junctions should cause a tremendous amount of interference drag. In effect making the rocket have drag as though it were 5" diameter.

I plan on using the left over tubes for new short rockets.

Mine turned into Superman....

I saw your thread Batmite, Really a lot of effort on it. Kudos.

I saw mine in the fresh light of day and did a blend on the paint. Half hot pink fading to hunter orange on the other side.

Too much wind to fly in my 700x1000' field today.

Rockets should point upright.

That's a nice and bright color, good color choice.

The way we lose rockets figured that brighter and bigger was better.

It must be the color
We launched it with an old Estes D12 motor. It went great. We recovered it. Yeah will live to launch again.
[video=youtube_share;y6L9XC8nNjs]https://youtu.be/y6L9XC8nNjs[/video]
What was particularly cool was that you could see the nozzle ejecting when the rocket fired the parachute charge.

For what it's worth, the stock build is super draggy with the tube fins and flys great on a D12.

Thanks for your comments. I wanted to reduce the drag so I simplified the finning.

Pretty sure that mine had too much drag on the guide rod. The clearance between the guides and 1/4" rod was only about 1/32". With the thrust being off center it probably was binding. I am switching to my 3/16" guide rod. My previous rocket had wire hoops on it which definitely had less friction.

Viewed the original vid, frame by frame and the engine seemed to have good smooth looking flames about 8" long.

Used the last of my 10 year old D12s. Had run out of igniters and used cannon fuse. Should be getting another batch of motors in the mail today.

After the launch and non recovery of 3 of my old rockets my wife scrounged a generic cardboard tube carved a nosecone from foam and is finishing up a few minutes a day.

What were you using as an igniter in the video?

Bat-mite said:

What were you using as an igniter in the video?

Click to expand...

Looks to me like a fuse lit with a torch:y::y:

Yep a propane torch with an auto ignition. So indirectly we used electric ignition. At this point are out of D motors and out of igniters. They only seem to include one igniter for every motor. Had one that didn't work so I improvised.

I mentioned: Used the last of my 10 year old D12s. Had run out of igniters and used cannon fuse. Should be getting another batch of motors in the mail today.

Click to expand...

Maybe tomorrow we will get our new motors. My wife's rocket has a primer coat on it and should be ready very soon. It is set up for a 24 mm engine tube and I have an 18mm insert, it's first flight will be with a c6.

ASA said:

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Rocket it looks good, but who did the Tin Work behind it.
I haven't done anything like that since Middle School.
I'm guessing all the stars for The Lone Star State?

Hi Woody
Like you I tend to look in the background of the shots. It is amazing what you find. The shot is behind the wood stove. My wife is very inventive and made a pattern taped it on and punched the holes with an awl.

We are in Missouri actually. The Texas connection is that the capital of Missouri was moved to Marshall, Texas during the war.

Bat-mite said:

Mine turned into Superman....
View attachment 248119

Click to expand...

I see it!

Now that I see the creativity and kit bashing, I am ashamed that I didn't do anything else with mine, but imitate the exact model that they showed on the box.

Now, I'm thinking of picking up another, just to play around...for $9, that's certainly possible....

We got a box of new motors from a fellow member Bob Jablonski in Indiana.

My wife had scratch built a rocket. She carved the cone from some white Styrofoam. Painted on several layers of elmers and micro. She had found some generic tube and did the same to it. We used four of the stock fins that were included with the NeonXL. It was my first time that I had really looked at the laser cut balsa. Laser cut balsa is nice.

She flew it around on a string and we added 160 grains of lead to the nosecone to make it balance. The rocket weighed 90 grams without the motor. We flew it on a C6-3. Electrically launched.

Here it is just before the flight.


At launch.

She had used a 4 foot ribbon of rip stop nylon for recovery.

Went great! Landed about 100 yards up wind.
The rocket has room to fit in a 24mm diameter D motor. Maybe an E if we ballast it more. I bet she will hold off on that considering our pasture.

I ran the SuperNeonXL on a D12-5.
We used a 3/16" fiberglass rod about 40" long. This time it went perfect. Apparently I was getting binding with the first launch rod. Or maybe it was the older motor but it did look like it was making power.

Pre launch:

Off we go!


Both weathervaned a bit in the light wind. With the recovery it landed about 50' away from the launch. My camera somehow decided to autofocus after the launch making the videos blurred.

We launched again yesterday. Rocket flew great again on the D12.5
Video came out good.
Thrustcurve promised 700+ feet. The stock chute deployed and we followed it down. Sort of. The wind was 12 mph. It went back into our north woods. It wasn't found so I got out google maps and we plotted the parachute time, the azimuth and measured the rocket size in the video. I came out with a drift of 850-1000 feet in the one minute of float time.

[video=youtube_share;7V_UVi6HuBc]https://youtu.be/7V_UVi6HuBc[/video]

We went back out after dark, No karma. Today we went back out twice. The last time we found it 1000 feet on the exact azimuth that we last saw it. It was about 30 feet up in a tree. I got my chain saw out and brought it down. We have 250,000 trees this is one more for heat next year.

My wife launched her homebuilt machine as well with a D12, I posted video of it here: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...s-a-rocket-and-launches&p=1396209#post1396209