NARTREK Program

[gdjsky01]

Funny. I've achieved Silver level probably 3 times over (based on what I read here at least) but never enrolled.

 

[Micromeister]

Ace hardware up the road? May have been more incl. tax. The wider stuff on a longer roll was from Lowe's, closer to three bucks.

don't know where you live but here in the DC-Mar-Va area "The Party Store" and several other dollar store type places have 2" x 10yr rolls for under $1.00. If your paying close to 3 bucks you are really overpaying LOL! OBTW most any party store will also have crepe paper in sheet form. usually 12" x 30" (5-sheet packs) for about $1.00. with any 1/2" mylar tape these and the Mylar wrapping paper sheet packs can be made into very nice Streamers of just about any length.

I really like the Orange mylar wrapping paper to piece together 4" x 90" steamers that flash in the sunlight like "Fire in the Sky". Very neat looking recovery.
These mylar streamers do require the addition of some form of flameproof wadding, be it Estes or Quest type or wadded up Crepe Paper strips.

 

[dhbarr]

I was talking about surveyor's tape, however

 

[mwtoelle]

And there lies a conundrum. I purchased a streamer kit that was just 3FNC and feels like one of the lightest model rockets I have ever built. Using RockSIM and the basic launch characteristics in the data file I had to use a B motor just to achieve a thirty second flight. I know this isn't a realistic flight and a lot is taken for granted, but for the average rocketeer on a constrained budget this is very likely to be a no-go as far as a learning tool. I was wanting to just use an A motor to achieve this and there was no way the simulation gave enough hang time. You are right that this pushes the NARTREK into more of a competition type setting. It would have to be minimum size BT, tube launchers and composite building materials to name a few techniques to excel at this. Hmmmm, food for thought.

If you look back at the rockets that I used for my NARTREK Bronze, I did switch form the recovery device that were included with the two kits that I used for the duration requirements. IIRC, the Apogee Blue Streak is supplied with a 1" wide streamer and the Alpha III is supplied with an Estes 12" parachute. Those recovery devices were swapped with a 2" x 24" crepe paper streamer and a 18" Estes parachute, respectively. I did try the Alpha III with 18" chute on an Apogee A2 motor but came about 2 seconds short. I could have tried an Estes 24" parachute, but it is extremely challenging to pack that large of a parachute into the short piece of BT-50 available in a otherwise stock Estes Alpha/Alpha III model and have it deploy properly.

As far as changing streamer size, I would go wider and longer than stock. Start with 2" x 24" streamers. BTC (Big Time Competitors) will use even larger streamers with some exotic folding methods to get long hang times on small motors. I believe that the duration requirements have been met for SD and PD on 1/2A motors. However, there probably has been some thermals assisting in keeping these models up. Unfortunately, neither OpenRocket nor RockSim take thermals into account for flight simulations.