AT and CTI compatability

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terryg

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No, not the engines, I have that part down (I love them both), but the shipping tubes! The tubes are too nice to throw away, so they must be pressed into service. They are perfect for the guaranteed to cato estes E9 or E12 batches or for old FSI motors and the like destined for the out of date motor program. As I am sure I am not the only one to be obsessively saving them, are there any suggested combinations of motor size/brand shipping tube combinations for these destined to die sacrificial rockets?
 
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Once upon a time Estes used to ship their motors in cardboard tubes, three to a tube with a piece of nichrome for the igniter. They actually had a balsa nose cone and a thrust ring that fit the shipping tubes. I never make a rocket around them though... wish I had, and had saved it, it would be quite the conversation piece now.
 
I don't save all of them, but have save a bunch. I have used them on a few oddrocs including parts of my Saturn V induction rockets. I also found that one, I forget whether it was CTI or AT, that matches the tube on the AT Cheetah. I inherited one that had the top part of the BT crunched. I cut it down and replaced it with the packing tube. It took more finishing than a rocket tube but it was free.
 
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You make rockets out of the reload and casing shipping containers? That's cool. I've used the clear casing shipping containers to visually see and measure an approx. packing length prior to building a few scratch builds. They sort of flex though. The CTI casings came in clear plastic containers for H class 4 grain casing. Aertoech 38/480 reloads had big old cardboard tubes big enough for an assembled casing to slide into, but rather thin wall. I guess you could scrap build a couple of small B-C estes kind of low power builds out of the trash about a foot long or so with a carved foam nosecone I guess and some cardboard fins from the shipping boxes if you just want to troll people for entertainment.
 
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