Shotgun Wad... For Rockets ?

We were hiking today and there was a spot where the locals had been shooting clay pigeons.

Looking at all the trash they left behind got me to wondering.....

Has anybody tried designing a shotgun style wad to be used in a rocket instead of using dog barf?

It would act like a piston does, but wouldn't use up space so it would be great for smaller rockets. It could be attached to the shock chord and thus re-usable.

Only issue I see is the recovery shock chord would need to be attached near the motor, and not up at the nose cone.

Something like the VP-60 or 65 shown below that doesn't have the shock absorbing space at the bottom.

Thoughts?



View attachment 387695

Public Missiles uses a piston system for laundry ejection in their kits. In some of my earlier builds I used a sliding baffle to act as a piston. The baffle holes ensure that the laundry gets ejected even if the baffle hangs up for some reason.

P.S. This may be closer to what you are thinking of:
https://dinochutes.com/Petal-Protector-26-Petal26.htm

Dog barf is cheap, easy and biodegradable. For the vast majority of applications it works very well. I have heard of pistons binding due to temperatures at a launch colder than when the piston was built. Not saying this idea isn't valid, but I would need a good reason to change from dog barf.

You'll have a hard time finding shotgun wads much bigger than 18mm od. (I think 12 gauge is 18 mm od. I need to check. Edit: its not, it's slightly larger.) And if you use one, tie it to your shock cord so it doesn't end up as litter. They don't decompose as well as dog barf.

kuririn said:

P.S. This may be closer to what you are thinking of:
https://dinochutes.com/Petal-Protector-26-Petal26.htm

Click to expand...

And that's it! Thanks kuririn.