BT-60 and a Bertha NC

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Here's my idea -

FinMod.jpg

Find a long coupler tube - long enough to go the full length of the fin root.

Cut the body tube into 3 sections.

Glue the coupler tube to the upper body tube.

Glue the small internal finlets onto the middle section of body tube, slide over coupler.

Glue the last section of body tube on to the bottom of the coupler - this will lock the middle bit in place but still allow it to spin.

Complete the rocket :)

Krusty
 
Whoa.. Good thinking. I will play around with it a bit. Thanks for the idea.
 
Just got a call. A guy said his uncle found it while tilling his field. I pick it up over lunch tomorrow :)
 

IMAG3400 by beerorkid, on Flickr

Chipped fin and a bit of wear on the leading edge of another fin. Sat out in a day of rain and only the holes for the altimeter seem like they swelled a bit. Other than that she will fly again.

I offered him $20 as a reward and he declined it. Eventually let me get him a 6 pack of Sam Adams and a 24 ounce Heineken. Said his uncle found it in the field and gave it to his son. The son thought it was awesome but he wanted to get it back to me because he figured I would be sad I lost it. Dude was pretty proud of his son. Mee too :)
 
BeerorKid said:
Chipped fin and a bit of wear on the leading edge of another fin. Sat out in a day of rain and only the holes for the altimeter seem like they swelled a bit. Other than that she will fly again.

I offered him $20 as a reward and he declined it. Eventually let me get him a 6 pack of Sam Adams and a 24 ounce Heineken. Said his uncle found it in the field and gave it to his son. The son thought it was awesome but he wanted to get it back to me because he figured I would be sad I lost it. Dude was pretty proud of his son. Mee too :)
Click to expand...

That doesn't look too bad at all! And it never hurts to have a rocket with a few battle scars :)

You should let the family know when you launch next and see if they want to come along... And you never know, the uncle may allow you to use his farm for launching!!

Krusty
 
That seems to be the consensus from all I have told about it. Maybe his son might be into rockets. The guy runs an auto repair shop and well I think he is decent. Might give him my business in the future. I pulled out the 24MM case to show him why I wanted it back so bad. Explained how it uses composite propellant and he was very intrigued. Said he looked at it and unscrewed the retainer and had no clue how it worked and screwed the retainer back on.

On the initial phone call he said it did not have a parachute attached, which seemed really odd, but it was just jammed in the BT very rough. Took about 5 minutes to untangle the chute and cords, but the 24MM case cleaned up great. I figured I had lost it and ordered another. So now I have three 24MM cases and... welll... that is darn nice ;)

Nose cone area had some water damage, but it will just take a bit of sanding to get it back to the proper fit. I am darn impressed it weathered the rain and many freezing nights and seems fine. I think I might hack off a few inches off the top and then put one of those new BT-60 baffles in there down near the fins as well. I got her back and can hack the crap out of it I figure.

Still going to try for the 1/2 CD and spinny fin idea in the future though. I see no reason to not do it.

Still just baffled that an E18 could take it that high. I had the F24 ready for the next flight.
 
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lets us see...comparatively lightweight rocket + a motor that has a 2 second burn time = holy cow it's going into orbit :). nice to hear that you got the case back (you can never have too many cases, especially the 24mm).
rex
 
Agreed. I simply did not know what I was doing. I had these visions of this relatively light and skinny rocket just acting like the LPR rockets I had flown before, but on a bigger motor. I had no clue, even after open rocket sims, that it would go that fricking high. It just did not connect in me brains before I launched it. I will do her next launch on a taped D12 and then load the RMS in it with a much smaller chute and maybe a streamer as well.

I am about to lose that launch area because the farmer will prob plant some crops or something. Boooooooooooo......

Still though. What an adventure that taught me so much. I am so happy it all turned out so well.
 
Bah! Nothing wrong with learning by doing!!

I learned not to launch very small rockets on C motors on very windy days.. Well, at least if I wanted to get them back ;)

Krusty
 
heh, a big bertha will hit about 1000' on a D12...I suppose that we've all used a motor that was bigger than what we should have used. a mosquito on an A10(3x but did manage to find it), a goblin on a D12-7 (2x, lost it both times)...I would suggest a D15-5 for this one. I can tell you that a bbertha goes out of sight at around 1500' @ 500mph :)(got it back by sheer luck, another rocketeer found it while looking for his rocket).
 
so the thought occurred to me...that by now you have probably accumulated a number of 18mm motor mounts...so here is a suggestion for you :). suggested reading; chapter 11 of the handbook on multistaging/gap staging.
rex

View attachment rexga.ork
 
You've got quite a rocket adventure going on here; pretty cool about the find.
 
Rex R said:
so the thought occurred to me...that by now you have probably accumulated a number of 18mm motor mounts...so here is a suggestion for you :). suggested reading; chapter 11 of the handbook on multistaging/gap staging.
rex
Click to expand...

That looks awesome. Multistaging scares me a bit. Even the mini Comanche 3 seems like it would go way too high. It will happen one day though.
 
Here are a few I came up with Beerorkids you might like. The Bt-60 is 8.5" tall that will fly on the f-24 or 39 weighs 4oz. The other is a Bt-80 that will fly on the f-35 8" tall with a weight of 6oz.
:cool:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
Dude, you have some awesome builds. I love what you are doing to the nose cone.
 
BeerorKid said:
Dude, you have some awesome builds. I love what you are doing to the nose cone.
Click to expand...
That's the one thing I'm going to do is show you guys how to do the nose cone. Try and give back. Right now I'm working with some water base paints that you can spray a glitter flake on from hobby lobby. Then do a clear coat over that. Here's a picture of some of my rockets. Alex's seen a few of these.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
just trying to help you advance your education :). wanted to try my hand at 'building' a two stager in open rocket, found it was fairly painless, hard part was getting the booster to tumble...and I found that one can copy paste from one window to another which made life much easier.
Rex
 
Well thanks to estesbasher and other inspirations here I decided to blindly scratch build once again.

BT-60 with a pointy nose and some non through wall fins I sorta just drew up.


IMAG3422 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3424 by beerorkid, on Flickr

Graph paper is printable


IMAG3415 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3414 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3416 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3421 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3423 by beerorkid, on Flickr

Very thin fillets after CA the fins on. Will wood filler it up right.


IMAG3425 by beerorkid, on Flickr

24MM motor mount with retainer just because.

I will now slather her in wood putty and sand sand sand sand to beautiful. MMT will sit flush with the end of the tube so it can sorta sit. I think I got the CG / CP not right, but have no way to test in a sim with them fins. Will add nose weight just in case.

Was thinking of rear ejection possibly and fusing the NC.
 
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I like it. It reminds me of a kit I seen, Then it hit me Binder design kit the galaxy. The BT-60 is one of my most used tubes from Estes. the nose cone off the vagabond kit looks real nice on a rocket. You know how to do the swing test? Just do that to see if you have to add some nose weight. With all my Estes cones I'll cut a small piece of tube then add a couple. Glue it with some Jb-quick weld. Then if you have to add weight I use some Kevlar in place of the I-bolt in the bulkhead. Run it down to the tip of the nose and glue it with the BB's. That way you've got a hard attachment for the shock cord. When I glass the tube they always come out bigger than the nose cone, So I'll use some bondo to try and feather it to where it looks like one piece They look some thing like this before I give them the paint.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
Just drill some small hole in the shoulder on the nose cone. With the JB-weld I've never had one let go.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us Keep it up It looks good. Beerorkid.:cool:
 
Estesbasher, This build is dedicated to you. I would start a new build thread, but I am still on the same BT and the pointy NC came with the 4 pack of Bertha nose cones for these scratch builds so WTF.


Bbashy2 by beerorkid, on Flickr

ork

not sure of the name yet, but it came from a drunken Sunday afternoon and I am working on it. BorkBashy.. GORLAXian Bruiser... Borkotron 2084...

I got way too crazy with the fin holes. That has to at least do some serious drag. I think it will hurt me though.


IMAG3427 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3428 by beerorkid, on Flickr

I swore I got pics of it, but... Anyways. Chopped the NC down hard, but the lip was so low that I ended up cutting it out with a blade. Drilled epoxy holes and attached a bit over an inch of BT-60 to attach the NC and the coupler.

2 OZ of BBs + epoxy on a skewer through the NC with a 380 LB loop kevlar around the skewer. Made a ply bulkhead and threaded the kevlar through it and epoxied it down. The edge there is the coupler glued in.


IMAG3429 by beerorkid, on Flickr


IMAG3432 by beerorkid, on Flickr

I can still jam a baffle in there, but not sure if it is worth it. MMT will get glued once I get the body sanded smoooooooooth. Will install rail buttons and paint awesome. That nose weight seems insane, so it better fly darn great darnit ;)

estesbasher, I would of not done this without your posts. Thanks. Sorta opens up more techniques I have not seen by searching or that have not been done. It totally works though. Well, as far as I can tell. Thanks for sharing.
 
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Once again I thought I took more pics, but I wood filled the NC to the BT and coupler darn fine. Another coat of gray primer will be ready for sanding soon.

The NC might have way too much weight, but I think for now she will fly straight.
 
krusty said:
That's looking schweet!!

Did you settle on a name for it yet??

Krusty
Click to expand...

Dude, the holes in the fins are a direct result of your Nautilus III (Build)

Name is GORLAXIA

I was bummed how small my first hole was and kept going. True story. I cut one way too close to the leading edge.

2ND primer after some wood filler. Many more sandings to go. MMT is not epoxied in yet.











:)
 
Now you've done it. The rocket gods will get their hands on this one. Don't dedicate anything to me. That's what this forum's for. I think it works real good too. Sure is a lot of these guys do some awesome builds in here. One day you can pay if forward. Well that's after you've built 200+ rockets. You'll find what works for you by watching others and asking Questions.
Here is another thing you can do. I see in the picture where you've got tape around the coupler. Take some CA. soak the inside of the body tube, Sand it down with some 220 grit. If the fit is still loose repeat the same. By doing this you can build up the inside of the tube where it will fit the coupler. I like the looks of it so far. Keep the pointy side up.:wink:
 

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