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watermelonman

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I got a note today saying that the 54/4000 M motor is officially certified.

Congratulations Scott and company!
 
That's one heck of a kick in the pants,,
that's for sure,, lol...

Great work Scott...

Teddy
 
Wonder what it would do in a 54mm MD....? Too bad no Loki in CA... I'd probably have to go to Eagle Eye anyway.
 
Sounds like a challenge. My quick and dirty OpenRocket sim says 45k on the M and 38k on the L.
 
One flew at Balls. The rocket was not able to keep up with the motor.

Tony

There were several flown at Balls in MD airframes. Couple of the airframes did fail. But I know of at least one that was completely successful (dwatkins...)
Another one in our camp was not so lucky (the first one to go at Balls).

Mike
 
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There were several flown at Balls in MD airframes. Couple of the airframes did fail. But I know of at least one that was completely successful (dwatkins...)
Another one in our camp was not so lucky (the first one to go at Balls).

Mike

Do you know any specs on the one that survived? (Or any of them for that matter?)
 
I would suspect they laminated the fincan in some manner. One will need to pre-plan a build as the motor is quite long. I have the hardware and an L. I have a modified "Stretch" Wildman rocket I added a longer sustainer, ebay and upper bay to.
It flew successfully on a Loki L1400. I was going to do an ARTS II with an MAWD and a Beeline GPS in the ebay but I couldn't fit all the "stuff" in (this is an old project before modernity) and did the flight with the BLGPS and MAWD. Did 10k AGL and Mach 1.
I'm gutting the ebay, will put in two modern, smaller deployment devices, bought a new glass nosecone I am going to build a tracker nosecone. Flying the L2050 will be no problem. The M1387 should not be an issue either as Cotronics 4525B hi-temp
epoxy was used for construction. Only problem is I have to certify first and to fly this rocket would take something other than the nearby venues. The L could hit north above 15k and the M much higher. Kurt
 
I would suspect they laminated the fincan in some manner.

I would not assume anything based on the ongoing opposing discussions in regards to "good engineering" and "over-kill building". I am planning the same flights as you, L2050 and M1387, but realistically this will not be until 2018.

I picked up the 54/4000 hardware from Loki in the spring. I also picked up a 60" CF airframe, 24" CF payload tube and 12" CF coupler from a member of my local club. He said he had Curtis Turner make them for him a number of years ago and that they are the thick wall CF tubes and referred to them as the IM7 Carbon, which are apparently "pretty darn strong". Initially I was just going to add the top part of my Tomach to the 60" tube, tack on some fins with a robust T2T and call it a day.

However now that I have the heavier coupler and payload tube I plan to put a bit more effort into optimizing the rocket design from an overall length perspective. This dictates that I look into efficient designs for the recovery and tracking/AV bays. In the end it will end up being a custom instead of a stretched Tomach.

Good luck with yours Kurt, if you do a build thread I will be following along.
 
There were several flown at Balls in MD airframes. Couple of the airframes did fail. But I know of at least one that was completely successful (dwatkins...)
Another one in our camp was not so lucky (the first one to go at Balls).

Mike

Bill Good had a great flight on one and stuck the recovery.......IMG_1125.jpg
 
Now that I have the data downloaded I will way in. Last year I tried similar flights. Performance rocketry carbon tubes, and one I made myself both failed at the top of the motor tube. The one we got back showed heat failure.ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1475165146.848694.jpg

So when Wildman offered the Falcon kit I decided to try both again. Carolina Composite made the 54mm tube for me. Fins were a copy of the Falcon's. Fins were attached and filleted with Scotch-Weld DP420. Two layers of 5.2 oz carbon tip to tip. I painted the fin can and nose cone with high temp caliper paint. Results were 53g's, Mach3 at about 9,000', 32,699'. Recovered about 3 miles out.

Dennis
 
Thank you everyone. It was a long time coming, but better late than never.

Dennis, that is freakin awesome man. Congratulations! You are the first of several people to fly this motor with a 100% successful flight & recovery. VERY well done sir.  I look forward to reviewing your flight data. As well, I look forward to reviewing everyone’s flight data from BALLS that was able to be retrieved intact.

All in all, I heard five Loki Research M-1378-LR’s announced at BALLS this past weekend, one L-1040-LR (54/2800), at least three K-627-LR’s and two K-1127-LB’s for the 38/1200 hardware. One of the K-1127’s, flown by Scott Wathey, had a complete burn through just above the nozzle. After inspection of the case, my determination was that the liner had a crack that opened up under pressure. Taking instruction from me, Scott W. friction fitted the bottom end grains into the liner. In hind sight, that may not have been the best course of action. The 38mm liners have very thin walls and are the easiest to damage and crack, but they all can be cracked. I dropped and cracked a 98mm liner (~.102” thick) a day before leaving for BALLS. It happens to all of us. I was glad to be there as I was able to hand Scott a brand new 38/1200 hardware set and another K-1127-LB. Other than that, all of these extreme performance motors performed beautifully.

If you flew a Loki Research motor at BALLS, or know someone who did that doesn’t read this forum, I’d like to ask that any retrieved accelerometer based flight data be sent to me for review.

Thank you to all of you who flew Loki Research motors at BALLS this past weekend. You helped put on a great show that impressed a lot of folks out there. Thank you very much.

Oh yes, before I forget. Here is the link to ThrustCurve.org

simfile2151_650x350lbs.png
 
Oh yes, Clay Reynolds got his L3 on an M-1882-LW at BALLS as well. And I could be wrong, there might have been three K-1127's flown. I'm sure there were other Loki flights that I missed.
 
Looks like he got a bit of velocity on the way up, and down.

Just a tad bit of velocity. Bill does excellent composite work and he has learned that the leading edges take a beating on extreme flights. He did the fin can lay-up on my 3" minimum diameter "Unfinished Business" with aluminum leading edges. At mach 2.4 she took just a bit of a beating!IMG_1123.jpg
 
Just a tad bit of velocity. Bill does excellent composite work and he has learned that the leading edges take a beating on extreme flights. He did the fin can lay-up on my 3" minimum diameter "Unfinished Business" with aluminum leading edges. At mach 2.4 she took just a bit of a beating!View attachment 302520

Holee cow Gary, I think Bill has the solution to single use Mach screamers although it looks like his red rocket shown above was before he started putting on Al leading edges? Looks like you just need to replace the rail buttons, sand and "pretty up" the
paint or coating and she'll be ready to fly again. Kurt
 
This thread got my gears turning so I've been working on an aluminum fin can design. If I can get all of the bugs worked out I might try to machine one soon.

54mm Fin Can v2 v12.png
 
This thread got my gears turning so I've been working on an aluminum fin can design. If I can get all of the bugs worked out I might try to machine one soon.

View attachment 304152

You make it yourself Chris, you can certify with it too if you're not aware and wish to go that route. Just do some darn good photo documentation so no one can doubt you. Kurt
 
Holee cow Gary, I think Bill has the solution to single use Mach screamers although it looks like his red rocket shown above was before he started putting on Al leading edges? Looks like you just need to replace the rail buttons, sand and "pretty up" the
paint or coating and she'll be ready to fly again. Kurt

This was a "last minute" project prompted by the Loki M purchase at AIRFEST and no time to add the aluminum leading edges. Next year I have one with the aluminum, so we shall see.

Flew the same rocket similar motor with same results. The learnings sometimes hurt!! ��
 
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