Wow Lee! I see you were a DOM plans fan back then. Noticed a few of Design Of the Month rockets in your lineup. Very nice, BTW!


Joe

Thanks Joe! I was a big fan of the DOM /Free Plans. Growing up in Colorado, my first purchases were mail order to Estes. Then my friends and I found a hobby shop in Denver (Tom Thumb Hobbies) that carried everything in the Estes catalog. With plans coming in MRNs and in my orders, I found that I could go to the hobby shop, get all the parts I needed, and build the rockets from the free plans pretty cheap. Of course, kits were also pretty cheap at the time!

One favorite plan (Free Plan #28) was the Augie II. For those unfamiliar, it’s the yellow and black rocket. Featured “thrust augmentation” and what I’ll call “internal CHAD staging”.

Another fun rocket, (not shown in my picture), was the Tiger Shark (Free Plan #22) whose booster glided after staging.

I’ve wanted to upscale both of these for a long time. Maybe a BT-50 based moderately upscaled Tiger Shark. Semroc has an upscale called the Lil Augie (really an Augie II, and nit the L’il Augie shown in Free Plan #10) that is 29mm motor-based. F15 to F15 would be pretty amazing.

A 2x24mm mount will not fit in a BT-60 based Ranger/Big Bertha.
The most it will fit is either 3x18mm, or single 24mm, or single 29mm.

Yeah I would modify the fins. Ive built several Aerotech rockets would def have to cut some of the fin through part down.

The Tiger Shark was always one of my favorites, too. The first one I built back in 68-69 is long gone (the booster glided pretty well, surprisingly), but I have a replacement that's been sitting around waiting for a paint job for 25 years or so.

ghrocketman,

You need to think outside the tube! A “Dueces Wild” type of mod would be right up your alley, in terms of “unwimpifying” a Big Bertha.

In her nakedness, she’s a thing of beauty. :)

Apologises if I missed it, but I didn't see anyone mention that Semroc makes a Ranger kit:

https://www.rocketreviews.com/ranger-1958.html

As I did see mentioned, it is a good choice for a first cluster-powered rocket.

I’d forgotten about the Semroc Ranger. But, a 2x18mm Bertha would be at least one less motor to worry about if someone wants to get a taste for clustering.

Speaking of Rangers, I have a Semroc Brighton, a really incredible upscale (BT-80) of the Ranger. It has interchangeable motor mounts. It included a 4x18mm mount, 3x24mm mount, single 29mm, or you could fly it with single 24mm using the 29-to-24mm adapter.

Good luck flying a Semroc Brighton on a single 24mm anything short of an RMS24 F24 reload.