When I change the clay weight mass, I should be able to immediately see the stability change in the other window, right?

Unless the design is under-finned to a point where even a POUND of weight isn't helping. :confused:

Hey Gordo!!!

Do you have any pics handy that you could post of the Merc-Redstone, Gemini and Vostok Bertha bashes?

BINGO!

I actually saw the stability margin increase when I took out that weight...(EDITED: WRONG! It went completely the other side of 0.00...)

I'm going to change the fins a bit to get this thing stable. It's beginning to remind me of the Hi Flyer issue...

Chris,

Here's the updated version of your design. It was under-finned, as you thought. Now, it flies with rather good performance, and only needs 0.375 oz of ballast (three 1/8th ounce fishing sinkers) at the inside-tip of the nose cone.

From a purely visual perspective, I think this particular design would be better using a normal bertha-length tube rather than a baby tube.

These bashed designs seem to fall into specific categories.
Either they are stock big bertha/baby bertha with original fins but different color/markings to LOOK like a bash (like some of Sandman's nifty creations), or they are totally revamped with the only original parts being a stock tube and cone (like some of Excelsior's ).

Oh, another Rocksim weirdity. It didn't like fins hanging off the aft end.
It defaulted to rocksim calcs as Barrowman and Cut-Out couldn't handle it.
The drawing window had resizing issues too. Everytime I came out of editing a part, the drawing would be so huge that only the cone showed onscreen!

New Plan -- Sergeant Gooney
 

Here's a promotion for Chris Timm's Corporal Gooney...

Sergeant Gooney!

It comes in two flavors -- white, with black trim, and olive drab.

A8-3.....156'.....14 FPS.....36" rod
B4-4.....396'......3 FPS.....36" rod
B6-4.....404'......4 FPS.....36" rod
C6-5.....893'......7 FPS.....36" rod

Enjoy!

Have you tried the V8 demo yet? It has a lot of improvement over the V7 release.

I didn't have any trouble with the fins hanging past the tube edge. If anything, that helped the design as it moved the CP back just a bit. I think the problem was simply the fins being too small for any stabilizing effect. RocSim is a bit lax on telling you what the problem might be - it presumes you can read the numbers and figure it out yourself, but it isn't always evident what you're looking at. On this score, V8 isn't any better.

The short body designs are, by their very shortness, short-coupled, meaning that they tend to react a bit quicker and you can see the effect of that reaction more visibly. A long-body Corporal would be far more stable, but then you loose that "Gooney" feel to it. Goonies are supposed to be short, stubby, even rediculous impersonations of larger rockets. A full Bertha-sized tube would take it out of that (boot) camp...

I love it!

Can you wrap a roll pattern on it and do a the alternating black checkerboard pattern on the fins like the one in the pics below?

v8 is on its way.
Red Wings didn't get lucky two games in a row.
Heres another gooney.
This time, the Redstone Missile!

It's possible. You'll find this out soon enough, but that feature has it's own share of frustrating bugs in V8. It doesn't always want to align correctly, no matter what you try to do...:confused: