Mini Fat Boy or Baby Bertha?

I just bought an Estes Mini Fat Boy, and after a little more deliberating (hindsight, y'know), I'm wondering if I should have gotten the Baby Bertha and cut it down. If I want it to go over 250 feet, I'll need to swap the engine mount on the MFB, and that's just that much MORE money, when I could have chopped the BB and actually saved a few bucks (why on earth is the larger rocket cheaper?). The only positive I can see for the stock MFB setup is that the motors are a little cheaper, so I guess you get an extra launch.

Am I missing anything, or does that pretty much sum it up?

Baby B's can be goony'ed as well as cut down into a MFB, I always have a few Baby B's around for parts/kitbashes.

I'm afraid I'm pretty new, and I have NO idea what "goony-ed" ("goonied?)"means. I remember liking the movies from the 80's but.....

EDIT: AHHH, I see. Well, maybe I picked the right one after all... I plan on taking it and making it the "Slug Slinger". My son and I are big fans of the show Slugterra.... a scifi cartoon about launching alien slugs at 100 mph for sport (think Pokemon). I saw this rocket and thought it would be great for a conversion!

To just look like the slug slinger gun, or are you planning on firing these horizontal?

The_Plummeteer said:

I'm afraid I'm pretty new, and I have NO idea what "goony-ed" ("goonied?)"means. I remember liking the movies from the 80's but.....

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Let me respond: The term gooney appears to be a class of modified or "goofy" rockets that all seem to derive from the basic Baby Bertha or similar stock. They typically feature unusual fin configurations, some unique decals or other modification to make them appear "Gooney".
There is a separate section here on TRF labled "Goonies" or some such, since there is such proliferation, and photos involved, and you can get some great ideas and yucks from flipping through it.

I have also bought one or two kits that qualify as "Gooney" including the "Saki" and the "Lil Green Man". They are basically fun pricey kits that give you everything you need, but you can certainly invent your own.
Share your photos of your progress, please!:wink:

The_Plummeteer said:

Why on earth is the larger rocket cheaper?

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Myth: Prices are based on costs.
Fact: Prices are what the market will bear; profits is based on costs.

The smaller rocket is priced higher because people will pay it.

Kirk G said:

Let me respond: The term gooney appears to be a class of modified or "goofy" rockets that all seem to derive from the basic Baby Bertha or similar stock. They typically feature unusual fin configurations, some unique decals or other modification to make them appear "Gooney".
There is a separate section here on TRF labled "Goonies" or some such, since there is such proliferation, and photos involved, and you can get some great ideas and yucks from flipping through it.

I have also bought one or two kits that qualify as "Gooney" including the "Saki" and the "Lil Green Man". They are basically fun pricey kits that give you everything you need, but you can certainly invent your own.
Share your photos of your progress, please!:wink:

Click to expand...

Goonies: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?702-What-exactly-is-a-goonie

Any current or OOP kit can be turned into a Goony as the thread above will show.

Mushtang said:

To just look like the slug slinger gun, or are you planning on firing these horizontal?

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Ha, no, just a theme. Though it would be fun to incorporate some fireworks on the ejection somehow to simulate the "morph" (without destroying the rocket?).

To further elaborate, the tern Goony (or goonied) refers to a series of rockets that Estes brought out in the early seventies.

https://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/catalogs/estes73/73est16.html

Called Goonybirds, they were all BT-60 rockets using the same length body tube and the same nose cone. The nose cone was similar to the one in the Big Bertha/Baby Bertha/Mini Fat Boy models, but was a two part injection molded nose cone rather than the blow-molded nose cone used today. The original Goonybirds also all used 13mm (T-motor) motor mounts and were loosely part of the "Mini-Brute" series of the day. Some purists (myself included) don't consider a model to me a Goony unless it has the right body tube length, Bertha nose cone, and the mini motor mount. Others drop the motor size from the requirements and consider anything the right length and shape to be a Goony regardless of motor size.

Originally, the models were going to be fanciful parodies of scale models including the V2, a couple of WWI biplanes and the German Buzz Bomb. Este marketing got hold of the concept and decided to change it to the models shown in the catalog page referenced above there was a thread on Ye Olde Rocket Forum a number of years ago that showed sketches of five of the six original Goony concepts.

Hope this clarifies things a bit