Inkbunny

And there are some beyond the tree.

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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Why I mentioned it. I've had model rockets land in the only set of powerlines in the area before!

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Wow...That's something no one would want to try to get back.

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner

Why I thought of it. By the way that hobby was really starting up around 1960.

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner

I shot quite a few rockets up when I was a teenager.

When I was a young adult, I shot one up one morning just before sunrise. The motors that are most common are A, B, C, and D series (D being the more powerful)
When I built this rocket, I put an F series motor in it. The F series motor was meant for a rocket 3 feet long with a diameter of 4 inches...The rocket I put the F series motor in was only 10 inches long with a diameter of 1 and a half inch, which was a rocket meant to have a B or C motor (It was like putting a 450 cubic inch V-8 racing engine in a compact two seat sport coupe).
When I fired it off shortly before sunrise, you could only here a >POP< sound as it took off. There was no >Swoooosh< sound of it going away...I believe it flew on it's way up faster than the speed of sound.
The only way my siblings and I could notice it in the sky was that it went up high enough for the sun to shine on it, even though it wasn't sunrise on the ground yet. And it got up that high in only a few seconds.
And even then, it was so high up, the portion of the smoke trail that was lit up by the sun looked thin like a pencil line.
At the end of it's flight, we saw the pencil line thin smoke trail arc over, then we barely saw a tiny buff yellow spark size flash. That was the parachute deployment. After we saw that flash, we had to wait for the sound of it to reach the ground before we heard it. And from the ground, it sounded only like a faint >pip< because it was so high up.
Needless to say, we already knew there was no point in trying to find that rocket. It could have come down a mile or more away, thus none of us even tried to find it.
One of my sisters who saw it go up said of it, "It looked mind provoking".

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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I've never been higher then a "D" unit, I'm just a playful hobbyist. That'll have been a Centuri or Flight Systems "F" unit wouldn't it?

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner

I don't remember the brand name, though Flight Systems does sound like it rings a bell.

I do remember it was in the late 1980s I bought it, and I paid $17 for just that one single motor.

Without a doubt, that rocket was the fastest thing I've ever built in my lifetime. If a bird ever got in the way, I'm sure it would have been like being shot with a high velocity bullet.

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner

There were times I had wondered if the rocket might have been still coasting so fast after burn out, that the parachute might have ripped away from the rocket when it deployed. There was no way to tell. It was so high up, all you could see of it was the distant smoke trail lit up by the sun prior to daybreak.

After the flight, I remember three sections of the smoke trail were taken in different directions by three different levels of weather patern air flow. That gives a good indication it went up really high.

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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1980's sounds like Flight Systems and $17 then was quite a lot! Though such units today are $30-40 I think. It probably did rip the chute off.
This www.ninfinger.org/rockets/rockets.html website is one of the best resources on the history of it and has links too others. In 1960 it was no further then "B" motors!

MrRoseLizard

4 years, 5 months ago

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I remember one time I got a model rocket for Christmas. It was an Estes brand, though I don't remember the series, and it came with one of those TIE fighters from the Star Wars movies. You'd have to connect the rocket pieces to the front and rear holes in the fighter's pilot section before launching it. Anyway, I just built the fighter model with the windshield and rear section and just got rid of the rocket. I guess the rules forbid firing rockets within the confines of the apartment complex. I had to reluctantly tell my classmates about the TIE fighter (and the Cylon Raider from Battlestar Galactica), and they humiliated me by saying: "You like the bad guys! You like the bad guys!! YOU LIKE THE BAD GUYS!!!"

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner

I built that rocket I mentioned from scratch, and was not from a kit. The only part I actually bought for it was that F series motor, and those do pack a punch.

I've fired off undersized rockets with D motors in them before during thunderstorms and watched them disappear into the low drifting storm clouds.

A few days after I sent that rocket up I've wondered how much higher a small rocket like that with three stages being all F motors would go.
If those motors are still available, I'd like to someday try it.
From what I observed when I launched that rocket, I'm convinced it went up well more than a mile...possibly two miles...From the ground, the smoke trail looked like a thin pencil line where the sun lit it up when the rocket went up just before dawn.

I figure three stages of F motors in a tiny undersized rocket should go more than three times as high, being that the two upper stages don't have to accelerate from a zero stand still...Of course, the lower stage does have to carry the weight of two upper stages.
Hopefully higher than 5 miles...At midlatitudes the Stratosphere is only slightly more than 6 miles up.

"

Near the equator, the lower edge of the stratosphere is as high as 20 km (66,000 ft; 12 mi), at midlatitudes around 10 km (33,000 ft; 6.2 mi), and at the poles about 7 km (23,000 ft; 4.3 mi)[5] Temperatures range from an average of −51 °C (−60 °F; 220 K) near the tropopause to an average of −15 °C (5.0 °F; 260 K) near the mesosphere

The F motor I used more than 30 years ago had a 15 second delay time between burn out and deployment. If I build the rocket I'm thinking of, I'd want to go with a 10 second delay time. I noticed with the one I sent up, it started arcing over during the last 5 seconds of that 15 second delay time, which was okay for that rocket. But I don't want that arc over between stages during flight with a multi-stage rocket.

Such a rocket I'm thinking of should be quite a show launched shortly before dawn like the other one was, as the sun lights up the upper smoke trail before daylight down at Earth. And I wonder if such a rocket would reach the lower level of the stratosphere. And if sent up during autumn or early spring, it might come back down with frost on it being had been where it is 60 degrees below zero.
Though it would be another rocket I'd never find, it would still put on a grand exhibition during flight.

Just a little edit...I just now seen on Google that there are G series motors. Those don't even look like a typical toy store rocket motor. I'm betting those could really go cookin' 'n' bookin'.
https://www.google.com/search?q=model+rocket+motors&...

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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It sounds like some of the classic Flight Systems Inc ones.

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner

The G motor I saw the posting of is made by Aerotech.

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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I meant your "F" unit was probably Flight Systems Inc, Aerotech formed in the early 80's but didn't really get going big until the late 80's but they are now the leader in many high powered areas.

TheGroundedAviator

4 years, 5 months ago

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i got a number of Star Wars ones.

Reizinho

4 years, 5 months ago

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Indeed.

nelson88

4 years, 5 months ago

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This is dangerous...but the pic is absolutely great!^^

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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@ nelson88

Thanks.

After the loss of the kite, the cubs now listen when Dad and Mom tells them where to fly the kites.

MrRoseLizard

4 years, 5 months ago

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This piece brings back one of my better memories. There used to be a vacant field near an apartment complex where I lived. I would take my kite there sometimes during the summer and try to fly it. There was no worrying about trees or power lines because there were hardly any. The real problem was with the wind, which either blew in all different directions or hardly blew at all.

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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I remember as a teenager, I built a glider out of that Styrofoam material like what meat package trays in the grocery stores are made of.
I made the fuselage three dimensional with little seats and a dashboard inside. And I had clear plastic in the windshield and windows. I even had a door on it that really opened. The nose of it was made of sponge to adsorb any impact of hitting anything. The weight of the sponge nose also balanced it out for flight.
It flew really good like a store bought glider does.
One day when we took a trip into town, I was flying it in an open field next to a Waffle House. When the glider flew close to the Waffle House, a wind updraft against the building lifted the glider up and over the Waffle House, then the glider set down on the roof of the Waffle House. I never did get it back.

MrRoseLizard

4 years, 5 months ago

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Sorry to hear about that loss. I'll bet that glider flew real good to land on top of that Waffle House. So did you build another one?

moyomongoose

4 years, 5 months ago

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Edited 4 years, 5 months ago by Owner