Lockheed Martin DAGR

Well, I finally finished this build. A couple of years ago I stumbled upon this rocket being developed by Lockheed Martin, the DAGR. The real thing is a 70mm, air-to-ground guided rocket. My near full scale version is 65mm, with 38mm motor.

As a tube fired rocket, I was particularly intrigued by the curved fin design, and wanted to replicate it. After some experimentation, I finally figured it out. It includes dual deploy, with the forward fin section doubling as the AV Bay (38mm inner AV bay with Raven 2).

It's relatively heavy (about 6 lbs ready to fly), and sims out at 1500' on an H268-R. Due to the forward fins, I had to add about 16 oz of nose weight to get a reasonable margin of stability. I hope to fly it in the next couple of months.

Special thanks to Mark at StickerShock - he always does nice work.
(I included a pic of the real thing for comparison.)



-Bill

For your sims did you use rocksim? If so, how did you sim the curved fins?
Looks like a cool rocket.

Thanks. Yes, I used RockSim. For curved fins I used the dimensions straight, without the curve. Surface area should be the same - at least that's what made sense to me. I couldn't figure out any other way to do it. :confused2:

Wow, at first i thought you were showing us pictures of the actual rocket! Only when I viewed the pictures full sized, i noticed the motor reatiner. Looks very realistic. Are those fins peices of body tubes?

Alex

Worsaer said:

Thanks. Yes, I used RockSim. For curved fins I used the dimensions straight, without the curve. Surface area should be the same - at least that's what made sense to me. I couldn't figure out any other way to do it. :confused2:

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Probably the way I'd do it. Someday I want to figure out a tube launcher for rockets like this, with collapsing fins that spring out into position.

Aksrockets said:

Looks very realistic. Are those fins pieces of body tubes?

Alex

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Thanks - yes, I played with several materials for the curved fins. I needed something that would not flop around or shear off, and Blue Tube worked out best. It's pretty resilient, not brittle. When testing it out I actually cut out a fin, then tried bending it backward, stomped on it, etc., and it did pretty well.

This past Saturday the DAGR made it's maiden flight at TCC's Dairy Aire. She flew great on an I161W, using motor ejection. I was somewhat concerned that I might get some unpredictable wobble or corkscrew effect if the curved fins were not perfectly aligned, but it flew great - no problems. I didn't have electronics for this flight, so I can only estimate the altitude at between 1200 to 1500 based on the sims. I was able to get a pic on the pad, but no video due to operator error (if no video is my worst screw up, I'll take it!)