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Old 06-03-2018, 10:20 AM
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teflonrocketry1 teflonrocketry1 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Whitehouse, Ohio
Posts: 264
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I flew my Centuri Hummingbird clone yesterday at the Wright Stuff Rocketeers (WSR #703) launch on their Rip Rap Road field in Dayton, OH. The winds at he launch were about 5 mph and the temperature was around 82 degrees F, pretty decent weather for glider flights! I test flew (hand tossed) and trimmed the glider at the launch site before its flight. I chose to use an A8-3 motor because I thought my build was on the heavier side due to the clear-coat finish I applied. I also taped a 2" wide x 10 inch long crepe paper streamer to the motor so it would come down on a recovery device. The boost was pretty much straight up, probably close to the 375 feet AGL as RockSim predicted. The motor ejected near apogee and the glide phase was upright. However, the crepe paper streamer on the motor tore in half and the free part of it got caught on the Hummingbirds rear stabilizer. I am not sure if this helped put the glider in an upright position. I recovered the Hummingbird glider about 300 feet from the launch pad with some slight charring and a 6 inch piece of crepe paper caught on the rear stabilizer. I estimated the glide time was around 20 seconds the glider made at least three complete horizontal loops during its decent. I did not get a chance to fly the Hummingbird again, because there were a lot of other rockets I wanted to fly (Centuri X-24 bug being one of them).

I also visited eRockets, and Randy Boadway, the owner, confirmed the company's interest in releasing a Semroc reproduction of the Centuri Hummingbird glider. I gave Randy several Hummingbird nosecones that I 3D printed for ST-7 tubing (in PLA and ABS plastic) but found out they were too loose of a fit to be of any use. I plan on designing and printing a better fitting 1.5 inch ogive nosecones for the ST-7 tubing.
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