10" lightweight Atlas Missile

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I considered outboards, but this was optimized for the cg and to be lightweight, adding more tailweight meant more noseweight andi needing a larger chute that would not fit in the bay. When trying to be very light things add up more quickly than you think.
 
I had a spare coupler and piece of styrofoam ball left over and made a short heat sink type early re-entry vehicle nose I can swap in. Photos to come.
 
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While I was fixing bit of damage to the engine side shrouds, I decided to change the nose cone/warhead to a heat sink type from a long ablative type that flew on D models, and change to a 4B test scheme with red on the shrouds, I think it looks nice. The 4B model should have slightly different side conduits but I didn't wan't to muck with those. On the side view you can see how I used my clear fins to mount some vinyl decals to simulate the vernier motors and flame, looks great in flight as the fins dissapear. Shown is a flight shot of the original nose config. 70" tall, 10" diameter, 5#8oz dry.

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Two more flights from this weekend. Buddy Michaelson replaced a chute I had been having issues with with a new 5' and it worked perfectly out of their chute bag. Keith Packard checked out and repaired my easy mini after two hard landings two weeks ago which also worked perfectly. The lower fuse and shroud skin is getting a little wrinkled in places from landing on hard objects. Two of the fins developed cracks over time where it appears the CA glue crazed the surface(they are only 1/16" thickness) but I simply taped them with clear packing tape on both sides in two layers and they have held up fine in flight. I installed new dark grey silicone nonslip hydroflask slip on protectors held in place with a screw, rubber and steel washer that simulate the outboard nozzles, they are heat proof and just squish on landing and pop back into shape! It's still got the silicone R/C airplane muffler extension on the bottom which simulates the turbopump exhaust which also just bends on landing. All that is just cosmetic, It's got plenty of flying life left.

 
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Here is the second of two flights, flights #10 and #11 on this airframe, at the Tri cities washington this weekend, flew great as usual!

 
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Here are some photos from Scott Binder, out of the three flights that weekend I had one chute tangle that caused a fin to crack and come loose and out of its mounting slot, one other was cracked previously when the fin stuck in some soft dirt and then the model tipped over on landing and put a lot of stress on it.

It had flown many times perfectly straight with the packing tape repair as the fin stock is thin and polycarbonate is hard to glue.

I had been wondering about base drag and if it would fly ok, my CG is not as far forward as I would have put it using base drag only but we were in a mood to experiment, we flew it like that, with effectively one fin on each axis, it had some coning and wobble, but did not tumble but was still a safe flight, It would need much more nose weight to get the cg far enough forward and would then require a larger chute to prevent landing damage, my parachute bay is quite small just big enough for the 6' chute so I won't try that.

I was considering retiring it after 14 flights, as I didn't feel like getting more fin stock but after a few days I found some spare 1/16" lexan, so I made and mounted a new fin and she's back as good as before.

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