Standard 9 mm ID, 50 mm long rocket tube. End plugs of wax treated cat litter. One end rammed on 8 mm high nipple, the other rammed flush using a case extender.
The flush end was the one that the spin/lift vent was drilled in, just about the clay and into the pure meal propellant. A 1.8 mm drill was used, the hole fused with thin blackmatch and meal-NC paste in the usual manner.
The recessed end was slotted with a pair of snips, such that a paddle-pop stick could be placed into the slot and glued in place with some hot-melt. The vent pointed about 45 degrees down with respect to the plane of the stick, so as to provide not only rotational thrust but lift as well.
Worked Very Well!
I haven't had much luck with helicopters before, but clearly this design works quite well. Some basic clean-ups like a tapered rammer vent-end plug and/or waterglass treatment should improve performance.
The device was not recovered, so its nozzle widening could not be established. The lift-off direction was rather unpredictable, perhaps a more gentle thrust vector would be better? Experimentation will tell.
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Test Video | video/x-msvideo | 1.020 Mbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture | image/jpeg | 39.858 kbytes |