Hello All,

A while back I posted about the possibility of using the Quercetti catapult missiles as boosted darts with standard model rockets. (A little background: since the early 1960s, the Italian Quercetti toy company has produced precision-made catapult-launched missiles that utilize parachute and streamer recovery systems. They can reach altitudes of up to 100 meters. YORF member Leo Nutz has a large collection of Quercetti missiles that can be seen here: http://www.leo.nutz.de/Rockets.php?Rockets=Quercetti ). Now:

The current Quercetti missiles are the Tor II (see: http://www.quercettistore.com/en/prodotti/tor-ii ), the two-missile "Orbital Adventures" set that includes the Jupiter and Saturn missiles (see: http://www.quercettistore.com/en/pr...ital-adventures ), and the new Elifly missile, which uses helicopter recovery (see: http://www.quercettistore.com/en/prodotti/elifly ). The Tor II missile is also included in their "World of Flight" educational kit (see: http://www.quercettistore.com/en/prodotti/world-flight ), which also comes with several of their glider and powered airplane kits as well as an experiment manual. Also:

Today (well, yesterday at this hour) I received two "Orbital Adventures" missile sets that I had ordered from a vendor in the United Kingdom (Quercetti's products are sold in the USA, but trying to find their flying toys here seems like searching for matzoh ball soup in Saudi Arabia). :-) The Jupiter missile that comes in the set has a new feature (it wasn't included in the "stand-alone, sold-by-itself" Jupiter missile that I had in the 1970s) that enables its streamer deployment altitude to be varied. It is simply a small rubber band that fits tightly around the missile body and over the "hinge tongue" of the recovery system hatch; this "tongue" is flush with the missile skin when the hatch is closed. Simply by sliding or rolling the rubber band up or down the missile body, the hinge tension can be varied, which varies the streamer deployment altitude. In addition:

Like the larger, accompanying Saturn missile in the set, the Jupiter missile uses a hinged lever arm (it looks like a conduit when folded against the missile body for launch) that swings outward when the missile slows down near apogee, releasing the recovery system hatch to open. The arm has a flat vane at its far end that is held against the missile's nozzle by the slipstream as the missile ascends. This feature should make it possible to use a Quercetti missile as a boosted dart. Its plastic nozzle, with the flat vane of the lever arm held against it, could be slip-fitted into the front end of a model rocket motor-powered booster. When the booster (it could use a short-delay motor, to deploy a streamer to recover it) stopped thrusting, the Quercetti missile would slide out due to differential drag and coast upwards until it slowed sufficiently for the vane-equipped lever arm to swing outward and deploy the missile's recovery system at or near apogee.

I hope this information will be helpful.

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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
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