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blackshire
06-16-2010, 12:03 AM
Hello All,

Below are a few links to material on the British Bristol Aerojet Skua and Petrel meteorological/sounding rockets, the Spanish INTA 255 sounding rocket, and the US Arcon sounding rocket. The Skua was roughly similar to the Arcas. The 6-finned Petrel used a larger motor (both rockets had end-burning sustainer motors). The Petrel was also used as a target to simulate short-range missiles.

COPIED FROM AN EARLIER YORF POSTING OF MINE: Hmmm...another use for Quest's new 1/2A3-2 would be to power the parallel-burn, series-staged boosters of scale models such as the British Bristol Aerojet (BAJ) Skua meteorological rocket (see: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hsaulles/march-april.pdf and www.astronautix.com/lvs/skua.htm ), the BAJ Petrel sounding rocket & supersonic target (see: www.astronautix.com/lvs/petrel.htm ), the Spanish INTA 255 sounding rocket (see: http://fuseurop.univ-perp.fr/inta_e.htm ), and the Atlantic Research Corporation Arcon sounding rocket (see: www.astronautix.com/lvs/arcon.htm ). An accelerometer could ignite the sustainer as soon as the booster caused it to move.

Some versions of the Skua (and the Petrel too, if memory serves) had parachute-recovered reloadable boosters that landed quite close to the launcher, so using parachute-recovered boosters on these models would give them life-like performance.