Who has the best BT-50-size transparent payload section tubes?
Quest is out because their tubes are red, and I am getting this for a gum-camera rocket.

The tube that came with my Estes Nova Payloader is "eh...". Are the Semroc tubes any better? What about another company?

__________________
John Adams
"There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"

The one in the Semroc Shrike kit looks identical to the original one from Estes.


Bill

__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...

For your purposes the one that came with your Nova Payloader is probably better. Current Semroc tubing (including that in my Shrike kit) has longitudinal ridges that would be rather noticeable to a gum cam.

What I actually did to fly a gum cam was cut a hole in the payload tube for the lens to look out through. You'll get some interesting sounds in the audio that way, but a clear view.

__________________
Bernard Cawley
NAR 89040 L1 - Life Member
SAM 0061
AMA 42160
KG7AIE

Check your local pet shop. Under-gravel filter tubes for aquariums are the exact size. The last piece I bought was $5.69 for a three foot length.

__________________
www.wooshrocketry.org NAR Sec. 558
Look us up on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/guytogo75?feature=mhee
unstable by design

Hmmmm... aquarium tube Thankz.

The Estes tube has longitudinal striations as well. .

__________________
John Adams
"There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"

Interesting. I have a Nova Payloader built from a fairly recent kit (all-white parachute - so a couple of years old) that has a pretty smooth payload section - although now that I hold it up to the light and look it does have longitudinal ridges on the inside as well - they're just less pronounced than recent Semroc PST-50 tubing.

I thought I had posted a picture of my HiJinks with the gum cam payload section (with hole for the lens) but I haven't found it yet. A post with a link to a video is in this rather long thread here on YORF about gum cams (and later keyfob cams). Post is here .

__________________
Bernard Cawley
NAR 89040 L1 - Life Member
SAM 0061
AMA 42160
KG7AIE

I was at a local hardware shop (Lowes) and noticed florescent tube protectors, two different diameters. Thought to myself....hmmmm. Didn't check out if they are the sizes typical for model rocketry but plan to stop by again tomorrow when I don't have to be somewhere else....

__________________
Don
NAR 53455
"Carpe Diem"

Those come in two sizes. The larger one is slightly larger than BT-60. The smaller is just a tad smaller than 29mm motor tube.


Bill

__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...

If you're planning to shoot straight through the plastic tube-- IE NO HOLE for the lens or anything, I don't think you're going to like the results...

My brother and I bought a Boostervision cam (the "sugar cube" analog TV transmitter type) and mounted it on his R/C monster truck... we tried shooting through the Lexan windshield to get a 'driver's eye view' and despite the fact that the windshield appeared CRYSTAL CLEAR to the EYE (we even put our heads up into the car shell to get an idea of camera placement and stuff and we could see through the windshield as clearly as I would driving my pickup down the highway) when we put the CAMERA in, the image looked slightly better than if we'd have smeared Vaseline on the camera lens...

Guess that's the difference between "clear" and "optically clear". Also goes to show what amazing devices the Mark 1 human eyeball is... most cameras just don't have the range and adjustments that our eyes do to see some things... IE through "clear" Lexan...

We DID finally get some "driver's eye" vids, but using an older dinged-up car body on his RC monster truck, which he was willing to cut a "hole" in the front windshield for the camera lens to look out of...

Later and good luck! OL JR

__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

What LS said is basically what I was thinking. If you want to take pictures or shoot video from inside the payload tube, then the better way might be to cut out a square window in the side of the tube and then cover it with a flat piece of crystal-clear acrylic (Lucite, plexiglass) or polycarbonate, which will be what your camera shoots through. In my idea, you would lay the clear flat piece across the square hole in the side of the tube, and then patch over the two parts of the hole that it doesn't cover by using a couple of half-moon shaped pieces of plastic.

Another option would be to somehow obtain a fairly thin-walled smooth, clear polycarbonate tube as a replacement for the extruded polyethylene one. But with even a crystal clear tube, the curvature of the wall might introduce some distortion. Or it might not. (It would all depend upon the quality of the tube, I guess.) Clear plastic payload tubes are not made to be "lens clear." If they were, the pricetag for the kit would be many times higher.

__________________
SAM # 0011