WANT !! WANT !! WANT !! (New Estes Shuttle and Stack)

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That nose cone is the same one used in the Executioner. Heck it even uses the same body tube. I was happy to see your model flew kind of straight. At least it was high enough to not be worried about it hitting the ground before ejection. It looks like the rod was tilted in the direction of flight so maybe tilt it the other way next flight. I believe the shuttle needs just a pinch more nose weight. So happy to see people building and flying this model since it's a different then most of the models Estes has Produce.

John Boren
 
The rod was tilted a little more than I thought it was on launch and the shuttle deff needs to be weighted a bit I tested it (tossed it like a plane in the yard) it did good but after swing it launched I'll have to weight it down a bit lol but thank you on the feed back
 
I saw one fly at Fiesta Island at a DART Launch in San Diego..

Boosted straight and had a nice glide already trimmed in .

Didnt catch the fliers name...Exactimator may know.

Kenny



Sent from my LG-LS997 using Rocketry Forum mobile app
 
That nose cone is the same one used in the Executioner. Heck it even uses the same body tube....

I was amused to see a slotted tube with a glue-on cover for the Shuttle-side in the instructions...
 
I'm surprised that set of instructions is out there. The slotted tube never made it into production and the instructions were changed early on.

John Boren
 
I regularly use a program to crawl the Estes website and download all the content, I'll look to see what it pulls down. I like having an archive of all the catalogs and instructions.
 
I'd bookmarked the link. If it wasn't on the Instructions Page, then I probably just guessed the URL since the all follow the format - <kit no (padded with leading zeroes to 6 chars)>, underscore, <kit name (all caps, underscores in lieu of spaces)>, .pdf
 
I am building one with my kids right now.
A few observations, notes, and suggestions:

1). Dry-fitting the shuttle bulkheads, as per instructions, is virtually impossible: far too many moving pieces to keep aligned with either 2 or 4 hands. It's far easier to start gluing the bulkheads with PVA, which adds some viscosity and stabilizes the parts' attachment position, then continue on gluing the wishbones. The wood glue sets in slowly, and remains pliable for 15-30 minutes (depends on which one you use), so there is plenty of time to fix alignment issues.
2). Use masking tape to help align things just right, until the glue cures.
IMG_20180101_203643.jpgIMG_20180102_095724.jpg

3). Laminating wings helps to add extra strength to the multi-section balsa panels, and will help with durability. I also CA-ed the exposed fin edges, and sanded them smooth.
I followed the same process with Sirius Interrogator build a while back, and after 20+ flights (
some less than graceful), am yet to experience any structural damage to the fins.
IMG_20180102_212942.jpg

4). Last but not least, we decided to upgrade from decorative, to fully functional boosters!

Parallel staging and booster ejection will be implemented by utilizing Apogee's strap-on booster pods that will burn 18mm Estes BP motors (B6-0 or C6-0), and separate upon burn out.
Boosters are held in place via a hook connected to the booster/rocket nose cone. Once ejection charge fires, the boosters' nose cones will be propelled upward, and take the boosters with them for a safe descent on streamers.

If we time things right, the main 24mm motor will continue burning for a second or two longer, providing a nice visual treat of booster separation, followed by extended main engine burn, followed by shuttle separation and glide down. In all, the package should descent back to earth in four (4) pieces.

IMG_20180101_190119.jpg

The only open question is whether we keep the original (decorative) SRB boosters tubes in place and add +2 of our own, or cut out the decorative tubes and position our functional strap-on boosters exactly in place of the fake ones.

The whole kit is way too complex to model out in OR or RS, so we will just have to eye-ball that decision.

Any suggestions?


a
 
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You may want to fly it on a single high thrust motor that approximates the combined thrust of the planned stack to be sure it will fly straight at higher speeds before you commit to a multi motor flight.
 
You may also want to fly with dead weight (or unlit motors) in the pods first. The pod motor weight will shift the Cg with respect to the long axis. It may drive it back towards the centerline, but if the kit is intentionally designed with a certain amount of Cg Z offset (for lack of a better way to describe it), you may see more arcing just from shifting the mass distribution.
 
You may want to fly it on a single high thrust motor that approximates the combined thrust of the planned stack to be sure it will fly straight at higher speeds before you commit to a multi motor flight.

Just to be clear - strap-on motors are mostly for show.

The main 24mm engine will provide the bulk of thrust.
Estes's box recommends D12-3 (20 N-sec, 1.6 sec burn) or E12-4 motors (30 N-sec, 2.7 sec thrust duration).

2 x B6's (10 N-sec in total, 0.8 sec burn) or 2 x C6's (20 N-sec in total, 1.6 sec burn), mated to D12 or E12, respectively, would add another 50% or 66% of thrust.

Flying on AT RMS 24mm motors is also in the cards, but lighting the BP and composite motors in parallel would pose a challenge, as the latter take longer to get going.

a
 
You may also want to fly with dead weight (or unlit motors) in the pods first. The pod motor weight will shift the Cg with respect to the long axis. It may drive it back towards the centerline, but if the kit is intentionally designed with a certain amount of Cg Z offset (for lack of a better way to describe it), you may see more arcing just from shifting the mass distribution.

The delta in rate of Cg shift during flight is an excellent question.
Another one is the overall Cg shift rearward with +2 18mm motors, and whether or not I would need to compensate for the added instability with either more weight in the nose cone, or up-scaled booster fins.
The speed off the launch rod is another variable I would dearly love to check before flight.

All of these can only be answered with a sim.
I don't suppose the Estes designer is still hanging around these forums, and has a .rkt he would be willing to share with us?

If not, I might have to spend a few nights trying to draw it all up in RockSim (current OR release still doesn't support booster sim-ing, to my knowledge).

a
 
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JumpJet (John Boren) occasionally chimes in on his designs, and there's a good chance he made this one.

Although there's a high chance that no simulation was used in it's construction lol
 
Answered in post #70, this thread: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...stes-Shuttle-and-Stack)&p=1601876#post1601876


"Since I couldn't make a RockSim of this model I have never bothered to write down where my ready to fly CG was. Every flight has been stable with the seven models I have built. It will weather cock some if the winds are high so fly in low to moderate winds for your first flight.


John Boren"
 
...The only open question is whether we keep the original (decorative) SRB boosters tubes in place and add +2 of our own...Any suggestions?

You could make all of those external tubes into strap-on boosters, the 2 large SRBs and the 4 additional on the side opposite the orbiter/glider. If just for show rather than thrust, use 13mm mini motors, they come 4 to a pack anyway, smaller mass and c.g. shift with those, might be a timing issue with altitude at booster ejection time.

How do you compensate for the off-axis thrust from all those boosters? ... you CANT! :)
 
Working on mine right now, though it's been a bad year for getting garage time in. I'm making every effort to keep this light - this means no wood grain filling and minimal primer. As subassemblies should be painted before final assembly, it's a tough one to build when the weather isn't conducive to painting.
 
You could make all of those external tubes into strap-on boosters, the 2 large SRBs and the 4 additional on the side opposite the orbiter/glider. If just for show rather than thrust, use 13mm mini motors, they come 4 to a pack anyway, smaller mass and c.g. shift with those, might be a timing issue with altitude at booster ejection time.

Heh, heh, that might just be the v3.0 iteration of our shuttle, assuming the initial v2.0 with 18mm SRBs flies well.
I do have left-over 13mm motors gathering dust somewhere, after I lost my last micro-max rocket to the tree gods last summer.
:dark:


Answered in post #70, this thread:
"Since I couldn't make a RockSim of this model I have never bothered to write down where my ready to fly CG was. Every flight has been stable with the seven models I have built. It will weather cock some if the winds are high so fly in low to moderate winds for your first flight.

John Boren"

How do you compensate for the off-axis thrust from all those boosters? ... you CANT! :)

OK, so it's either nights of rock-siming beyond what John B deemed reasonable, or eye balling with 24mm main for v1.0 flights, to validate the Cg/Cp of the Frankenstein Shuttle. If that flies nice and stable, on go the 18mm motors into the boosters for v2.0 and beyond.

Oh, and if the glider actually glides and doesn't dive bomb, which is all it has done so far in hand toss testing, that will be even better. I thought the idea was too add more weight to the nose, to balance it out. Looks like I either need to add weight to the tail (and turn it into a flying brick), or drill out some weight from the nose balsa block. Or mount a key-chain camera on top, somewhere, on a Velcro strip, as a ballast. Or all of the above.

a
 
...I do have left-over 13mm motors gathering dust somewhere, after I lost my last micro-max rocket to the tree gods last summer.
13mm are mini, I thought MMX micro are like 6mm.

I did not mean "can't" as in not possible, but as in the verb "to cant," as in to mount the engines in the side boosters at an angle, if possible, towards the c.g. as appropriate. Like the FlisKits Duece's Wild, you know?
https://www.fliskits.com/products/rocketkits/kit_detail/deuce.htm
 
13mm are mini, I thought MMX micro are like 6mm.

You may well be right on names. All my only forays into sub-18mm motor rockets sizes ended, rather quickly, in trees. Mini/micro/picko/nano - not my cup of tea.

I am mostly staying north of 24mm motor rockets for predictability of retrieval reason, among others, but Shuttle was way too interesting not to build!

a

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Yeah, i wasn't clear it was the peak thrust, and speed I was worried about, if the drag is not perfectly symmetric, it may be ok at one thrust setting, but not when you go faster...so the peak thrust of two C-6's and one D-12 is about 12 pounds of thrust as compared to a single E-12 at about 7.5 ..of course your weight might be slightly higher as well so your speed might be a wash, just something to consider...

Frank


Just to be clear - strap-on motors are mostly for show.

The main 24mm engine will provide the bulk of thrust.
Estes's box recommends D12-3 (20 N-sec, 1.6 sec burn) or E12-4 motors (30 N-sec, 2.7 sec thrust duration).

2 x B6's (10 N-sec in total, 0.8 sec burn) or 2 x C6's (20 N-sec in total, 1.6 sec burn), mated to D12 or E12, respectively, would add another 50% or 66% of thrust.

Flying on AT RMS 24mm motors is also in the cards, but lighting the BP and composite motors in parallel would pose a challenge, as the latter take longer to get going.

a
 
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OK, we flew with various combination of motors a few weekends ago, right after a yet another March snow storm.
Not the best day to fly rockets, but we had to gather some data for my son's science fair, so we had ourselves a snow-day rocket outing.

Here is what the shuttle looked like when completed, with Apogee side boosters:
shuttle.jpg IMG_20180311_142604.jpg


Due to the extra weight of 808 onboard camera and JL Alt3, flying on either D12 or E9 was less than successful.
Shuttle weather cooked right off the pad, and gained between 75-100 feet of altitude, before crash landing into snow.

Side boosters saved the day.
D12 + 2x C6-0's flew beautifully to 228 feet:
FlightGraph.jpg


Video below:
[video=youtube;qPQosiDsN-E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPQosiDsN-E&index=2&list=PLI1ZX23Bv4Uw2harvbH68esqy9xN6MVkd&t=0s[/video]
 
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I would NEVER use an Estes E9 motor as the only motor with the Estes Shuttle. Simply doesn't have the lift off kick needed. I'm sure the side booster would help out greatly. It looks like you also upgraded the recovering system with metal connectors and nylon chute. All this must have added a great deal of weight so I can see the need for the side booster. Great Project.


John Boren
 
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