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  #1  
Old 07-31-2020, 06:44 AM
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Default BBIIA drawings? (Black Brant video)

Hello All,

Over the weekend I came across *this* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM_a4bV9TA4 video, containing a lot of old film footage and still pictures, about the Canadian Black Brant sounding rockets. I also found ^this^ https://www.argoshpr.ch/j3/articles...ack%20Brant.pdf 1962 Canadian Bristol Aerojet brochure, which covers the Black Brant series. Included in the video is material on the four-finned Black Brant IIA (or was it called the Black Brant IIB?), which would be a pretty easy conversion for the (three-finned) Estes Black Brant II scale kit: https://estesrockets.com/product/007243-black-brant-ii/ (the BBIIA’s [BBIIB’s?] fin planform was different from that of the three-finned BBII), and:

In the historical video, still pictures of the BBIIA (BBIIB?) can be seen from 5:16 – 5:28 and from 8:08 – 8:18. (I ^think^ this second depiction shows a BBIIA [BBIIB?]—it *might* instead be a Black Brant I [Propulsion Test Vehicle, or PTV], although I don’t think it likely; only 17 PTV/Black Brant I vehicles flew, and all of the pictures I’ve seen of them [there’s one in the above-linked brochure] showed three-finned rounds.) Also:

Are dimensioned drawings and décor scheme information on any four-finned Black Brant II rounds available anywhere? I ordered an Estes Black Brant II kit a couple of days ago (hope springs eternal for finding an accessible flying field; :-) at worst, it’ll be a great display model), and I’d like to build it as a four-finned round.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
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Old 07-31-2020, 08:29 AM
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Right off the bat I noticed the front end of a Piasecki H-21 helicopter with U.S. Air Force markings and an "Operated by Pan-Am" marking on the side. This is way up in Manitoba with the Canadian govt. in the early-mid 50's. <Artie Johnson voice> Verrrry interesting!

I knew the US operated BB's, but I didn't realize the U.S. Army reopened the Canadian site. The site was chosen in the first place because it was a Canadian military base. I wonder if the Canadian base remained open the whole time and supported the US Army research.

Sixty two BBII's launched through 1974.
Our Estes and FSI BBII's were the 3 fin A model. Did anybody kit a 4 finned B model?

Hey mojo1986, do ya'll really pronounce Nike as Neee-K?


I'm editing as I watch the video instead of making multiple posts....and Blackshire, I haven't read your entire post yet. I've jumped on that video like a Black Brant on eelgrasss!

Thanks Blackshire, that was a very good video. I wish all the major players would do a quality video of their sounding rocket families.
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Last edited by tbzep : 07-31-2020 at 08:55 AM.
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Old 07-31-2020, 09:14 AM
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Originally Posted by tbzep
Right off the bat I noticed the front end of a Piasecki H-21 helicopter with U.S. Air Force markings and an "Operated by Pan-Am" marking on the side. This is way up in Manitoba with the Canadian govt. in the early-mid 50's. <Artie Johnson voice> Verrrry interesting!
My late Aunt Jane worked for Pan American (I noticed that helicopter, too...), and she helped design our overseas airbases during World War II. Pan Am was (it still exists, on paper), like Bell Telephone, one of those companies that was more than just a regular company, because it provided special services for the U.S. government (and for other governments, on behalf of ours), and:

Another space-related example was Pan Am's contract to operate the Atlantic Missile Range--they provided security and catering at Cape Canaveral, and they operated and provided services at the downrange tracking stations (which are on foreign territory, of several nations). The U.S. government found it easier to have Pan Am, a private company (with which the various foreign governments were familiar, and on good terms with), handle those interactions, than to have the U.S. State Department do it (Pan Am representatives could make deals on a handshake, while government-to-government negotiations would have been cumbersome and "by the book").
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
I knew the US operated BB's, but I didn't realize the U.S. Army reopened the Canadian site. The site was chosen in the first place because it was a Canadian military base. I wonder if the Canadian base remained open the whole time and supported the US Army research.
I knew that the U.S. Army reopened the Churchill Research Range, but nothing beyond that. It was--and presumably still is--plagued by long-distance ionospheric "skip" radio interference during the day. (Newman Bumstead's article "Rockets Explore the Air Above Us," in the April 1957 issue of "National Geographic" magazine, covered the Churchill site, and mentioned the daytime radio interference from a taxi company down in the U.S.!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
Sixty two BBII's launched through 1974. Our Estes and FSI BBII's were the 3 fin A model. Did anybody kit a 4 finned B model?
I can't think of any scale model rocket kits of the four-finned Black Brant II (there may be--or may have been--such HPR scale kits, but I wouldn't know about them, not being into HPR [for economic and storage space reasons]).
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
I'm editing as I watch the video instead of making multiple posts....and Blackshire, I haven't read your entire post yet. I've jumped on that video like a Black Brant on eelgrasss!
The Black Brant no longer exists (it's now called the "Eastern Brant"). :-) Do you mean the corrections I posted on YouTube below the video? They weren't big or numerous errors; I just figured I'd pass the correct information along to him. They were as follows:

**********(From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM_a4bV9TA4 )**********

Thank you for creating this historical video! There are a handful of errors (which don't detract from its value), which I thought I'd point out:

The rocket shown (in color) between 8:42 and 8:53, just after exiting the tower launcher at Churchill wasn't a Black Brant, but an Aerobee-Hi or Aerobee 150 (these two rockets were very similar), a 15" diameter, Aerojet General-made, boosted single-stage pressure-fed liquid propellant rocket with a 12.75" diameter solid propellant booster that burned in parallel (note its two sets of fins); the booster fell away after it stopped thrusting. The tower launcher--which was designed to accommodate three-finned rockets--was built at the Churchill Research Range in the mid-1950s, for launching the Aerobee vehicles (but its interior launch rails were adjustable to accommodate rockets of different diameters). The sides of its protruding triangular beam section, above the roof (like a radio tower, but much wider) were originally covered with metal panels--you can see the tower launcher in its "as new" form in Newman Bumstead's article, "Rockets Explore the Air Above Us," in the April 1957 issue of "National Geographic" magazine. (Beginning in the late 1950s, several rounds of the Aerobee 300--an Aerobee 150 topped by a second stage consisting of an 8" diameter AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile solid propellant rocket motor [its frustum--"cut-off cone"--adapter doubled as a vacuum-optimized nozzle skirt extension and as a conical stabilizer, as with the Black Brant IV's second stage]--were launched from the Churchill Range.) Also:

The black-and-white, "on-horizontal-launcher" picture (between 8:08 and 8:18) of what is said to be a Black Brant V was actually either a Black Brant IIA (having four fins), or perhaps even--although less likely--a Black Brant I. Incidentally, your narration referred to the PTV as the "Propellant Test Vehicle." Every written reference I've seen said that PTV stood for "Propulsion Test Vehicle," although it is true that the vehicle's purpose was to test the then-new, CARDE-developed CARDEPLEX solid propellant (by the way, the Black Brant I, II, and V motor cases were the same diameter and length--or very nearly the same length--as those of the British Skylark sounding rocket's Raven series of rocket motors), and:

In the narration and the screen text, you referred to the CRV7 (I've also seen it written as "CRV-7"--it's short for "Canadian Rocket Vehicle 7") as the "CVR-7." Also, at places in the screen text (such as about the Black Brant 6 and 7), multi-kilometer altitudes were abbreviated as "kms"; in all such expressions (kilometers, grams, kilograms, etc.), the abbreviations--they're actually symbols, as they are also used in other languages, regardless of their alphabets (like "F(x)" and other mathematical symbols)--are always written as singular (12 g, 7.5 kg, 438 mm, 170 km, etc.).
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Old 07-31-2020, 09:21 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
My late Aunt Jane worked for Pan American (I noticed that helicopter, too...), and she helped design our overseas airbases during World War II. Pan Am was (it still exists, on paper), like Bell Telephone, one of those companies that was more than just a regular company, because it provided special services for the U.S. government (and for other governments, on behalf of ours), and:

Another space-related example was Pan Am's contract to operate the Atlantic Missile Range--they provided security and catering at Cape Canaveral, and they operated and provided services at the downrange tracking stations (which are on foreign territory, of several nations). The U.S. government found it easier to have Pan Am, a private company (with which the various foreign governments were familiar, and on good terms with), handle those interactions, than to have the U.S. State Department do it (Pan Am representatives could make deals on a handshake, while government-to-government negotiations would have been cumbersome and "by the book").I knew that the U.S. Army reopened the Churchill Research Range, but nothing beyond that. It was--and presumably still is--plagued by long-distance ionospheric "skip" radio interference during the day. (Newman Bumstead's article "Rockets Explore the Air Above Us," in the April 1957 issue of "National Geographic" magazine, covered the Churchill site, and mentioned the daytime radio interference from a taxi company down in the U.S.!)

If that's not some cool history, I don't know what is. Thanks!
It has put me in the mood to build one of my Skydart II's in Pan Am livery.
It hasn't put me in the mood to do any sanding, though.



.
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Old 07-31-2020, 09:40 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
If that's not some cool history, I don't know what is. Thanks!
It has put me in the mood to build one of my Skydart II's in Pan Am livery.
It hasn't put me in the mood to do any sanding, though.



.
You're welcome. That would make a pretty livery (especially with the Sky Dart's decor scheme already being that shade of blue--or a similar one--on white). Also:

While it wasn't an official, contracted project with the airline, the late Arthur P. "Art" Smith, a Pan American captain (he started when they were flying Ford Tri-motors, and much later moved to jets when they "went turbojet") and an active member of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society, in 1960 co-founded the Miami Museum of Science--of which he was the Curator--and in 1966 helped found the adjacent Miami Space Transit Planetarium. He also knew Wernher von Braun and several other members of his team, and because the ballistic missiles' and satellite rockets' ascent trajectories--usually ascending to the southeast--can be well-seen "from the side" from Miami, Art took photographs of the launches--including separation and staging events--which von Braun found very helpful in post-flight analyses.
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Old 07-31-2020, 09:50 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
You're welcome. That would make a pretty livery (especially with the Sky Dart's decor scheme already being that shade of blue--or a similar one--on white). Also:

While it wasn't an official, contracted project with the airline, the late Arthur P. "Art" Smith, a Pan American captain (he started when they were flying Ford Tri-motors, and much later moved to jets when they "went turbojet") and an active member of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society, in 1960 co-founded the Miami Museum of Science--of which he was the Curator--and in 1966 helped found the adjacent Miami Space Transit Planetarium. He also knew Wernher von Braun and several other members of his team, and because the ballistic missiles' and satellite rockets' ascent trajectories--usually ascending to the southeast--can be well-seen "from the side" from Miami, Art took photographs of the launches--including separation and staging events--which von Braun found very helpful in post-flight analyses.


Pan Am was the symbol of America to the rest of the world for over 40 of its 64 years. As a kid in the late 60's and 70's, the Pan Am globe and the red TWA logos were beacons that pulled you in, whether it be on their planes, their Disney spaceships, or in futuristic movies, artwork and models. I can see how a veteran Pan Am captain would end up rubbing elbows with Von Braun.
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Old 07-31-2020, 08:44 PM
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Originally Posted by blackshire
He also knew Wernher von Braun and several other members of his team, and because the ballistic missiles' and satellite rockets' ascent trajectories--usually ascending to the southeast--can be well-seen "from the side" from Miami, Art took photographs of the launches--including separation and staging events--which von Braun found very helpful in post-flight analyses.

Similar to this shot of the Perseverance launch from a small private plane.
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Old 08-03-2020, 01:08 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
If that's not some cool history, I don't know what is. Thanks!
It has put me in the mood to build one of my Skydart II's in Pan Am livery.
It hasn't put me in the mood to do any sanding, though.



.
You also reminded me--William Roy Shelton's 1967 book ("American Space Exploration: The First Decade") and L.B. Taylor's 1968 book "Liftoff! The Story of America's Spaceport" cover the early years of the Atlantic Missile Range, and Pan American's responsibilities in providing security, catering, and other services on the range, at Cape Canaveral and at the downrange tracking (and telemetry reception) stations. Also:

Shelton's accounts of the 1958 USAF Thor-Able Pioneer Moon probe shots include how Pan Am catering trucks would bring sandwiches, coffee, and soft drinks for the launch crews and reporters during the long, often late-night countdowns. He also described how those working on the Pioneer payloads at the top level of the gantry had to sign in with a Pan Am security guard posted there before donning surgical smocks to work on them (they had two probes--one was a back-up; they sterilized the probes' parts with an ultraviolet light [and, if memory serves, with disinfectant on the outside, too], to prevent false positives if later missions discovered microbes on the Moon), and:

The Pan American security guards, as these books recount, also kept the "birdwatchers" (reporters who tried to scope out what was going on at the Cape launch complexes) at respectable distances. In the early, pre-NASA days, there was a cloak of security over all Cape launches (except--at least partially--Project Vanguard; but even with it, expected launch times weren't usually announced in advance, forcing reporters to watch the vehicles [when first stage LOX venting stopped, liftoff was imminent]), because they were conducted by and for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and were missiles, but:

Even so, the secret-keeping wasn't terribly effective (most reporters had private sources--project engineers, sympathetic military officers, etc.--who quietly informed them about when various launches were scheduled, and the reporters--who had honor and integrity as well as being patriotic, back then--returned the favors by keeping quiet before launches, protecting their sources, and pretending to be surprised at having fortuitously "caught" the launches). But the Pan American guards were effective in forcing the birdwatchers to observe the Cape from a distance (the beaches to the south [this was long before the Saturn and Titan III pads were built on and beyond the northern end of the Cape]), using high-powered telescopes and telescope-mounted cameras. But:

Things loosened up a bit, though, after the Vanguard TV-3 launch failure on December 6, 1957 (it was just a launch vehicle test carrying a tiny test satellite, as "TV"--Test Vehicle--stood for, but pre-launch news coverage had built it up to "America's answer to Sputnik," which made its fiery fall from just four feet altitude so humiliating). When Wernher von Braun's ABMA--Army Ballistic Missile Agency--team in Huntsville, Alabama was finally given permission to try to orbit a satellite using their Juno I (a four-stage Jupiter-C, using a "stretched" Redstone first stage burning Hydyne and LOX), the Army, not wanting to repeat the Vanguard TV-3 "Kaputnik" fiasco, took the Cape reporters into confidence, offering full disclosure as events transpired *IF* they would keep their information confidential until ^after^ a successful launch. The reporters, American and foreign (the BBC and other press agencies were involved, too), kept their word (something that would be doubtful today, except for a few stalwart journalists), and they brought the full story of Explorer I to the American public and to the world at large, once it was safely in orbit and confirmed to be functioning normally.
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Old 08-03-2020, 01:58 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
Right off the bat I noticed the front end of a Piasecki H-21 helicopter with U.S. Air Force markings and an "Operated by Pan-Am" marking on the side. This is way up in Manitoba with the Canadian govt. in the early-mid 50's. <Artie Johnson voice> Verrrry interesting!

I knew the US operated BB's, but I didn't realize the U.S. Army reopened the Canadian site. The site was chosen in the first place because it was a Canadian military base. I wonder if the Canadian base remained open the whole time and supported the US Army research.

Sixty two BBII's launched through 1974.
Our Estes and FSI BBII's were the 3 fin A model. Did anybody kit a 4 finned B model?

Hey mojo1986, do ya'll really pronounce Nike as Neee-K?


I'm editing as I watch the video instead of making multiple posts....and Blackshire, I haven't read your entire post yet. I've jumped on that video like a Black Brant on eelgrasss!

Thanks Blackshire, that was a very good video. I wish all the major players would do a quality video of their sounding rocket families.
While I grew up calling the rocket (and the winged goddess of victory) "Nighk-ee" (with equal stress on both syllables), the correct pronunciation--"Nike" being a Greek word--is in fact "NEEK-ay" (with nearly equal stress on both syllables; the stress on the first syllable is slightly stronger than that on the second), and:

It's the same with Io (the closest of Jupiter's four large Galilean moons, named after one of the human mortal lovers of Zeus [Jupiter, to the Romans], who--seeing his wife, the goddess Hera [Roman: Juno], approaching--hurriedly transformed Io into a pretty white heifer, to hide what was going on; Hera [Juno] was not fooled by this imposture, and asked her husband to give her the white cow as a gift, which was the beginning of her bovine troubles...). Most Americans pronounce it "EYE-oh," but the correct pronunciation is "EE-oh" (some people called it "Ten," because Voyager pictures of the planet and its Galilean moons often used a sans-serif font--in all-capital letters--to indicate their names on the images, and in that font "IO" looked like the number "10"). :-) (There *was* a Jupiter 10 [written as "Jupiter X"] moon, now named Lysithea; until the 1970s, Jupiter's other, smaller satellites were known simply by numbers [like Jupiter V, now called Amalthea, after the nanny goat whose milk nourished the infant Zeus/Jupiter].) But (and no pun was intended in this line):

The most entertaining one--knowing the ancient Greeks'...shall we say, "lack of inhibitions" in this area (they would have laughed long and loud over this one [their shepherds and goatherds, who often lived in solitude, also honored the rustic, horned and goat-legged god Pan for teaching them, well..."manual joy department stimulation," to put it delicately])--involves the name of the seventh planet from our Sun. The correct pronunciation of its name, which is the name of the "grandfather of the gods" (the god of the sky, whom Gaea [or Gaia], the grandmother of the gods, created and made her equal, after she emerged from Chaos, at the beginning of all things), is "OOR-an-os." But in English, this Hellenic pronunciation becomes "Uranus," which sounds like two particular words (I'm sure that the Huntsville team, having progressed, like the outer planets' orbits, from Jupiter to Saturn in naming their missile and rocket vehicles, did not relish the name the *next* series of launch vehicles would have had, had they progressed beyond the Saturn family)...
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
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  #10  
Old 08-02-2020, 01:12 PM
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What a fascinating thread about the Black Brant sounding rocket program! Special thanks to Blackshire for the original post, links and info; Dave for the great BB pics; and a tip of the toque to Brad Gordanier of Polyus Studios for putting together such a great retrospective video!

Apropros of the ending of the video, perhaps we can direct our scale and livery questions about the Black Brant to the Canadian Wildlife Service?
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