Super Baby Bertha Build

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DigBaddy

It's OK to not know something
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Not a build thread. Was too lazy to want to put one together. So, here's something after the fact.

Love our little Baby Bertha; always gets flown whenever we launch and has put up with a good ~8 years of use now. Wanted to build a bigger version. Estes nicely has a Super Big Bertha, and a Big Bertha, and of course, Baby Bertha. But, the lack of Super Baby Bertha seems like an obvious gap and I'm definitely not the first to see this.

Anyways, was a fun build. Attached are some pics of the build progress and finished product. Went with a 24mm mount. We generally fly on a small field, so even limiting it to a F30/F32 single-use motor is more than enough for this. Didn't see the need to buy more parts to make it 29mm. I built the front centering ring out of 2 layers of 3/32" basswood, grain at 90* angles. Seems strong. The rear centering ring is two layers of cardstock. That also seems really strong. Fins are TTW, 1/8" balsa, papered with resume paper. I was using parts inventory, so body tube is two pieces coupled together. I decided to build a basswood right-angle baffle, like the Qualman designs, for this as well and to see how well that works. Did the logo up in Gimp; see if you can find the inspiration for it in the pics.

Should be a fun bird on those new D/E 24mm Q-Jets. :)

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After a bit of activity on this post; I realized I forgot to update the thread. I have had a few flights on this wonderful rocket. The first shakedown was an easy flight on a D12-3 at a local park. I found the shock cord was a bit too short and the NC and body collided, taking a chunk out of the BT. But, it was easy to notch in a replacement piece of tube and fix it up without taking drastic steps like shortening/lengthening it. I also corrected the shock cord situation.

After that, E30 flights were awesome. Great rocket. Should be more fun once I get some 24/40 reloads to play with. F24 should be really nice in it.
 

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