Hello, YORF! I'm a new member, and this is my first post. Please be gentle!

Over Thanksgiving, my sons and I built a trio of Estes kits: the Taser Twin, the Sky Lofter (as part of a launch kit), and the CC Express. We all have been bitten by the rocketry bug, and we ordered some more kits after Christmas.

I was intrigued by the "dual parachute recovery" offered by the Chuter-Two, but I couldn't find a description of how it worked. Even the link to the instructions on Estes' site is broken. I envisioned it being similar to the two parachutes used by the much larger Saturn V scale kit. When I received the kit last week, I was disappointed to see that I was wrong.

"Dual parachute recovery" means that the rocket comes down in two parts: the nose cone is glued into a shorter body tube section, which then has a solid balsa connector that slips into the main body tube. This upper section has a parachute affixed to an eye screwed into the balsa connector. The lower section is comprised of the main body tube and engine mount, and has its own parachute attached via a shock cord and the standard paper mount. The upper and lower sections are not connected, and will drift separately. It's definitely a novel design, just not what I expected.

There's one other detail from this kit that's worth mentioning: the list of materials on page 1 of the instructions include a balsa nose cone, P/N 070254. I believe that corresponds to a BNC-50AR. However, the kit actually comes with a plastic nose cone. I've tried to match it to descriptions and drawings on the Internet, and I believe that the included nose cone is P/N 071025, or PNC-50V.

Clear skies!

Beowulf,

(chuckling)

http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...d/71dcen18.html

I've put the original design into RockSim, and noticed that it had some very high deployment speeds that could possibly shred the 'chutes, if both sections were attached to each other. So maybe that's why the designers at Centuri decided to have them recover separately.

But then again, this is all speculation.


To quote fellow YORF inmate Craig McGraw, "Welcome to the asylum!"


Cheers and blessings,

__________________
Jay Goemmer
"Centuri Guy"/"Tau Zero"
YORF Member 28
Semroc SAM #0029
NAR 86131


"I think about organizing things all the time. Never seems to happen. I find something that piques my interest and I'm off on a quest. Or a Centuri. "

--Bill Eichelberger, 02/22/2022


“Centuri fret buzz in an updated form.”
Bill “Wallyum” Eichelberger re: Estes Flutter-By
03 Sept 2014

Kinda funny when kids are there they can drag the adults in with them
Mr. Bob
Starlight Model Rockets LLC
www.starlightrocketry.com

You will find that many of the kits that contained balsa nose cones will soon, or are are now being shipped with plastic cones. Not sure if the balsa versions will be brought back or not.


John Boren

Thank you for your warm greeting, and for that link. I am enjoying the process of learning about the stories behind these kits. For example, I browsed the 1973 Centuri catalog online, and was surprised to find the Star Trooper and Long Tom rockets in there. That led me to do a search about the histories of Centuri and of Estes, respectively.

The challenge, of course, is that Google has yet to be able to pull the text from a scanned image! The page to which you provided a link doesn't show up in a search for "Chuter-Two" (or "-2"). I was interested to see that the original kit was sold as a payloader with what appears to be a clear capsule, while the re-release does not implement that feature. The nose cone section is a segment of BT-50, to which the nose cone itself is glued!


Ahh, RockSim. I'm not sure I'm ready to take the plunge into making that investment, but I am certainly impressed by all of its features!

Clear skies!

John,

Thanks for that comment. Personally, I'm not upset that the Chuter-Two came with a plastic nose cone instead of a balsa one: not having to fill the pores with CWF is one less step I'll have to perform during the build!

I mentioned this discrepancy in case people were specifically looking for the PNC-50V for their clone projects.

Clear skies!

Dang! While I usually prefer plastic nosecones over balsa, I feel compelled to go out and buy up one each of the recently (ie, last couple years) released kits with balsa cones. I'm sure I can sell them on eBay for big bucks some day

Doug

.

__________________
YORF member #11

Try OpenRocket . Although not as full-featured yet as RockSim, it's also not nearly as expensive (as in FREE).

Some here are starting to use it more often. It's an open source project, and the updates come sporadically, but it's still an accomplished program in its current form. We're hopeful it will continue to be developed and improved.

__________________
Craig McGraw

BARCLONE Rocketry -- http://barclone.rocketshoppe.com
BARCLONE Blogsite -- http://barclone.wordpress.com
BARCLONE Forum -- BARCLONE Forum

BARs helping BARs

SAM 0044
AMA 352635

FYI, the Michaels at 15th and Alma (east) as well as the one at Plano Parkway and Park (west) have Estes kits. The one at 121 (north) is still RTF only. The west one had a bunch of motors in older blister packs on clearance. Had as of last Sunday, but not now.


Bill

Actually, the very first version of the Chuter-Two (mid-1960s or so) did not feature the clear payload tube....just the regular paper body tube payload tube.

So, this re-release I guess actually harkens back to the earliest version of the Centuri kit. One of those early versions was on ebay earlier this week and went for about $180.

Earl

__________________
Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970