MMX fun

rocketkid88 · Oct 30, 2004

Yeasterday my school had a 'field trip', since its a cyber school the students almost never get to meet eachother so it was more like a social event. any way we allmet a Valley Forge Historical park and after having a picknic lunch took a little hike around some of the stuff in the park... I walked with two guys i had met on a previouse field trip with my school and we were just talking and stuff, but about when we were done with the walk the one kid asked "is that a rocket your making??" 'course it was, throughout our walk i had taken a BIC pen and some masking tape and made a pen rocket

When a said "do you wana launch it?" he just said "It'll fly?!?!?"
So we went back to the car and grabbed my MMX pad and walked over to a little open space and set it up. The last time i had tried to launch my MMX rockts it hadn't worked at all, but i had a new batt and the thing took of like a shot. I should have really told the guy who was reading the memorial behind us what we were doing, but...

Any how it went up to maby 75-100ft and blew the tip off the pen (there was no recovery device). we got the body back and, since i had another pen in my pocket, i took the tip off that. it was a much tighter fit, but i hamered it against a rock and it went in alright. flew it again, about the same hight, and had a perfect lawndart recovery. pulled it out of the ground and could have flown it again, but i had some of the quest MMX rockets in the car so we went and got those and flew them till i didn't have any ignitors left (7 flights totoal)

well it was fun, and the one fellow i was with said he "had" to get some of those

atached pic of the four rockets we flew on my Quest launcher... note the 'tic tac' dispenser that down dispenses my MMX motors

Oct 30, 2004

Cool post! I have been getting into the MMX stuff lately. I like that I can shoot them off just about anywhere. Definitely, a great addition to our hobby. I can't wait for the new MMX rockets to come out.

Brian

Micromeister · Oct 30, 2004

What are you guys waiting for? there are a at least a dozen MMX kits available from ASP, QCR, Pratt hobbies, Fliskits, and Art applewhite. If you want to scratch build you can order everthing you could need for totally tubular. We have over 65 one page plans FREE in the files section of the MicroMaxRockets yahoo group everything from downscales to clusters, staged models, odd-rocs, Plastic model conversions, SCALE and competition plans.
I'd suggest adding a 30" piece of kevlar shock line and a 1/2" x 9" plumbers tape streamer to you Bic pens. Even as light as the pen is, we really should at least be using break apart recovery with the pens. Don't forget to pull out the metal pen tip. you can replace it with a tiny piece of tooth pick. Art may get me for this but I'm gonna attach a copy of his Printed computer paper fincan. Fold along the line diagonally and all the straight lines. with the piece folded diagonally, snip off the white squares. I use a little glue stick glue on each folded fin,
slide the completed fincan onto the pen body. This works so well i've used it on other model with about the same diameter

I'm pretty sure you can still download the Bic-Pic rocket plan for Art Applewhites web site as well as the files section of the MMX Group. Fliskits as some awsome cardstock UFO free downloads.
hope this helps.

Micromeister · Oct 30, 2004

heres what the completed Bic pen with printed fin can looks like

rocketkid88 · Oct 30, 2004

staged MMX? i was thinking about that, but they don't sell booster MMX motors do they? you'd haft try to remove the delay/ejectjion charge to make it a MMX-0

Looks like i'll need to find some place that sells MMX motors... time to join up w/ the yahoo mmx group.

Micromeister · Nov 1, 2004

rk88:
Staging is a bit if a challange, We don't recommend altering ANY motor. Here's 2 of my favorite two stage downscales, I also use it with a 10mm 12,000mcd orange LED to illuminated the nose at waivered night launches in the micro Warp-II and a 1" cylume glo-stick in the Micro Hercules. Staging is OK but clustering is a lot more fun

ps sometimes finding the 1st stage is a real challange, I've now replaced the lower stage on the M-warp-II twice.