More designs
 

I posted a while back about my rocket designs and attempts to fabricate one or two of 'em, and some of you may remember the faux rocket company design work I played around with for a bit. But there were some designs from back then that I didn't present, and I wanted to throw them at you for your comments.

No better place to do that than here, IMHO!

More...

The third one looks like it may be something from the Odyssey, Rigel 3 and Dark Energy family.


Bill

I really like Pic 4 in the first group, the two stager.
That, and the first one in the second group! The Hornet on is my favorite.

Two questions -
1. What software do you use to draw these with?

2. Being from Bradenton, do you fly at any Florida section launches?
I should be at the Tampa TTRA this Saturday with the JonRocket trailer.


Great work - keep them coming!

I hope that's a good thing! :D

I do all the 3D modeling in a free prog called Wings3D (recommended, if you have a taste for that sort of thing) and then I export finished models from there to another prog (not free) called Swift3D by Electric Rain, where I add textures, materials, scenery & lighting. It's a great prog to interface with Flash (CS6 - the latest) to produce animations and the like, as well.

I have not been out to any of these launches, although not for lack of desire.
The few launches as a BAR I have done have been on my own (me and Cuzzin' Mike, that is!)
I doubt that I could make it this weekend, but who knows...? :rolleyes:

Well, I'm game.
A few more, for your consideration.

Very creative!

Southerners will especially like the 1st one in the above post :chuckle:

All very nice! I love the exotic designs and the sharp deco on all of them!

True... it was Cuzzin' Mike's idea, and we might actually build it someday for him (once we get the decals taken care of - I know, a few guys here can handle that stuff!)... licensing for a kit would be a headache! It would probably be more bad-a$$ as an MPR or better.

Great work! You have some real good designs there for sure. I'd buy 'em!

I've got pages & pages of sketches for rocket designs, and some of them are making their way into the 3D realm. This one I just made in Wings3D, brought over to Swift3D and added the 'paint job' & rendered out this image within the last half-hour! Sometimes this can be as much fun as building real ones... :p

Hopefully someone out there will understand why I call this one the Atlatl... ;)

Cool... but stability would probably require some work on that one... :)

Later! OL JR :)

Perhaps, but I've seen something like this in the BARCLONE catalog (and Shrox makes/made that displaced fuselage jet rocket kit); also, you might notice that I have the trailing body tube offset from the center of the tube fin to compensate, I would hope... these are just nuggets of ideas, not necessarily to be taken seriously.

I love your designs. Especially that Atlatl. Not sure on the refrence tho...

Do your designs come with measurements and parts lists yet :D

To what do these terms refer?

Three Estes kits. The Odyssey and Rigel 3 are "classic" kits from the late '70's/early '80's timeframe that featured an unusual blow-molded plastic nose cone. The Dark Energy is a new release that uses a version of that nose cone made with new tooling.

D'OH! Gotcha now. When you said "family" my mind immediately went to "classification of warships" so I wondered if this was some kind of sci-fi reference.

I still have my original Odyssey and it is still in flying condition. Never had a Rygel 3 (I don't remember that one, so I'll have to look it up).

Hey! You've got some real creativity going on there. Fresh, unique, excellent! I don't do kits anymore but I'd actually buy many of those. I don't know what would be involved with all the details but have you ever contacted any of the kit companies? You've got more "original concept" ideas than most of what I've seen by any of them for quite some time.

Really nice!
Randy
www.vernarockets.com

I have not contacted any model rocket companies. One of Tim Milligan's comments in his series of online newsletters (where he also says "Buy a model rocket company instead!") is something along the lines of "We aren't looking for rocket designers." This pretty much sums up my take on the industry since prowling around about it. How many new kits does Estes put out a catalog year? Less than 10? How many people work for them creating useable rocket designs? John and who?

I'm not complaining: There are a number of model-rocket-business-related personages on this forum, and at least a couple have said a kind word or two about some of my designs; but nary a one have expressed any more interest than that - which supports my point about this 'corporate' mindset. Which I get. If I started a company like this, I'd want to be the brain behind it.

I expect 'twould be folly to try. ;)

Not yet!

That's an idea that's been forwarded by others, which is great for all those die-hard kit builders & bashers that abound on this forum... but there are rocketeers out there who aren't BARS that might like these designs as well. Marketing to that potential (larger) group is probably the first best target (which means full-on kits), and the BARS & the rest can still do what they do with what's there. That's my theory.

I'm still behind the curve on building most of these designs and determining what's what, and I'm not going to pretend I have vast knowledge of model rocket testing techniques, 'cuz ah don't. It would be some time before I could get around to offering anything that a customer wouldn't be justified in demanding his money back for.

Actually, six of my earlier designs have been built and tested more than once and they are good to go - there are contruction-technique-details I have to work out with a couple. A couple of others are too simple to offer as kits... bash away!

I do not have anything even remotely resembling a workshop with which to do this work properly, so I have a handicap there. It remains to be seen what happens!

This is an atlatl:

I do not think there will be a stability problem with the Atlatl. FlisKits has a couple of designs which uses body tubes spliced together like that and they fly fine.


Bill

I knew I had seen an example or two somewhere (else).
Ideally I'd like to design a paper shroud for the blunt ends of the body tubes in order to get an unbroken, streamlined overlap (and it'd be a good spot to put a 'logo'). Here I was trying to come up with the simplest construction technique. I wonder how much math would be involved in getting this one lined up right... :confused:

Nimrod STO
 

The NIMROD Surface-To-Orbit missile.
Inspired a bit by the new Estes QCC Explorer...

Oh, that's nice & lethal looking! :D

Empress
 

The Empress.

Nniiiicccee!

I hope you don't mind if I scratch build for my own use something inspired by your SPARINGER-AO

The SPARINGER-XL 2 Stage (BT-60 to BT-55)

Agreed! Nice design. What tube sizes?

Good question... one that I muddle with a little when designing these things. I don't necessarily worry about such specs up front. I come up with what I think looks good, but I assume going in that an actual build is going to change some proportions. For this one I'm thinkin' BT-50 first, and that would probably give us BT-20 for the fin pods and BT-5 for the set of tanks. At this point it's anybody's call!

The only special items here would be the set of 'tanks' - for want of a better word - at the back end w/ the skewed nosecones (whose points lay right up against the main tube), and those can probably be fabricated with cardstock (and you only need them for the top ends!).

Keep in mind that I have not built and/or tested any of these designs. If the 'R' part of R&D is your cup of tea, I'd certainly be interested in seeing and hearing about the results!

BTW: A couple more designs... the Caveat has been around this forum before, but this is the latest v.ersion!

Do I mind?!?
Just don't forget to post pictures! :D

And I thought I should provide a pronunciation for this rocket name: "suh-PRING-er".
I've had folks say it "sap ringer." Cute, but incorrect. :rolleyes:

Thank you!
At the risk of redundancy I am going to post everything I have design-wise that hasn't been in this thread yet. Some of you may have seen some of these before, but these are new renders. Enjoy!

More of the sme.
BTW: The Stanger and the Nomad are both excellent flyers!

And finally...

That reminds me. I have some of those Agent Orange, Michaels Christmas tree light bulb clear nose cones around here somewhere from a few years ago. If you still want them, PM me a snail address and I'll try to find them.


Bill

More stuff... Blackshire liked the Four Alarm the first time I presented it; and I ran across this photo of a Coney Island rocket icon that they were considering taking down, from what little I could learn. I thought it would make a neat nostalgia kit!

A few new
 

The Eclipse is a new (and upscaled - MPR?) version of the cross-tube-finned Dead Ringer; + more designs... and a fantasy view of a trade show booth... ;)

I think I am going to go thru this entire thread and pull out the ones that I like and put in my build queue. Hope you don't mind!

That should give me something to build on for the next 10 years or so. ;)

Tell ya what: Do that and you'll be grandfathered in as the first SKY AYE board member (or something... fan club president???). Hopefully you'll provide some 'R' to some of my 'D'... and keep me posted, if possible (thread builds, pics, video of launches, barrage of opinions... all good). I want to know what dimensions of and what materials you use, too. Thank you.

Oh, and don't forget to look at the new design - the Bulldog 24-D. You can prolly guess the inspiration for this one... :rolleyes: