I made up some new tooling (from timber scraps I had laying around) for my core-burning rocket motors. A real nipple and mandrel, and a new set of drifts. These two motors were assembled to test it.
Standard 8 mm ID, 12 mm OD, 50 mm long PVA pasted A4 80 gsm paper tubes (you get three from a single sheet, and an extra ~40 mm piece you can use for something else).
Wax treated cat litter nozzle and bulkhead. Core and nozzle is slightly less than 2.5 mm, probably 2.3 mm. Standard stick stabiliser hot-melt glued on. Fused with thin blackmatch and meal-NC paste to hold it in.
Second device carried a small payload of some 4 mm cube cut stars. Their composition was the same as the Iron & Aluminium Gerbs, but bound with NC lacquer so they dried fast. Break was a 1/4 teaspoon -20+40 mesh pulverone mixed in with the stars. Payload fairing was a PVA pasted four turn A4 paper nozing, closed at top with a little wadding and a triangle fold.
Absolute Screamers!
The first rocket tested was the one without a payload. It was the first such motor with a clay bulkhead that didn't CATO. I did however climb the highest I've ever seen any of my motors of this size go.
It went at least 100 metres up before it burnt out, who knows how much higher than that before apogee.
The second motor was carring twice its weight in payload, but it hardly noticed. It didn't go as high or as fast, but it still performed fantastically well. The only problem is the payload wasn't activated! I have a terriable feeling I simply didn't drill far enough through the bulkhead and into the composition! Bugger, what a dumb mistake. I'll make a determined effort to find this one, somewhere out there (hopefully in the ocean) is a live shell.
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Rocket #1 Video | video/x-msvideo | 500.122 kbytes |
| Rocket #2 Video | video/x-msvideo | 412.296 kbytes |
| Tooling | image/jpeg | 72.663 kbytes |
| Rocket #1 Pre-Test Picture | image/jpeg | 66.486 kbytes |
| Rocket #2 Pre-Test Picture | image/jpeg | 59.911 kbytes |