Soyuz build from Cosmodrome Vostok

delta22 said:

Completed rocket!

I am both pleased with the result and glad construction is done. Showed rocket to the family and my daughter said it looks like it should take a mouse into space.

Top section weighs 49.65 oz with altimeter sled. Bottom section is 47.25 oz. Recovery and motors not included. 6 lbs as shown, 8.5 lbs flight ready.

Rocket is 60.5 inches tall with a CG at 34.5" from very top of rocket, or 4.5" behind the recovery separation point.

This week will prep recovery, motors and igniters.

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But...but... but...there's no decals!:y:

It looks beautiful!

The flight was amazing, but the boosters fell off! All four of them! It was surprising quiet, even with all the engines on board.

eggplant said:

The flight was amazing, but the boosters fell off! All four of them! .

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Mission Points!

Hope all was recovered w/o damage......

rockets4kids said:

Congratulations! That is one awesome build!

I believe you mentioned early on that this started out as a kit, and as such has been proven to be flight stable. But I am curious how stable it is. My gut feeling tells me that this model is on the very edge of stability.

My knowledge of fluid dynamics is armchair at best, but the complex shape of the booster pods leaves me to believe that the fins will be operating in some rather turbulent air, reducing the effectiveness of the smallish fins to begin with. I believe this would make simulation using anything less than CFD tools not terribly accurite.

If anyone has any comments on this I would sure love to hear them. And needless to say, like everyone else here, I am on the edge of my seat for launch videos!

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Cosmodrome says it can only fly on a fast H...a 242 - IIRC.
That is a fast blue.


Given the overall shape...it would appear that this would operate much like a cone stabilized rocket.

At about 1pm today the Soyuz went up for its first flight.

The flame effect was dramatic and pleasing.

The central G125 and 15 of the 16 D11-P motors fired. Altimeter reported apogee at 716 ft.

Initial liftoff was clean and straight up to about 400 feet, then there was a pronounced corkscrew to its flight path, which ended at deployment. Rocket4kids, you were absolutely correct, the turbulence did prove to be an issue.

Deployment went as planned, however when the lower rocket hit the ground all 4 boosters separated pretty cleanly from the core. This was coming down slowly onto soft grass. Very fixable, but will require a much stronger connection method going forward.

My son suggested telling everyone that the boosters were supposed to do that...

Flight pictures posted here. Got ground and onboard video but editing and posting those will happen tomorrow, as I am going out dancing with my wife tonight

Very impressive flight ,great pictures.Congratulations on what i would call a very successful flight !!

BRAVO !


Paul T

Fantastic job Boris, from start to finish.
I love that second lift off shot with the outboard flames...

I 'm sure after all that work, it gets a little tense when the button is pushed.

Can you tell us a little bit about the method of cluster ignition of the BP and composite motor (one of your specialties no doubt).

Absolutely beautiful! Ditto on that second launch pic ... just fantastic. Thanks for documenting your work so carefully and sharing it here with all of us!

Here's a close up view taken with a cheap camera that was worth risking to get a good shot. These were exported from video. Evidently the camera duplicates several frames to get a respectable frame rate. I also have several good stills of Boris trying to figure out what button to push to start the camera.


View attachment soyuz2small.bmp

View attachment soyuz3small.bmp

View attachment soyuz4small.bmp

More pictures!

Another magnificant cluster flight by Boris.

His scale Soyuz was extremely well detailed and finished, and masterfully constructed with 4 outboard booster pods each using (4) D11-P motors retained by a central bolts, and a central G125. The liftoff was spectacular, with lots of flame and smoke. At 400' there was a slight coning to which continued to apogee followed by a picture perfect deployment.

The only hiccup was the 4 booster pods separated cleanly from the airframe on landing. Nothing was damaged, and Boris will reattach them in a more shear resistant manner before the next flight. Can't wait to see it launch again.

Bob

[YOUTUBE]oZQTdCFl3Hg[/YOUTUBE]

Flight video. Ground and onboard edited together.

Soyuz - flight 1 4/30/11 CMASS Amesbury, MA

Firing 1x ProX G125 and 15x D11-P

[video=youtube;eUsnP4k4ig4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUsnP4k4ig4[/video]

Very impressive!!!

Way to go!!

Thanks Bill for the camera at the pad. Cool pictures.

Thanks all for the kind words.

Some pictures by my wife Laurie from the day of the launch.

Mike Kruger (of Cosmdrome Rocketry, producer of the Vostok kit the Soyuz is built from), his son and I.

Bob Harrington's very nice paper Soyuz about to fly. This was one of the inspirations for my build.

Prepping recovery. Set up recovery the night before the launch. At the field added a 24" Rocketflite ematch with 1g recovery charge placed below the chutes and connected the quick link in my hand to the upper section of rocket.

Thanks to Alan for help at the pad.

The required "now stand next to the rocket while I take your picture".

MaxQ said:

Can you tell us a little bit about the method of cluster ignition of the BP and composite motor (one of your specialties no doubt).

Click to expand...

Last year I build a cluster box to provide high current for cluster launches.

It is powered by a 14.4V 5.0Ah Lipo battery, switched by a 200amp Ford starter relay and power is delivered through fine stranded (very flexible) 10 awg hobby wire. Box weighs 6 lbs and can deliver over 1300W. Build thread: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?t=11766

This battery is a very "stiff" power source, capable of delivering high current with minimal voltage sag.

To balance voltage vs. current load, specifically to take advantage of available voltage and reduce current demand, I wired Rocketflite ML igniters in series strings of 2 igniters. Then wired 8 of these strings in parallel to fire the 16 BP motors. One more ML fired the central G125.

Went with Rocketflite ML igniters instead of the MF ematches because they burn longer, giving them a motor ignition reliability advantage, as long as a lot of electrical power is available.

Each ML igniter has a resistance of 0.8ohms. Total resistance of the 17 igniters as wired was about 0.2 ohms. Into a this load the cluster box delivered more than 14V and 70A, or 1000W+.

In the year I have been using this cluster box, it has fired 28 cluster flights, igniting 198 of 201 motors loaded.


More info also at:
https://www.bpasa.com/Rocketflite.htm and
https://www.bpasa.com/Cluster-box.htm

It is a lot of fun to enjoy launching rockets with my son. In the previous two posts, pictures show Paul prepping recovery and cluster ignition on his Viper at the same time I did these things on the Soyuz. His Viper fired its 4x D12-5 motors as it usually does for a great flight. He also helped me with pad setup and recovery of the Soyuz and the Thunderbird.

First picture shows me using a frame made from 1" x 1/4" aluminum to attach a video camera to my still camera. Still camera is Canon XS DSLR set to ISO 800, F8, 1/3000. Video is Samsung HD set to 720 60p.

By confirming alignment of both cameras and setting video to capture a wider area, I can aim both cameras using the optical viewfinder of the DSLR and usually get good pictures and acceptable video.

Posting close up Soyuz launch picture with all motors at peak output. This image is cropped but full resolution.

Last picture is my English Electric Thunderbird, a 2x upscale of a FlisKits Thunderbird, going up for its fifth flight an hour after the Soyuz. Firing a central ProX F30-6, 5x D12-5 and 4x D11-P.

This was last winter's build. A 3/15 scale model of a British surface to air, anti-aircraft missile deployed from the late 50's to the early 70's, as a defense against Russian heavy bombers.

What's next for Boris?

May I copy a few of these to the gallery?

JAL3 said:

May I copy a few of these to the gallery?

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Please feel free to do so.

MaxQ said:

What's next for Boris?

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Just completed:

Last weekend went to TARC with my son Paul's team of three 7th graders. They worked together well as a team and put in a solid effort, placing 38 out of the final 100 in the national competition with a score of 28.

This is a very good result for a young team the first time out in a competitive event that started with 607 teams.

Their families are all very proud of them.

We stopped by the Smithsonian Aerospace museum at Dulles airport on the way home and saw an SR-71, a Concorde, a full scale Shuttle used for drop/glide tests and a number of other cool planes and rockets.

TARC is an impressively well run event in a beautiful venue. The boys had a great time and are already planning their next TARC attempt.

In process:

Writing a couple articles for Sport Rocketry about cluster projects.

Going forward:

Plan to repair the Soyuz and get many more flights from it.

Also planning a couple rocket glider projects. One is a Delta Star by R&R Model Aircraft: https://www.randrmodelaircraft.com/R&R RC Rocket Planes.htm The other is experimental, will start a TRF thread on this one soon.

Sorry to resurrect a long-dead thread, but I was curious if/how repairs have proceeded? Did you take any pics of the booster-core separation points - did the epoxy simply separate from the core & fibreglass shrouds?

I'm hoping to have my Vostok finally, finally finished in the next 2 weeks and I'm coming up on final assembly, any advice you have on preventing separation would be appreciated!

I have not repaired the Soyuz yet, but absolutely intend to later this summer. Have new projects in the works that are taking up all my rocket time, TRF threads to come soon.

Because I had reinforced all Soyuz components with thin layers of fiberglass, had assumed that surface bonding was sufficient to secure boosters. As can be seen in the picture, this was clearly a mistake.

Cosmodrome Rocketry instructions for the Vostok kit specify small 1/8" ply internal supports for booster attachment. This approach or something similar would be a very good idea.

Suggest combining surface attachment of the boosters with internal support pieces as recommended in the kit instructions to attach the boosters. When I get time to do repairs, that is what I plan to do.

Fantastic, thanks for the pic! The damage looks pretty minor, hopefully it'll be an easy fix.

Well late for this but its an amazing rocket, love the thunderbird as well.

Thank you.

Finally getting around to repairing the Soyuz.

In its first and only flight on 4/2011 the boosters separated from the rocket core during recovery. While the real Soyuz drops its boosters, my build was not supposed to do this.

Fortunately they separated cleanly.

Scraped off excess epoxy at the points where the sections separated.

Also cut a 0.75" x 1.25" hole in the base of each booster to receive a rectangular post that will help bond parts together.

Woo! My favorite thread is active again. Your experience with your Soyuz led me to modify my Vostok build in a similar manner, I drilled a hole in the side of the boosters at the base of the large shroud just above where the 3.1" tube ends. I extended the hole all the way through the inner central tube, then drilled matching holes on the central core. I epoxied dowels into the central core so that they were touching the motor tube then slid the boosters over the dowel.

Will you be surface-mounting your posts on the central core or will you cut a similar hole to go down to the motor mount?

Did I not make this kit complex enough? :confused2:

*heh* I actually thought my dowel solution was simpler than the plywood fin slot attachment things the kit uses. I tried using the kit's method on one booster (cutting a slot in the outer shroud as well as the inner core tube) - I don't know how in ever-living heck anyone is able to keep both slots perpendicular to each other since the inner tube is so deep inside.

Using the dowel method I used my drill press, lay each booster on the press deck, angled the deck so that the top booster edge was parallel with the floor then drilled a hole. I put matching holes in the central core tube and then epoxied the dowels in place. I can put up some pics when I get home if Boris doesn't mind me temporarily hijacking his thread.