Time to start a build thread 
A couple months back, the thought hit me, to build a flying silo. There are likely many reasons why this thought would enter my mind. The most prominent reasons to get me started on it are:
1. I grew up on a dairy farm. Had silos.
2. It'd be ridiculous; like my flying carrot. So, why not?
I'm scaling it off our high moisture corn silo; which can be viewed in this nice aerial pic from 1973 when my dad was 15 years old. It's the left/standalone silo. 60' tall and 14' diameter. That means a BT80 tube just over 11" long should be fine.
A sim in OR makes sense, right? Not exactly perfect, but the software says I can get something stable-ish that resembles a silo and maybe 500' on a D12-5. Not bad. That's one more step toward reality.
One thing I had to do before I really got rolling on if I should do this was to find a nosecone. I was searching the interwebs, but then happened to look at our Bullet Bobby kit. Well, if that isn't the closest nosecone shape there could be, I don't know what is. A quick email to our friends at @Launch Lab Rocketry and I was able to procure an imperfect BB nosecone; imperfect for their kit. Perfect for a silo!
Right now I'm mainly amassing parts and cutting a few things.
This pic is most of the goodies. BT80 tube, assembled motor mount (24mm), a BT5 tube for the discharge chute of the silo and a piece of old kid's arrow (fiberglass) for the filler chute; which also conveniently will function as a launch lug. I found some thin styrene rod at the hobby shop to play the part of the metal bands that go around the silo to hold the staves (bricks) in place.
One important part was that discharge chute isn't just round in real life, it squares off to cover the unloader doors. So, I cut some 1/64" ply scrap that will go alongside the BT5 tube square to the body tube.
I cut the fins out of clear acrylic sheet. I realized after I bought them that I probably should have gotten polycarbonate, but these don't seem very brittle and can flex a lot, so I think I'll just use what I have.
I've got stuff for the brick pattern on the way to make that possible, so will post that once it arrives and then have a good bit of figuring out how to piece this all together. But, this is where I'm at with it. More to come!
A couple months back, the thought hit me, to build a flying silo. There are likely many reasons why this thought would enter my mind. The most prominent reasons to get me started on it are:
1. I grew up on a dairy farm. Had silos.
2. It'd be ridiculous; like my flying carrot. So, why not?
I'm scaling it off our high moisture corn silo; which can be viewed in this nice aerial pic from 1973 when my dad was 15 years old. It's the left/standalone silo. 60' tall and 14' diameter. That means a BT80 tube just over 11" long should be fine.
A sim in OR makes sense, right? Not exactly perfect, but the software says I can get something stable-ish that resembles a silo and maybe 500' on a D12-5. Not bad. That's one more step toward reality.
One thing I had to do before I really got rolling on if I should do this was to find a nosecone. I was searching the interwebs, but then happened to look at our Bullet Bobby kit. Well, if that isn't the closest nosecone shape there could be, I don't know what is. A quick email to our friends at @Launch Lab Rocketry and I was able to procure an imperfect BB nosecone; imperfect for their kit. Perfect for a silo!
Right now I'm mainly amassing parts and cutting a few things.
This pic is most of the goodies. BT80 tube, assembled motor mount (24mm), a BT5 tube for the discharge chute of the silo and a piece of old kid's arrow (fiberglass) for the filler chute; which also conveniently will function as a launch lug. I found some thin styrene rod at the hobby shop to play the part of the metal bands that go around the silo to hold the staves (bricks) in place.
One important part was that discharge chute isn't just round in real life, it squares off to cover the unloader doors. So, I cut some 1/64" ply scrap that will go alongside the BT5 tube square to the body tube.
I cut the fins out of clear acrylic sheet. I realized after I bought them that I probably should have gotten polycarbonate, but these don't seem very brittle and can flex a lot, so I think I'll just use what I have.
I've got stuff for the brick pattern on the way to make that possible, so will post that once it arrives and then have a good bit of figuring out how to piece this all together. But, this is where I'm at with it. More to come!
