Originally posted by OKTurbo
Dyna,
The nose cone and tail cone were crafted by Sandman. VERY NICE stuff! You get spoiled working with his parts. Top notch all the way. The motor retainer hooks are hand made using stainless steel wiper blade stiffeners. Sandman did a similar set-up on his BT80 Sprint. Kind of like an Estes hook on steriods.
I'm not sure how Sandman put in his hooks, but on mine, I did a "reverse" bend on the forward end of the hooks. In other words, they don't bend into the motor tube, they bend out into the inside of the tail cone. I sharpend them up a bit and just poked then into the tail cone at the right distance/depth. Then I hit the area with some thin CA to harden it up. The motor tube then goes into the tail cone and holds it all in place. The added benefit is that there is no thrust block or hook into the MMT. If I ever get a wild hair I can put a longer 29mm RMS motor in it and send it to the stratosphere.
Fully loaded with a 36" TopFlight chute and the 29/40-120 case (empty) it weighed in at 1lb 6oz. The 36" chute is probably a little bit big for it....might reef it down a bit depending on how high she flies / how fast she drops with the laundry out. CG is well forward. Maybe a little overstable if anything.