I'm looking for a tail cone for a BT-50 body tube.

Searches take me to sites that offer rocket building supplies, but I'm not getting enough info presented to help me figure out if they have what I'm looking for. Is a tailcone also known as a transition? I want to do what is done with the Estes Bullpup, where the engine is flush with the nozzle of the tail cone.

Has anyone else waded through all these sites and knows where I can get this item without such a hassle?

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-Brain
SKY AYE ROCKETRY
Follow Your Impulse!

What do you want it made from? If a paper (or cardstock) tailcone is sufficient, check out the Estes Sprint (http://www.spacemodeling.org/JimZ/k-49.htm). Just print the tailcone on cardstock and build it according to the instructions.

Greg

I have made them out of balsa but they are...fragile. Very fragile.

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Not fragile.



Just Jerry

The tailcone on the Estes Bullpup is a cut-down plastic transition section. If you must have a plastic one, get one out the Customizer Mini launch set if you have one or try to find a recently OOP kit like the X-ray or Fireflash to get a BT-50 sized transition. Failing that, you may want to cut down a BT-50 sized nose cone though the taper may not be acute enough to look right.

Or make one out of cardstock and soak it with thin CA to make it (much) tougher.


Bill

Semroc has a few categories of tail cones and hollow reducers.

Semroc

That's where I'd go. Balsa Machine Service, also.

A transition is just that, a tapered transition, usually conical but not always and sometimes hollow, with shoulders to fit inside the different sized tubes. A tail cone is hollow and tapers from the aft of a body tube and terminates at, or about the motor tube. These aren't dictionary answers and their are variations and exceptions such as using a paper shroud used for either a tail cone or a transition. Transitions and tail cones may be balsa or plastic or other strange and wonderful things.

Tail cones and transitions may be bought or made from existing components. Once such case is Commanders Willy's Red Rocket:


It is constructed of two polystyrene nose cones mated with a one inch bit of BT-80 body tube. The aft portion is a tail cone made from a nose cone, trimmed at one end and the most of the shoulder removed.

A second example is the Kran, which is made utilizing tail cones as transitions, all fit over a single BT.


Hope that was helpful...

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Love the look of the Kran. Nothing like a good camo paint job on a model rocket...

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Kurt Knox
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MASA section 576
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Semroc sells hollow balsa tail cones as well.
I think they have them in BT50, BT55, and larger HP-type sizes as well.

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