JAXA K10-14 Scale Data

[jrains]

Hi All,

I'm encouraged by the crowdsourcing that's going on to gather scale date here.

Marc McReynolds mentioned at the NARAM-53 awards banquet that the K-10 would be a good subject for Sport Scale. Unfortunately there is little data available. Correspondence with JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, yielded two photographs and a drawing. Marc McReynolds supplied a color drawing at NARAM-53 which was used to determine the shape of the nose cone. Jacob entered this at NARAM-54. First flight was two staged using a PerfectFlite MT4, however the chute stripped on the 2nd stage, so its second flight was single stage. Note that I thought the base color was white based on the photos, the consensus is that it is silver, but who knows? Bottom line is that I wasn't able to drum up any more usable data. Sharing what I do have with the hope that there's more to be found.

Jonathan Rains
NAR #13911

 

[Ez2cDave]

Hello, Jonathan !

Apparently, the "K-10" is actually the Kappa K-10.

I found some data that may be helpful, at least for Sport Scale.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/kappa-7.htm

https://www.planet4589.org/jcm/pubs/space/papers/2010/japan1.pdf

Dave F.

 

[mpitfield]

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I can see why there is a discussion about the colours. With the lighting, it is hard to tell if there are vertical lines of white and silver, or if it is just white and shading. My best guess is alternating vertical stripes of white and silver with a white and red fincan.

 

[Ez2cDave]

 

[jrains]

Hello, Jonathan !

Apparently, the "K-10" is actually the Kappa K-10.

I found some data that may be helpful, at least for Sport Scale.

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/kappa-7.htm

https://www.planet4589.org/jcm/pubs/space/papers/2010/japan1.pdf

Dave F.

Hi Dave,

I knew that K stood for Kappa. What's being repeated in these links, and your post, is the first color photograph in my original post. I repeatedly wrote JAXA asking for more info, to which they replied in two emails...

Dear Mr.Rains,

The picture you've found on the website is all that are available.

We have few photos on K-10 series because the production and operation was discontinued.

Thank you for your understanding.
------------------
Dear Mr.Rains,

Hello,

The launch date of K-10-14 was Aug 27, 1980. Please see the report below:

https://airex.tksc.jaxa.jp/dr/prc/japan/contents/IS0125934000/IS0125934.pdf?IS_STYLE=eng

As for the painted colors, we'll let you know if we can get helpful information.

----------------
Crickets after that.

Just was hoping that someone else on the forum had collected data on the K-10 in the past.

Thanks

Jonathan

 

[PeterAlway]

I've been accumulating Kappa data, but if I had anything better than what you have, I'd have published a drawing of the Kappa-10. ISAS (now JAXA) publications had a tendency not to give proper nosecone lengths--just overall payload fairing lengths. I picked the Kappa versions I did because they had simple conical nose fairings, so the fairing length was the same as the nosecone length.

I'm pretty certain the Kappa-10 was painted overall matte aluminum, as that color was a common one for ISAS rockets, at least after the first few Kappa variants. The payloads tended to be a shinier unpainted metal color, so that the rocket body looks more like matte white in contrast. The red bits may be fluorescent red or red-orange.

 

[jrains]

Thanks Peter. I do plan on building this model for myself simply because I would like to get the staging part to work. At NARAM I blinked on what motor Jacob should use in the first stage. Upgraded from a D12 to an E30. The resulting flight was was really hot, much higher and faster than I had anticipated.
For the nose cone I took a scan of the JAXA color drawing and enlarged it to full size. That’s what Jacob used to shape the cone.

 

[Ez2cDave]

Jonathan,

I'm glad that Peter posted . . . If he doesn't have any additional data, it likely doesn't exist.

Dave F.