Mid power Nike Smoke

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Simon and I got a Cosmodrome Nike Smoke for Christmas. It's heavenly building from a kit and not scratch building because everything is there and I don't have to worry about ordering the parachute or the engine mount. The parts were good quality. The fins and centering rings 1/4in aircraft plywood and the nose cone was an impressive 14in of balsa. The body tube was a little weak but since its a shorter rocket it's fine to have a little bit of a flimsy tube. We painted it to scale but had some problems with crappy paint.We plan to fly it on a F engine. It will go about 1600'

Zero to eight hundred in .5 seconds

As shocking as the title is, it's true. At the rocket's fastest speed it will be flying faster that buckshot fired from a shotgun. The small rocket is practically bullet-proof. It's less than an inch in diameter and about 10 inches tall. Originally, the rocket had balsa fins and a stubby plastic nose cone. Simon and I knew it was going to shred, but we didn't care. After we thought about it we decided we were at least going to try. We replaced the plastic nose cone with a taller balsa nose cone and the fins with 1/16in high-impact plastic fins sanded to a point.We used a combination of plastic cement and epoxy clay. We gave the body tube a light glaze of plastic cement for added strength. We plan to fly it on a Aerotech D21-7. It will hit about 3000 feet in about nine seconds and have a maximum speed 850mph (that's twice as fast as our old record.) It's meant for speed and not beauty as you can see in the pictures below. I haven't heard of anyone flying supersonic on a D so as far as I'm concerned it's a world record. This looks ugly but its really strongCompared to the Big Daddy

Arreaux/Christmas launch

For Christmas I got a Rms 29/40-120 reload case, a G76-7G reload, an Aerotech Arreaux mid power kit and a mid power Nike smoke. On Christmas day I started putting together the Arreaux (pronounced arrow). The kit had really good quality parts and was well designed the fins went through the body tube and locked into the engine mount. The fins were pre-sanded and were made of Fiberglass. The body tubes had thick enough walls that they could take a had landing and the nose cone was high impact plastic. It was a really quick build because everything snapped together with a little super glue. The parachute was surprisingly small and the shroud lines were short. I followed the paint scheme but instead of yellow I used red. The result was a sturdy well painted rocket. We decided it would be great if I could fly it before I went home to Utah. After searching hobby stores for any F engines I emailed the Idaho rocket club to see if they knew how to find a F engine finally a club member emailed me and said he had a F37-10W reload he could sell me for ten bucks. I took my 29/40-120 and showed it to him. The reload wouldn't fit in the casing but luckily he let me borrow his case. I went home and assembled the motor, it wasn't very difficult but the instructions were really vague. For the Ejection charge you had to open a black powder packet and pour the right amount for the reload. We went out into the desert on a cold windy day and got ready to launch the Arreaux and a few other rockets. It took us several tries but finally it worked great. The rocket shot off the pad and weather-cocked the ejection charge was really late and when the parachute opened the nose cone ans a fin were ripped of and fell to the ground. We couldn't find the fins or the nose cone but we were just happy that it worked.On the padThe Finished rocketthe RMSMaking the RMSall the piecesThe Fin CanThe Flight
photo by Rosemary Luque
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