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  #1  
Old 04-06-2008, 12:51 PM
shockwaveriderz shockwaveriderz is offline
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Red face 50 years ago: This Month in Model Rocketry History

4/58 Sputnik 2 burned up in the outer atmosphere , upon reentry.

4/58 Sputnik-3 launched.

4/58 A mouse was launched in a Thor-Able “Reentry 1″ test as the first launch in the Mouse in Able (MIA) project. The rocket was destroyed during its launch .

4/58 President Eisenhower proposed to Congress to create a civilian space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), using as its basis, .the existing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) .

4/15/58 First MMI "Aerobee-Hi" Model Rocket Kit 001-A, rolls off the assembly line at Model Missiles , Inc 1159 California St, Denver CO and becomes available to the public. This kit contained the Aerobee-Hi model rocket, a 36" 1/8" diameter launch rod, a blast deflector and 6 Type A Rock-A-Chute model rocket motors.

4/18/58 Bell Helicopter News has an article and Cover photo of Menford L. Sutton and his Super-Son model rocket.

4/58 American Modeler magazine article about model rockets By G.Harry Stine, titled, "The Do-It-Yourself Rocketeers". The Cover states: "Safety's the Watchword with the Model Missile Association: The Do-It-Yourself Rocketeers."

4/58 Atlantic City Press publishes article, " Brigantine Is Test Site For Mile-High-Soaring Rocket ; Expert Devises Solid Fuel" Story about Amateur Rocketeer John Rahkonen, future owner of ProDyne.

Some Amateur Rocketry Newpaper Headlines from April 1958:

4/58 LA Times In the San Gabriel Valley, Covina Boys Pool Skills to Build and Launch High-Flying Rockets While they're not aiming for the moon, four Covina High School boys are making a name for themselves by launching homemade rockets

4/58 Washington Post Young Rocketeers Given "Don'ts" by U.S. Experts . Youthful rocket builders should never attempt to build a rocket, mix rocket fuel, load a rocket or attempt to launch it without supervision by an adult expert, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare warned yesterday

4/58 NY Times HOME-MADE ROCKETS HURT 3 JERSEY BOYS; HACKENSACK, N. J., April 4 -- Two New Jersey youngsters were injured severely today in accidents involving home-made rockets. A third youth was recovering from a similar accident yesterday

4/58 Washington Post Children Invited To Rocket Meet

4/58 LA Times High School Gets Rocket License

4/58 NY Times Rocket Blast Kills Four Boys; Four Boys were killed and another seriously injured when they set off an United States Army Rocket they found.


enjoy


terry dean
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Last edited by shockwaveriderz : 04-20-2021 at 08:00 AM.
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  #2  
Old 04-07-2008, 07:58 AM
PaulK PaulK is offline
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Cool. A regular monthly column for the rest of '08?
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Old 04-07-2008, 12:48 PM
shockwaveriderz shockwaveriderz is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulK
Cool. A regular monthly column for the rest of '08?


Yes that is my intention.

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Old 04-07-2008, 01:22 PM
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Royatl Royatl is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shockwaveriderz
4/18/58 Bell Helicopter News has an article and Cover photo of Menford L. Sutton and his Super-Son model rocket.


enjoy


terry dean
nar 16158


Were Sutton's motors at that point in time like Carlilse's? I understand he was one of the forces behind Coaster.
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Old 04-07-2008, 02:43 PM
shockwaveriderz shockwaveriderz is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Royatl
Were Sutton's motors at that point in time like Carlilse's? I understand he was one of the forces behind Coaster.


Yes Menford Sutton was the oner/operator of Coaster Corp. along with a Continental Airlines pilot friend, named Gene Dickerson.

Its my understanding from speaking with Mr. Sutton and verifying the content of the conversation with Randy Liebermann, that the original Coaster motors were basiclaly pyrotechnic black powder skyrocket motors.

Orginally they did not have either a delay train or ejection charge'; if you know anything about black powder skyrocket motors, they have above the Core a variable length section called a "heading". This heaidng was made from the same black powder charge as the propellant grain; they were one and the same.

So when the engine core burned out, the heading fucntioned a dual purpose: it acted first as a delay train, and then as an ejection charge, blowing out the parachute.

Orv Carlisle took this basic pyrotechnic BP skyrocket idea, and used a an actual delay train (also make from BP) along with an ejection charge,; now the difference here of course is that the Carlisle delay train/ejection charge was specially formulated Bp to better their inteneded fucntion as a delay train/ejetcion charge.

The major differnce betwen the Coaster and Carlisle/Brown motors was of course the Coasters were Core burning while the Carlisle motors were endburners with a slight core.

In pyrotechnics, there are basically 2 types of rocket motors: the Cored Skyrocket and a lesser know variant called a Driver or Wheel Driver; these were never intended in their original use to propel rockets into the air; instead they were used as "wheel" drivers; ie they rotated pyrotechnic wheels. These Driver's were end burning in nature.

The clay nozzles of both from what I can determine were simple cylindrical nozzles.

The Coasters were retrofitted to use an actual delay train/ejection charge at some point after the Carlisle, Brown manufactured Rock-A-Chutes, were introduced to the market by MMI.

hth

terry dean
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Old 04-10-2008, 02:49 PM
Nedss396 Nedss396 is offline
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Terry, thanks for this ongoing history! It is great to see this preserved.
Back in the early '60's I few about 100 of those Coaster BP motors, they were such a big step up from the Esties A and B motors! We had pretty good results, but I did lose quite a few to CATOs on the pad or in upper stages!!! Seemed like only the ones with the nice paint jobs were destroyed on the first launch! We launched some radios and smoke devices, and managed to get several 50#/30# two stagers to fly.....These were the best we had until we found ProDyn and Flight Systems later on.
Thanks fo r the memories.
Ned
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Old 04-10-2008, 04:53 PM
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Mark II Mark II is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nedss396
Terry, thanks for this ongoing history! It is great to see this preserved.
Back in the early '60's I few about 100 of those Coaster BP motors, they were such a big step up from the Esties A and B motors! We had pretty good results, but I did lose quite a few to CATOs on the pad or in upper stages!!! Seemed like only the ones with the nice paint jobs were destroyed on the first launch! We launched some radios and smoke devices, and managed to get several 50#/30# two stagers to fly.....These were the best we had until we found ProDyn and Flight Systems later on.
Thanks fo r the memories.
Ned

Ned,

What kind of impulse did the Coaster motors have? E? F?

I am quite interested in the early development of model rocketry, and I am so very grateful for all of the effort that Terry has done (and continues to do) to research, track down and document this history. I'll be looking forward to each month's post.

Mark
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Old 04-11-2008, 08:05 AM
Nedss396 Nedss396 is offline
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Mark, I am not sure what the SI was, I'll have to check my old notes and see what we recored back then. As I recall the "50#" motors were similar to F-50 or so, the "20#" motors we a very low F. A 50# booster with a 20# upper stage would take a 2" dia rocket to 3000 ft or so.
Our launch site was along the Delaware River, it was about 30 ft above the river, about 1/4 mile wide and over a mile long - all sand, no trees or brush, and remote, so we were very lucky to be able to build and fly some fairly large rockets with little danger to the public!
I wrote an article about it in the Apogee newsletter last year.
Ned
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Old 04-11-2008, 12:18 PM
shockwaveriderz shockwaveriderz is offline
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Mark:

I can help somewhat here with Coaster motor data.

Coaster had at least 3 F size modelrocket motors: the F11 (F50) and the F15(F67) and the F25(f111); these are English/Metric values.

The total impulse for the F50 was 50Ns while the F15 was 63Ns. Max Thrust was 89N for the F11 and 156N for the F15. The thrust durations were F11- 0.45 sec and 0.7 sec for the F15 . The Isp (Specifric Impulse) for the F11 was 54 sec while for the F15, 68 sec. The propellant mass for both was in the 2.9 oz range. (thats about 83 grams !!!!!) . Yes these were way over the 62.5g limit, but at that time there was NO 62.5 g limit... the NAR did not allow its memberse to cluster these as the propellant weight was in excess of 113g, the FAA limits. I'm sure some people did. Both of these motors featured what I call dual-core geometries; they looked like the B14 internally. hmmmmm.

For those that know anything about BP rocket motors, the ISp looks way low compared to estes 70-80 sec for an ISp. Why was this? Simple, these were originally pyrotechnic Bp skyrockets and used a slow 60/30/10 BP mix as opposed to the Estes standard 75/15/10 (fast) mix. Thats also why they had so much BP propellant in them.


Both of these wre 8" x 1.062 " Od with an ID of 0.875. They had a whopping 0.5" diameter Nozzle Core and the nozzle was inset from the end of the convolute wound paper casing by 0.375" to provide a more increased nozzle expansion ratio.

They had that gummed outer labeling paper wrapper that you removed off the tops and bottoms before flight.

Centuri started selling the F11 in their 1964 catalog. By 1965, Centuri had absorbed Coaster and was offering the F11 and F15 as Atlas and Hercules , where the Atlas were E size motors (these I beleive were Centuri designed BP motors) along with a new F25 (F111) !!!!!! which was also a Coaster original. This monster had a whopping 69 Ns of Total Impulse!

Obviously this F25 was way before the 80Ns max average thrust limit that we have today for model rocket motors.

See the 64-65 Centuri Catalogs at Ninfingers for more info.

Ninfinger doesn't have a 1966 Centuri catalog, so if anybody has one, please scan and post there ? Or just scan the Atlas/hercules pages and post? or email to me please?


I don't really know how many of the Centuri Atlas E's actually made it to market(if at all) or the Hercules F25.

Sometime in the 66-67 timeframe, the Centuri renamed the Atlas/Hercules to "Mini-Max" and they had D,E, F BP motors. the old Coaster F11/F15 had now become the F10/F14. Again, I don't know how much of the D,E size Mini_Max were actually sold or made it to market.

Remember, that between the time Centuri absorbed Coaster in mid 1965 to 1969, during that period, Centuri was constantly improving and tweaking the original BP Coasters.

There's also NO 1970 Centuri catalog at Ninfingers, so I can only guess that somewhere in the 69-71 timeframe, Centuri quit manufacturing the older BP Min-Max and started manufacturing the newer composite Enerjets.

Again if you have a 1970 Centuri catalog, please consider scanning it and posting at either Ninfingers or YOR and or send me copy of just the motor pages.

I won't go into to much detail on the FSI motors suffice to say the F100 was actually an E60 and the F7 was actually an E5.

As far as Prodyne was concerned they offered D2.5/D3.5 ( D11/D16), E2.5/E3.5( E11/E16) and F2.5/F3.5 (F11/F16) BP motors that used a hi-temp plastic casing and these ranged in size from 4-7.125" in length with an OD of 1.0"and an ID of 0.810 for the Cyclones and 3-6.0" x 1.125" OD x 1.0" ID . The F11's had an Total Impulse of 45.4Ns while the F16 was 53 Ns, so they were barely an F. These were low thrust long burn (4.0 sec burn time for the F11/F160, had a propellant mass of approx. 2.3 oz, with an Isp of 80-85 sec.
The Cyclones had a a nozzle core of .01875, recessed .01875 into the casing., while the Hurricanes, had a nozzle diameter of .234" . These were ALL semi-core end burners like Estes end burners. I might add that the Cyclone core dimension are the exact same core dimension of the old B14 motor. hmmmmm....

The Cyclones had a peak thrust of 4.25 lbs(19N) and a sustainer thrust of 2 lb(9N).


The Hurricane's were the D,E,F 3.5 while the Cyclone's were the D,E,F 2.5


hth

terry dean
nar 16158
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"Old Rocketeer's don't die; they just go OOP".....unless you 3D print them.

Last edited by shockwaveriderz : 04-11-2008 at 03:31 PM.
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Old 04-11-2008, 10:41 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shockwaveriderz
Mark:

I can help somewhat here with Coaster motor data.

...

terry dean
nar 16158

Wow, thanks! I never knew that there had been so much motor development in what is now called the mid-power range back then. This was just a year or two before I got into the hobby. I knew (vaguely) that there were other model rocket motor makers besides Estes, but I also recall having the impression back then that the other brands of motors were more failure-prone and potentially more hazardous. I cannot remember where I got that impression - perhaps via word-of-mouth from other kids or from my buddy who got into rocketry with me. I do remember that at the time I was pretty impressed by the way my Alpha flew on a B6 [I still am!] and how my buddy's Big Bertha did on a C6 [because it was impressive!], and that those seemed like big motors to me. When Estes came out with the 24mm D's, I erroneously thought at the time that they were the biggest model rocket motors that were being made.

The Coaster motors, the Centuri Atlas and Hercules, and later the Centuri Mini-Max motors, were all BP. Those Coaster motors in particular sound like they were really massive. How CATO-prone were any of those motor lines? (I have already heard about the FSI motors.) It seems kind of weird now, from today's perspective, that anyone was trying to mass produce motors (big E's and F's!) that were packed with that much BP. But, as you pointed out, some of this development occurred before such motors were as tightly regulated as they would become later. At the time, were there any restrictions on shipping them?

As I mentioned before, I'm really fascinated with that era of model rocketry. It sounds like it was a time when there were fewer rules - because they hadn't been formulated yet! (because less was known then!) - and there were a lot of players involved who were trying lots of different things, but no one had yet emerged as an industry leader. Thanks for the info!

Mark
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