What am I doing?

[SecretSquirrel]

When I first got into rocketry I just went to the hobby shop and bought a rocket kit to build. That's what everyone I knew did too. Now it's years later and there are new building avenues like cloning and upscaling. I understand what both of those are but I started a little project this weekend and now I'm confused. Am I cloning a Sprite or upscaling a Tumble Weed?

 

[PGerringer]

dude, that is a fantastic job. :applause: What color are ya going to paint it?

 

[jflis]

LOL

yep, that's a stumper, alright...

things that make you go "hhhmmmmmmm...."

well, call me biased, but i'd say yer upscaling a Tumbleweed

 

[user 13]

Pool or a pond


Very nice, what will the paint be.

 

[SecretSquirrel]

I'm thinking of painting them to match this Estes catalog photo
1972 Estes catalog

 

[user 13]

A friend cloned the Sprite and painted it white with red accents, It looks great. The only problem is the white is smudged by the exhaust port after launch.

 

[PAH]

Very Cool. I like it. Check out the pic of a Mega Sprite launch at Whitakers, NC.

 

[PAH]

I found a close up of that Mega Sprite on the pad.

 

[Dr. Don]

I GOTTA get me one of them!
What MEGA power motor was required?

 

[jflis]

who *are* these guys? I gotta git in touch with them and send them a "Mega-Tumbleweed" decal for that thing!

Sheesh!

 

[gerbs4me]

Fantastic job!
It looks really cool!

 

[trogdor]

I saw this shred on video... forgot which video but they didn't seem to know what went wrong, and there was no postmortem on video but it looked to me like it started going horizontal at high speed and an altimiter popped the nose causing the explosion of parts.. too bad looked really nice too... getting that ring on after the rocket was on the pad looked less than fun tho!

 

[PAH]

I don't remember the names involved but it was an experimental motor. The WELD launch at Whitakers last April. I don't know what impulse. I was only able to catch the last few minutes before it was launched. It did however suffer a failure during flight. If I remember correctly, the motor was still lit when the nosecone separated. The guy who filmed it said he heard the ejection charge going off during playback of the tape minutes after the flight.

I just posted the pic's thinking SecretSquirrel might find the color scheme useful in his projects. I hope to see some pic's when the paint jobs are completed.

 

[MarkABrown]

The Mega Sprite belonged to Mark Lloyd. Mark is one of the Tripoli TAP's from NC. The Mega Sprite was 16" diameter. It was last flown at Whitakers Experimental Launch Days (WELD) on April 12-14, 2002. The motor was an "O" motor made by Ben Russell. All of this information was published in Extreme Rocketry - July 2002. It was a very good article which covered much more than just the demise of the Mega Sprite.