I have complete respect for those that design these things for a living and understanding that these are very knowledgeable people. I thank everyone of them for giving us products that we can go out and enjoy, so thank you.
Now for personal experience. I've owned and flown 3 Big Daddies with 3 more hanging on the wall. Clearly, I like the kit. The first was the early version with the 24mm D length mount. The second was also an early version but I extended the mount to fit E motors. The last one is built for 29mm with Basswood fins and a plywood upper centering ring.
I tend to over build so my stock BD is a couple ounces over the advertised weight. The first flight on the first BD was a D12-3 straight up on a calm day. The flight was perfect, and we heard the loud pop of the ejection at apogee. The nosecone pushed out but didn't pull the chute with it. The rocket fell sideways and landed in tall grass so no damage. Afterward the rocket was inspected, and nothing was wrong. The nose cone wasn't tight but also wasn't wobbling around loose either. My rule of thumb is that you should be able to pick the rocket up by the nosecone and the weight of the rocket should slowly separate the body from the nosecone. I chalked this up to a weak charge. I noted the date code on the motor and moved on.
A few weeks later we were out again, and I used another D12-3 that was purchased a couple days before we launched so different batch, different date code etc. Again, nice basically calm day. Rod straight up, perfect flight, loud pop of the ejection and the nose cone pushed out but no chute. This time it landed sideways in a grass field and broke a fin. I went to pick the body up and parachute fell out along with the shock cord so it wasn't tight.......
At this point I was scratching my head. I put the rocket away and let it sit for weeks while I got over it. Finally I was ready to work the problem and fix the rocket. Looking at it I didn't care for the shape of the nosecone. I also didn't like that it left very little room for the laundry but figured they did this to fill the volume in the body tube. I was wondering if the gas was escaping past that shoulder so I decided to do the old blow test. (minds out of the gutter guys). Insert the nosecone and blow into the motor tube to see if the cone would pop... Nope... It came out about 3/4 of the way and stopped. Mind you I was a healthy guy in my early thirties at this point, so I had pretty good lungs. I could feel the air escape past the shoulder. So obviously that was the issue.
Break out the power tools and epoxy and pretty soon we have a cut down nose cone with only about 1 inch of shoulder left. A bulkhead was inserted inside just above the shoulder lip and epoxied in place. I attached the laundry to a screw eye and called it done. A couple of weeks later we were back on the field for BD's third flight. Again, D12-3, Straight up, pop at apogee. This time we got a good ejection. I could see the nose cone stretch all 6ft the shock cord and pop back. The chute opened and it was a perfect fight. This rocket has been up literally dozens of times since then as well as its two siblings both with the same nose cone mod. with zero failure or even close calls.
You can preach all you want that the nose cone isn't an issue. I've experienced it firsthand twice, fixed the issue and never had an issue after that.
