X2C, a rocket from salvaged, backwards installed parts

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Dotini

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Two days ago I was looking at a pile of bent, cracked and broken rockets, the sad legacy of experimental rocketry combined with plenty of builder/operator error. Determined to salvage something from this pile, I cut away some crumpled sections from a few tubes, salvaged a nosecone, and stood looking for quite some time at a fin unit sawn and pulled from a crumpled tube.

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Salvaged fin unit from Estes Generic E2X, makings of motor mount.



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Completed motor mount.


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Motor mount mocked up in reversed fin unit. Note how, suddenly, the fins become tapered towards the trailing edge, and a plausible boat tail emerges.
 

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could also work as a booster, but given your small field staging anything over MicroMaxx may be problematic.
 
could also work as a booster, but given your small field staging anything over MicroMaxx may be problematic.
No, it won't be a booster. But suspect with its low drag, it could get to a very useful altitude starting life as a 30:1 backslider, never mind the spin, if any. It may open the door to a delay longer than the 2 seconds on my previous Magnus series of rockets. Dahl field is well over 500' x 500'. So 1800' altitude permitted per the NAR. I will not be launching anything higher than half that, at least not without a larger support crew.
 
No, it won't be a booster. But suspect with its low drag, it could get to a very useful altitude starting life as a 30:1 backslider, never mind the spin, if any. It may open the door to a delay longer than the 2 seconds on my previous Magnus series of rockets. Dahl field is well over 500' x 500'. So 1800' altitude permitted per the NAR. I will not be launching anything higher than half that, at least not without a larger support crew.
Looked up Dahl Playfield.

try to keep your rockets out of the pool!
 
Okay, this and my Backslider today gave me an idea. Got a beautiful flight out of the Backslider today, but crumby video and the rocket landed on asphalt and broke a fin.

what if I stretch the Epsilon to over 30 to 1, and use a forward side port to kick it to backslide?

should be safe and entertaining both up and down.

will probably corkscrew on the way up, which means less altitude, which means I can go with a bigger motor (a spent 18mm C casing weighs the same as a spent 18mmA.)

it should backslide on the way down, BUT the fins should be UP, so should have no fin damage.

could also go the Devil’s Triangle route

@Dotini. @Rktman @mooffle what do you guys think?

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Also, for backsliders, need to stay light. If you start with a white raw body tube, colored fluorescents should work well.
 
Epsilon looks like a great candidate for backsliding, the dihedral and forward swept design make sense to me. For whatever reason devil's triangle just doesn't look like the air would catch that fin correctly and slide backward. I could certainly be wrong though.

Actually if you could do a backslider with Epsilon style design you would hit the holy grail of a rocket that can't lose its fins!
 
Another odd, salvage part has been added, a mystery tube left over from over 30 years ago. Can anybody identify it?
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I'm using this tube because it is very nice quality, very smooth, and has a thicker wall than standard BT-50 tubes. It fits the parts I'm working with better, and clearly is stronger. By any chance, is this a Semroc ST-9 tube?
 
The natural life of X2C came to an end with the fuselage crumpling badly after only a few flights. To be honest, this model performed poorly as a nose-blowing backslider. Yes, it returned to Earth sliding backwards, but too swiftly and too steeply to yield consistently safe recoveries, The end neared when the rocket landed like an axe, with a single fin slashing deep into the ground, taking the full brunt of landing, sticking solidly and crimping the tube slightly. One more flight and another and worse crimp developed upon landing, and that was it.

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While waiting on parts for my next project, I decided to resurrect the venerable Estes E2X fin unit to yet another life experience by priestly conversion into horizontally spinning recovery.

Below we see the salvaged unit with fins trimmed and the first winglet installed with adhesive drying. The winglet is made from a segment of Lexan Miller Corner Saver, the adhesive is Foam Tac.


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A new and longer fuselage will be constructed with a length ratio approaching 50:1, and a puffer ejection system will be employed.
 
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