Yes, it's a good idea, in theory... getting park officials to actually do the 'legwork' to set aside specific times and areas and mark or "enforce" the rules is something else altogether.

People not "part of the group" generally won't or don't have much if any respect for other users anyway... what do you do with some busybody old lady that shows up to walk her poodle and *demands* her *right* to use *her* park *anytime she wants to* and then goes into hysterics or worse because a rocket launch "scared her little Fluffy all to pieces"?? Same thing with the soccer hooligans that show up on launch day and simply ignore everything and go out to "practice" and end up stomping rockets and land in their vicinity simply *because they can*...

It's a mess...

Heck, the county actually set up a nice model airplane flying field on an unused bit of county land behind the fairgrounds a few years ago-- even built a covered prep/setup area and small runway, keep the grass mowed, etc... even was a storage building for equipment/office type thing during club flying days. As it turned out, the neighbor was a rabid nutjob who "forbid" overflights of his property, claiming "damage" to his cotton crops from folks walking out into the fields to retrieve planes that went down, or whatever... he even shot a couple RC planes down, and later he got ahold of a transmitter and used it to jam/crash an RC jet costing several thousand dollars, for which he was sued (and lost and had to pay for it). It was SUCH a big problem that the county found another scrap of unused land and relocated the RC club to the new field, far away from this a-hole... of course all the facilities are still standing there, unused...

Personally I hope they put a county dump there-- would serve the a-hole right... put the smelliest crap they can find there. LOL

Just goes to show ya... PEOPLE SUCK!!!!

Later! OL JR

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

I'd get some 2-4d and spray his cotton after he shot down one of my R/C planes. What a jacka$$.

Reading that makes me feel like a unicorn who just stepped delicately out of an enchanted forest... I grew up in Miami (which is infamous for its drug crime and violence), yet my park model rocketry experience was a "photographic negative" of yours. For decades, our family flew model rockets at Tamiami Park (the site of the former Old Tamiami Airport [for light aircraft], now mostly occupied by FIU [Florida International University]), and people there whom I know still fly rockets at the park, all without any strife. Also:

The airport runway was preserved for R/C model airplane flyers (with a roofed, open-fronted preparation building situated next to the runway). The grassy areas are used by model rocketeers, C/L airplane flyers, kite flyers, joggers, FIU students (who often like to read and study while sitting in portable chairs or on the ground), "picnic-ers" (there are numerous tables set up near the parking area), soccer players, and folks who just enjoy the open space or watching the models fly. No reservations are needed to fly there, and we never had any problems--in fact, on more than one occasion, other park visitors picked up rockets that landed far from our pad and brought them over to us as we were walking over there, and the folks who fly rockets there today enjoy the same situation. I would like to think that my positive park-flying model rocketry experience wasn't unique...

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

You've just brought up something else in the NAR rules that I think could/should be changed. I think CHAD staging with 13 mm and 18 mm motors is safe, as long as the motors are either sheathed in motor mount tubes (which are painted bright fluorescent colors or wrapped with metallized mylar or foil, for enhanced visibility) or the motors themselves are so painted or wrapped.The now-cheap video cameras would permit documentation for "instant replays," if needed. :-)Some of the dime-store and "FOIZ" vending machine rubber balls (they're like mini-Super Balls) might be the right size--*or*, you could cast custom-size silicone rubber or polyurethane rubber hemispherical nose cones using resin molds ("resin casting in reverse"--the master part could be sprayed with a mold release agent so that the resin mold material wouldn't bond to it).

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

I appreciate the encouragement everyone.



Blackshire, I have to confess that having the booster glide down wasn't my intention. I expected a graceful tumble but I think I am going to accept the challenge and see if it will glide. Or at least fall in an upright position and land on it's belly.

And thanks for the links, especially the Centuri Tech Report TIR-24.



Here's an unconventional idea, memory foam. I've never worked with so I don't know how easy it would be to shape, paint, etc. but it is probably dense enough to hold shape during flight. It is about half the density of balsa so you could make it a little bigger. It would accept a lot of force and return to shape. There would need to be a bulkhead to protect it from the hot gasses.



Yup. The picture is sort of a mock up, the forward bulkhead is .25 styrofoam board and the rear bulkhead is this corrugated cardboard. Attached are the booster mock up files. The BT needs to be 4.75 inches.

There needs to be a .25 inch hole below where the booster BT connects to the glider BT. I'm a little concerned that the escaping hot gasses and flames will burn the glider shroud before they separate. What are the chances of that happening?

Attached Files

	BoosterAftBulkhead.pdf (141.0 KB, 68 views)
	X-24B Booster Fins.pdf (89.0 KB, 60 views)
	X-24B Booster Body.pdf (150.8 KB, 77 views)

You're welcome. TIR-24 also suggests a few possibilities:

A lightweight nose section could be added to your booster (or to a second one, for testing and comparison), to lower its drag and improve its gliding performance. A short, blunt nose "cone" shroud could extend from its forward bulkhead to the front edge of its motor mount tube, giving the booster a biconical profile (with the "bicone" being three-sided with rounded corners, of course). The forward shroud's cardstock could be treated with "waterglass" (a solution of sodium silicate, which is used for flame-proofing the rolled balsa or cardstock tailpipes in Jetex and Rapier model jet planes), to protect it from the flames at staging. Also:

If the booster's full-size fins cause any problems (they might or might not), the reduced-size "semi-finless" X-24 "Bug" fins shown in TIR-24 should work well (the Cuckoo motor-boosted versions of the British Skylark sounding rocket [see: http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/skylark_cuckoo.htm and http://www.spaceuk.org/ ] and Brazil's VSB-30 sounding rocket [see: http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1...lery/VSB-30.jpg ] have first stage fins that are considerably smaller than their second stage fins).

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

Getting dragged into court and having to pay $6,000 bucks for a jet he crashed sorta got his attention...

Yeah, surprised there wasn't some "midnight sabotage" involved with a total knob like that...

People suck...

Later! OL JR

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

Wow... fairy rocket land! LOL

Seriously, proximity to the space coast probably helped, among other things... (university atmosphere).

In most places, cross horns with "Grandma Bitty and her prize poodle" and you've got trouble... or land in anywhere near the soccer hooligans and you'll be rekitted and shovel recovery all in the same flight no matter how softly it landed!

Shine up yer horn there, unicorn! LOL

Later! OL JR

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

A sharp, brightly-flickering alicorn definitely helps to maintain the peace... :-) In addition to what you observed (all of which is spot-on), I think another factor is the familiarity of model rockets, airplanes, and kites at Tamiami Park, as they've been flown there since before it became a park. In its latter years, the Old Tamiami Airport (there's a New Tamiami Airport, near the Everglades if memory serves) was very seldom used, and they didn't mind us flying models there (I remember recovering my father's Astron Falcon boost-glider near the control tower, which is now FIU's campus police headquarters). Also:

Dogs are fairly common at the park, but I never saw one freaked out by a model rocket or airplane. I think they were so used to seeing and hearing the models flying (which goes on there a lot) that it just didn't faze them. It's also big enough that folks can play soccer or jog without being too close to the model flying, and vice-versa.

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

Fellow Rocket Nerds...

I am going to start another thread for "Field Frustrations ", so we can have the whole field discussion over there. It's totally my fault for bringing up my frustrations in this thread, but I would really like to keep this discussion as "Lifting Body-centric" as possible.

I'll see about moving some posts over to the new thread so we can have the whole discussion there.

Thank-you

John "Ironnerd" Adams

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