Here in the Colorado mountains, we have some really cool looking flowers. Being a hiker and a BAR, I find myself on hikes thinking "That would make a cool upscale rocket".

So how about a Red Columbine, also known as a Shooting Star Columbine?

I started designing / building this rocket July 2020. As with most of my rockets this is a scratch build that starts in Open Rocket and then I create a set of drawings in CAD.

The nose cone is turned on my wood lathe from a piece of pinyon pine branch from our property.

The petals, or fins in this case, I was going to make out of steamed basswood. I ended up abandoning that and making them out of 4 layers of 11 mil paper glued using Gorilla Wood Glue. The paper was wrapped around a wax paper covered form and then clamped.

The spheres at the end of the petals were turned on my wood lathe from a piece of 2 x 2 pine.

The rear eject motor mount is a pretty straightforward design. I'll use crepe paper as wadding to protect the 18" nylon parachute from the motor ejection gases, and 100# Kevlar as the shock chord.

The spheres have a counterbore which allows the petals to set into them. Then wood glue is used to fill up the counterbores.

I always do a swing test on scratch builds, to make sure they are stable. This rocket simulates as unstable, until you do the "base drag hack", then it shows a stability of just under 1 caliber. Here's a link to a video of the swing test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onzwm8Ee5lQ

I applied Elmers Carpenter's Wood Filler to the nose cone to fill in some imperfections and then sprayed the rocket with Rusto Army Green, followed by Testor's Gloss Dark Red.

The next step was to hand paint the orange and yellow colors. I used Testors Orange Fluorescent and Flat Sunflower.

We launched this rocket the last day of June.

This is the first rocket I have launched where I had to use the "base drag hack" in Open Rocket in order to get it to show as being stable, and even then the stability was just under 1 caliber.

Sure, it swing tested as stable, but I was still a bit apprehensive as to how well it would fly under power.

The rocket flew rock solid stable, and was recovered undamaged.

It's a really fun rocket, when it is descending, hanging from the chute, it profile looks like the real Red Columbine flower.

Here's a launch video. I was a bit giddy, this being the 2nd rocket I have launched in the last 40 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYFLNOAYi0w