Kframe
Well-Known Member
About a year ago, when I was working on my Stingray scale series, I decided to learn how to fiberglass a cardboard tube to increase its strength.
I bought some materials, watched some videos and gave it a go. As expected the first tube, a section of Estes BT-80, looked pretty rough, and the second one looked slightly better but not usable for the Stingray project.
However, I don't throw much hobby stuff away so those tubes went into my rocketry closet.
Fast-forward to sometime this past summer. My local club had a picnic and an older member who was getting out of rocketry had donated a few 29mm RMS cases and about 30 reloads from G54-H238 to the club. At the picnic we had an auction and I won all those. Only catch was I didn't have a rocket that would accept that complete range of motors, and given the age of the motors I didn't really want to risk one of my nice 29mm rockets with unknown quality propellants.
The solution was obvious, I needed a rocket built around this range of motors.
I went to my rocketry closet and started picking through my parts and soon I came across those two glassed BT-80 tubes. I also found a fitting fiberglass nosecone that I got for free in a pile of junk parts at my other club's picnic. As mentioned earlier, the tubes were cosmetically rough but they were strong (enough) despite the flaws. This rocket wasn't planned to be pretty, but a workhorse.
I keep all the scraps of plywood from cutting fins and bulkheads so I had plenty on hand for fins and centering rings.
Shortly I had a RockSim model of my intended 'utility' rocket. I wanted to run some sims before much work so I could tweak the design to fly on anything from a stout F to a punchy H. (Not all of the sims are shown in the pic below.)
Once I got the basic design planned I cut the fins, centering rings and fin slots.
Then I dry fit everything before applying any epoxy.
Once satisfied nothing would bind or not fit I glued the fins to the motor tube with wood glue, and then on the outside of the rocket applied fillets of JB Weld.
The backing nuts for the rail lug machine screws were secured with globs of JB Weld as well.
Once it was basically finished (still had to find a chute for it) I sprayed it with silver and a can of supposedly neon green that is more like a Dr. Seuss pea soup color, but again, it was laying around and I was trying to do this on the cheap.
And then finally, since I don't (yet) have a CirCut I hand-cut decals out of MonoKote film with a surgical scalpel.
That was a pain in the butt, but it turned out pretty good I think. I'm also pleased with the name I chose, Basket Case, as this is a pile of basically junk I assembled and it sure ain't winning any beauty contests, lol.
This bird was ready to fly, and even though it cost me almost nothing to build I didn't want to sacrifice it to a sketchy motor right off the bat so I did some ground tests on a couple of the thirty year old RMS reloads, and they seemed to vent all their energy in the right direction, so I felt a little more confident I wasn't just going to have a failure on the first launch.
Oooo, Mach diamonds!
I have since flown this on F67, G54, G108, H238 and H115 DM. I think about seven flights now, I'd have to look at my logbook again. It has earned a few scratches and dings here and there but it is structurally sound and has been a pretty straight flier. It does spin and wiggle a bit under boost, but stays vertical.
Another fun thing I did with it was to built a light module for night flights. Those are fun!
Bought parts from Menards (Home Depot equivalent) intended for truck lighting.
The lights have red 3M adhesive strips on them which stuck very firmly to yet another practice section of fiberglassed BT-80.
To turn them on, remove the Super Big Bertha nosecone and clip the loose wire into the included quick-connector and wallah!
Oh, I almost forgot. I built this so it can either be flown with just standard motor eject or could be set up for dual deployment. The picture below shows how a heavy duty coupler is secured to both body sections with roundhead sheet metal screws.
So far I've just flown it with motor eject (and a JLCR), but I have built a DD bay with an RRC3 for it that I'll try in the spring 2024.
You can also see, in this pic, how rough the glassing job was that I did on those tubes.
On a G54 it's getting about 700' at about 135mph and the H238 pushes it to over 1800' at around 300mph.
Those most expensive thing on this rocket were the lights I purchased specifically for the night-module, and the Kevlar shock cord and parachute were about $40 but I already had those on hand so I don't count them.
Ugly as it is, this has become one of my favorite rockets, and is the one I 'test the skies with' before I fly other HP rockets.
I bought some materials, watched some videos and gave it a go. As expected the first tube, a section of Estes BT-80, looked pretty rough, and the second one looked slightly better but not usable for the Stingray project.
However, I don't throw much hobby stuff away so those tubes went into my rocketry closet.
Fast-forward to sometime this past summer. My local club had a picnic and an older member who was getting out of rocketry had donated a few 29mm RMS cases and about 30 reloads from G54-H238 to the club. At the picnic we had an auction and I won all those. Only catch was I didn't have a rocket that would accept that complete range of motors, and given the age of the motors I didn't really want to risk one of my nice 29mm rockets with unknown quality propellants.
The solution was obvious, I needed a rocket built around this range of motors.
I went to my rocketry closet and started picking through my parts and soon I came across those two glassed BT-80 tubes. I also found a fitting fiberglass nosecone that I got for free in a pile of junk parts at my other club's picnic. As mentioned earlier, the tubes were cosmetically rough but they were strong (enough) despite the flaws. This rocket wasn't planned to be pretty, but a workhorse.
I keep all the scraps of plywood from cutting fins and bulkheads so I had plenty on hand for fins and centering rings.
Shortly I had a RockSim model of my intended 'utility' rocket. I wanted to run some sims before much work so I could tweak the design to fly on anything from a stout F to a punchy H. (Not all of the sims are shown in the pic below.)
Once I got the basic design planned I cut the fins, centering rings and fin slots.
Then I dry fit everything before applying any epoxy.
Once satisfied nothing would bind or not fit I glued the fins to the motor tube with wood glue, and then on the outside of the rocket applied fillets of JB Weld.
The backing nuts for the rail lug machine screws were secured with globs of JB Weld as well.
Once it was basically finished (still had to find a chute for it) I sprayed it with silver and a can of supposedly neon green that is more like a Dr. Seuss pea soup color, but again, it was laying around and I was trying to do this on the cheap.
And then finally, since I don't (yet) have a CirCut I hand-cut decals out of MonoKote film with a surgical scalpel.
That was a pain in the butt, but it turned out pretty good I think. I'm also pleased with the name I chose, Basket Case, as this is a pile of basically junk I assembled and it sure ain't winning any beauty contests, lol.
This bird was ready to fly, and even though it cost me almost nothing to build I didn't want to sacrifice it to a sketchy motor right off the bat so I did some ground tests on a couple of the thirty year old RMS reloads, and they seemed to vent all their energy in the right direction, so I felt a little more confident I wasn't just going to have a failure on the first launch.
Oooo, Mach diamonds!
I have since flown this on F67, G54, G108, H238 and H115 DM. I think about seven flights now, I'd have to look at my logbook again. It has earned a few scratches and dings here and there but it is structurally sound and has been a pretty straight flier. It does spin and wiggle a bit under boost, but stays vertical.
Another fun thing I did with it was to built a light module for night flights. Those are fun!
Bought parts from Menards (Home Depot equivalent) intended for truck lighting.
The lights have red 3M adhesive strips on them which stuck very firmly to yet another practice section of fiberglassed BT-80.
To turn them on, remove the Super Big Bertha nosecone and clip the loose wire into the included quick-connector and wallah!
Oh, I almost forgot. I built this so it can either be flown with just standard motor eject or could be set up for dual deployment. The picture below shows how a heavy duty coupler is secured to both body sections with roundhead sheet metal screws.
So far I've just flown it with motor eject (and a JLCR), but I have built a DD bay with an RRC3 for it that I'll try in the spring 2024.
You can also see, in this pic, how rough the glassing job was that I did on those tubes.
On a G54 it's getting about 700' at about 135mph and the H238 pushes it to over 1800' at around 300mph.
Those most expensive thing on this rocket were the lights I purchased specifically for the night-module, and the Kevlar shock cord and parachute were about $40 but I already had those on hand so I don't count them.
Ugly as it is, this has become one of my favorite rockets, and is the one I 'test the skies with' before I fly other HP rockets.
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