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Originally Posted by GuyNoir
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Yes--the HAD (High Altitude Density, powered by a Gosling IV first stage motor and a LAPSTAR second stage motor; the "standard" HAD released an Arcas ROBIN-type aluminized polyester film [6' or 2 m in diameter] balloon at apogee, which was tracked optically and by radar [a few HAD rounds lofted instrument payloads]) was a reliable and inexpensive vehicle. I am familiar with that useful and interesting article (the model is still on display, inside a case, at the Woomera Museum), but:
I was referring to the HAT (High Altitude Temperature) rocket, which is virtually un-documented; I have seen only one photograph (in Peter Morton's "Fire Across the Desert"), and no drawings, of a HAT round, on a rail launcher (the same one that HADs were also fired from). Its three-finned LAPSTAR second stage looked just like the HAD second stage, with the same bare-metal cone-cylinder payload fairing (or "head," as the Australians and the British called it), which contained the separating, parachute-lowered instrumented payload, and:
The HAT's first stage, though, was a side-by-side cluster of two surplus British military Demon rocket motors, which were smaller than the Gosling (the Gosling and LAPSTAR were also surplus British military rocket motors; the Australians made the nose cones, interstage transitions, and tail assemblies [later Australian sounding rockets used domestically-produced rocket motors, too]). Plus:
The HAT's first stage fins, which were nearly rectangular (they had long, narrow triangles "cut from" their leading edges; they were essentially "stretched-span" clipped delta fins), were attached to their rocket motors--two fins to each Demon motor--in the common "cruciform" ("+") configuration. Because the first stage had *two* rocket motors, the four fins formed an "X"--rather than a "+"--when the first stage was viewed from above or from below. The interstage transition was like the X-17's Stage 2/Stage 3 one (although it was shaped to adapt two--rather than three--lower-stage rocket motors to a single upper-stage motor)--the upper end of the transition interstage was made to accept the three-finned, single-motor (LAPSTAR) second stage.