How many lawn darts?

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Neil

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I am wondering how many lawn-darts you guys have had with rockets powerd by composite Es, Fs and Gs. I am afraid I have to enter in "0". Only count it as a lawn-dart if it landed with the nosecone on and did real damage to the rocket. If there is little/no damage, it doesent count;) I have NEVER had an MPR CATO, lawn dart or land shark in my LIFE. Strang, isnt it? Oh well. I guess i am lucky!
 
I've only had one so far. It was a PML Black Brant VB on an F20-7. It flew fine on the F20-4, so i ordered more. They sent me F20-7s. I was new to rocketry at the time, so I tried it. The delay was about 2 seconds too long. :rolleyes:

The worst part was, there was a guy there who really seemed interested in getting into rocketry. Then that happened.
 
Had one yesterday, 3" rocket with 7 F21's in it. Only 3 lit with predictable results. Had another last year when the F20-8 turned out to be a F20-20.
 
I've had only one...... It was my old estes Phoenix...... It was totally my fault...... I tried to fly it on a D15....... It was VERY under-powered......... It got up maybe 25' and started back down nose first....... The nosecone stuck in the ground.......... Just like a lawn dart........ But this wasn't the bad part............. A second later, the ejection charge went off and spit the whole motor mount assembly out the back end!!!!!!

This is why I am building the second one to have a 29mm motor mount!!!!!! MORE POWER
 
None on composites, one (Big Daddy) on a weak ejection from a D12 that never popped the nose off, and one when the second stage on my Commanche failed to light.
 
I've had two.

My Deuces Wild, one motor lit, beautiful big arch and powered in resulting in a shortened bodytube by 1/2". Really a testament to the quality of components used in the DW. I cut the tube off, repaired a ding in the nosecone, repainted and she flies as beautiful as ever.

And... my Black BrantII on a D12 (sniff-sniff)... no lawn dart, pranged big time. Came off the rod and about 10' did a direct left. After a cloud of dust about 100yds away found only the fincan. Thought about repairing it but sometimes you just got to let them go. I have the remains sitting on my build table. My grandson thought it was cool. Guess it is a matter of perception.
 
My first two stager lit okay, but the next 2-5 lawn-darted. I had not read anything about it, so I did not know to use tape. Now I get almost failure-free ignition.


BTW, if you want to loose a small rocket with big fins, take a D12-0 and CHAD stage it! You will notice that a C6-3 slides right into the D12-0, and you can tape it in place with ease! If the rocket has big enough fins, it will proabably still be stable. Make sure, though. Get the CP of your rocket. I CHAD staged a D12-0 to a C6-5 in my AMRAM, and lost it! What a flight, though! It was soooo cool!
 
Who had the "50-100 Lawn Darts"!?!? EEEEK! Thats quite a few!

I had a Fatboy on a C6-3 go horizontal..... It went up about 20', and just turned on its side. It continued to burn, and it went into a very large boulder, and the second it hit, the ejection charge blew! It didnt make much of an explosion, but it sure make a very big WHACK! 2 broked fins, noscone broked and shoved into the tube about 2", and crumpled body. OUCH. I never really liked that rocket, though. No big loss. That was a good year or so ago.
 
Kewl! For a company that big, Estes seems to have a pretty good customer service dept!
 
Yes, they do - unfortunately I didn't know that at the time, and just sucked it up and bought a new kit...lol
 
AT Initiator with an E16-4W that failed to deploy the chute on time (recommended motor by AT). That is the nosecone stuck in the ground over to the right. We think the ejection charge may have fired after the rocket landed which is why it is separated. Aerotech replaced the entire kit.:D

395335_R1_16A.jpg
 
bsexton - Your picture is hautingly familiar. I had my Initiator lawndart in the middle of the road at a Boy Scout launch:eek: The ejection charge never lit, and the nosecone looks like an accordian now. AT replaced the kit:)

I also had my Expediter lawn dart on a J350 with a greased delay. Killed my AltAcc and the rocket is toast.

I personally like the british term "spack" better than lawn dart:)
 
Never had a mid power lawn dart but lots of low power ones:

an A10-3T mini:


and a skywinder on a C6 last month:
 
Why is it when I read this thread, the Queen song: "Another One Bites the Dust" comes to mind:kill:

Fitting dont you think:D

My only lawndart was when super unleaded bit the dust big time. Sadly it was one very expensive lake stake. Sadly, it really did bite the dust!:rolleyes:
 
Sigh. I haven't kept count of them all, but over the past 15 years I've a lot of lawndarts, both mid-power and high power. Nearly all of them with cameras on board -- ouch! The vast majority were due to ejection failures, mostly with motors from smaller manufacturers (mostly prior to the motor cert days). Second biggest cause was two-stage flights where the second stage failed to light, or ignited late. The latter does a real good job of reconstituting cameras into tiny bits.
 
I'm in the 3-5 prang category. The worst one to date was my HAWK MIM23A. I was in the middle of rebuilding it from a previous crash. To date, this rocket only had 1 successful flight out of 4. Check out the wreckage - <a href="https://www.rocketryforum.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=52817">HAWK MIM23A Wreck</a>

Here's another heartbreaker. This one was more my own fault. The motor selection was poor. I used an F40-4W. The result was about 350ft of altitude. The delay was about a 6 sec. delay. Ejection occurred JUST as the nosecone hit the ground. BTW, this is an upscale DER Red Max. <a href="https://www.rocketryforum.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=53241">CRASH</a> The nosecone is a loss. The first 3-4" of the body tube need to be replaced.
 
you can't be in this hobby for long periods and not have lawn darts...

Those of you who have never had one? well, it's either "Welcome to ROcketry!" cuz yer new, or, "You ain't flyin' enough"... :D

My first was when I was about 11-12 years old, with my grand dad out in the rock quary. My Saturn V in the late 60's

This was the one that had the 3 C engine cluster motor mount that was interchangable with an optional D motor mount that you could buy. I bought the optional mount and launched it with a D13 (yea, the imfamous D-kaboom-13)

The way the motor mount work is it was a BT63 (or there abouts) main snuffer tube and the motor mount was built inside a short length of BT-60. The BT60 engine mount installed into the rocket like a large motor in that the snuffer tube has an "engine block" in it and used an engine hook to secure the mount.

didn't work very well... I knew I was in trouble when I heard the ejection charge and saw the motor mount shoot out the back of the Saturn like it was fired from a cannon....

She re-kitted herself right befor my eyes, telescoping up into such a tiny package i thought I'd cry! That was my first lesson in *repair*. My grand dad showed me how to use the tools and techniques to completely rebuild it and we did (only I put TWO engine hooks on that tube, 180 degrees apart. Got many more flights out of it befor i lost it.

jim
 
I've had very few lawn darts in the 40 odd years that I have been flying...had my share of land sharks! but very little damage.

On was a scale BT-60 sized Sandia Sandhawk with a weak ejectin charge. I know it was weak because when I picked it up the chute just fell out of the tube.

One rocket of mine with over 50 flights on it has lawn darted ohhhh....4 or 5 times. My Maxi Estes V-2...sometimes I just couldn't find D12-3's so I used D12-5's...my bad.

Believe it or not...very little damage...only one zippered tube on the last one...the nose cone was kinda shoved down into the body tube...then ejection.

I built it pretty light and never even had more than a cracked fin joint...easy fix with liquid plastic cement. NO epoxy!

Lucky?? or careful???not sure.

sandman
 
No MPR ones, but I remember one ModRoc lawndart in particular. My wife built an Estes Sparrow. Don't know exactly what happened, but the ejection charge blew the motor out the back leaving the nosecone still in the body. It was a beautiful flight, but man did it dig itself a nice hole. Luckily we were launching in a recently plowed field, so the ground was soft. All I had to do was clean off all the dirt. :D
 
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