Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post

Comrades:

As noted elsewhere, the Ute-Tomahawk flew great. Last weekend, I launched it a couple of times for Space Week. Space Week is several different events over the first week of October put on by our local not-for-profit Insights Science Museum and sponsored by the local aerospace manufacturers like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed. NASA hands out bags and goodies. The museum gets a lot of help because most people know they got the shaft: having been low-ball eminent domained out of the warehouse that used to house them, the museum has had to resort to a tour bus that they take to the rec. centers in low-income areas of the city. It's a long, ugly tale of local government misleading us but . . . .

Anyway, the high point of Space Week is launch day where 100+ kids ages 6-12 bring the rockets most of them built the night before at the mall to the R/C field and the old guys there, with help from the Boy Scouts launch them all at least once. Although they all get a cursory inspection, it's hard to tell a tiny kid "no ,you can't launch it" so with some super glue and some fingers crossed, they are sent back to their parents with a motor and some wadding for prep. Shreaded fins, melted chutes, at least two glued nose cones, even a motor mount shooting up the tube at ignition, the carnage was awesome! I doubt half of them could be re-flown by the end of the day. But the kids loved it.

Anyway, during the lulls, some of the grown-ups flew various low-powered rockets. U-T flew twice and both times booster and sustainer landed within 25 feet of the pad. The pop sound at staging got an "OOhh" from the smalls. I had so much fun, I decided to continue the project with dedicated sustainers and perhaps a Paiute booster.

And that's what's in the picture: fixins for three(!) Tomahawks each with the different fin designs from the scale literature. Tubes and Balsa from Semroc, Kevlar from Apogee, Basswood from Michaels. The .pdf is has the fin outlines in case anyone wants to make their own; just print it as is. Two of the Tomahawks will be mini engine powered, but the big fin sustainer with the 12" payload section gets a standard 18mm mount. The Paiute will probably be 18mm powered as well. It will all be sport scale.

I'll post more pictures when I get done.