1.) can you expand a little further on how you came about determining the best or recommended RC function for shuttle flying, I believe you stated the elevons (ala the original Luther Hux plans, were surpassed by your own experimentation with rudder only control? ...and maybe not even a full length rudder?
Sometime in early 1978, I made a huge cardboard shuttle orbiter to throw off of a cliff (guess what, it did NOT weigh 30 pounds). The elevons were elevator only. The steering was by rudder. First flight, I throw it, it goes into a shallow dive, I try to turn it right, but it rolls to the left. I came to realize that the full-height rudder was acting like an vertical aileron instead of a rudder. So, next throw, I think I will give opposite rudder, to make it turn like I want. I throw it, it dives slightly then I pull up into a higher angle of attack glide, give it left rudder to make it roll right (based on flight 1s opposite roll), but instead, it yaws left and turns left.
So, the full height rudder would only reverse (causing roll) at low angles of attack, while at higher angles it acted normally for yaw.
Because of that, when I built my first R/C piggyback 1/72 orbiter for rocket boosting (1982), I used mixed elevons. And I was never really that comfortable flying ailerons, as most of the other models I flew were rudder-elevator. Then one day (in 1985), I lost visual orientation on the orbiter, and it spiraled into the ground, smashing the nose.
When I rebuilt it, I wanted to try out rudder control again. But to avoid the reversal problem, to only make the lower part of the rudder move. I was not sure if this would work, so I only did a crude nose section build job, and flew the model with the crude nose to try out the half rudder type of steering. That proved to work out great, so all my orbiters ever since have used the lower half of the rudder for steering and elevons only move for elevator.
As I mentioned in another message, there is one drawback on boost. The rudder does act like a vertical aileron during boost, so left rudder causes right roll. So, I programmed my transmitter to make the rudder move in reverse on boost. Then when I flip the Boost mode/Glide mode switch to glide, which also auto-seps the orbiter, the rudder moves the correct way to steer down for glide.
2.) I recall seeing in the Space Modeling magazine long ago, a big foam core shuttle, may have been Matt Steele's.
Was that just done on a lark, like a big joke "odd roc",....or was that part of the whole R&D thing you guys were doing?
Two things. Last part first.
I did not do any rocket projects with Matt Steele after 1989, after he decided to no longer be on a team with me, and months later he decided to organize a split from the HARA NAR section in Huntsville. I never was part of North Coast officially, but before 1989 had let NCR make use of some of my designs (the Star Spangled G Bird was my design, but my BT-80 one would fly on an F far higher than the twice as heavy NCR thick walled one would on a G. And the NCR 4 Juno-I even used a nose section cast from an RTV mold made from my original model).
The North Coast shuttle that came out years later was not produced with any input from me. Matt Steele was partly going by bits of what he remembered about my 1/72 models before then, perhaps some very old notes or sketches or photos. Well, there was an article I wrote for SNOAR NEWS in the late 1980s on how to get something like a shuttle to fly, which discussed a lot about how to get the thrustline for one engine in the ET correct, and IIRC illustrating the problems of trying to do a cluster......
But for the most part the engineering and conversion of that NCR model was done by Matt. That turned out to be a VERY heavy model that was underpowered on a G motor. Part of the performance killer on it was the use of clear acrylic tubing and 1/8 clear acrylic sheet for the Estes-type fin system, which added so much weight to the back that even the solid balsa nose cone require a lot of noseweight to be added to it. If the fin system had been a paper type tube (or arrowshafts), and balsa or plywood fins, it would have been lighter in the back and at the least probably not have needed extra noseweight in the ET nose, which would have made it fly better on a G.
I should point out that Matt was nice enough to send me a couple of the NCR shuttle kits when it came out (one to go up on ebay in a few months). And when Estes was freeing up warehouse space years after the NCR shuttle went OOP, he sent a couple of boxes of leftover ET & SRB tubes to me. I did use those tubes on my 1998 boilerplate (and some sport birds).
As to the NCR foam glider, I think you are referring to the NCR Avatar shuttle.
That glider was made by some company out in California as an R/C model. I think for slope-soaring. It was molded out of expanded bead foam, like a cheap styrofoam cooler, or more accurately in this case like cheap but big foam toy planes you might find in Wal-Mart rather than a hobby shop. I do not know any of the story of how Matt came across this and decided to buy some to be converted to sell as rocket boosted gliders. I will say I never saw an R/C version of one boost straight on an E, as it was tail-heavy and required a lot of pilot correction on boost (I do recall hearing that Doug Pratt had some good luck flying his, using a long burn motor and not the E15 that model often flew on). Well, NCR also made the Avatar Arrow, a booster rocket to carry it up piggy-back, which was supposed to solve the boost problem. But of course the combo weighed about twice as much, so it needed twice the motor power to fly as high as the Avatar alone might have if it could boost straight
Even if I had been asked to try to help work the bugs out, that one was too full of bugs.
Photos below: First three of that big cardboard orbiter in 1978. They are screen grabs from an old Super-8 movie.
4th Pic - a 2-shot composite of the 1982 Piggyback orbiter after it crashed in 1985 and I converted it to try out rudder control using the lower half of the rudder. Also visible is the smashed original nose, and the temporary replacement nose.
Last photo - a scan I found on the web of an old NCR catalog page showing the Avatar Shuttle.
- George Gassaway
) using the right angles for the motors and all the extra. I am getting quite excited to start work on this! I also didn't know a friend who was into R/C (sort of retired) as much as rocketry. He has a few giant planes he said could strap a shuttle too and fly. So I may be able to test glide it a few times to get Cg's right. Im sure theres going to be alot to learn in testing!!
