Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post - The Return of the Empire

Comrades?

Did you ever have a build that just nothing ever seemed to go right? Like the rocket was just cursed or something? That's this rocket for me. I decided to build a completely new sustainer from BT-56 and managed to cut off the fins from the original BT-55. That's where it all went wrong.

I took the first picture to show what I was going to do to complete this rocket which sat for 11+ years. I show a coupler on the booster transition, a Semroc baffle and Kevlar leader with another coupler and two pieces of BT-56.

Not a single part of that worked.

The coupler on the transition froze before it went all the way on and I had to cut it off. When I glued all the BT-56 pieces together, I forgot to brace and it came out crooked, when I went to cut it a part, I somehow partially cut through the Kevlar. In the end, of all the pieces you see in the first picture, all I could save was 12" of the longer tube.

Luckily, I have a lot of BT-56/ST-13 parts lying around as I used that size for Scouting rockets, science fair rockets, Enerjet rockets, even a rescue V-2. So the second picture shows the rebuild sustainer braced against my Estes fin marking angle thingy while it sets. Total tube length is 20". I tied the Kevlar leader around a 5056 paper ring that I trapped under the coupler for the body tube. I got the other coupler on the transition by applying glue to the bottom of the transition and the top of the coupler. so the coupler was halfway on before any glue was involved. I was pretty excited when that worked.

So, I'm letting it sit overnight and tomorrow I'll tackle the fins and conduits. I found out today that I'll have a partial return to work beginning June 1 so I need to start wrapping all of these projects up.