Carbon FIber Starship FE with dual Rocket Motors

[questtek]

I lost interest in a single rocket on a Venom Wave Jumper. Too low tech although it was fun to watch.

I retro'd a Carbon Fiber Starship and put on it two Class C rocket engines providing a total of 5.4 lbs of thrust in a 1.2 lb carbon fiber boat. This gives a thrust to weight ratio of about 4.5 to 1 (lbs thrust to lbs weight). By comparison the F-22 Raptor, a fith generation fighter aircraft that can hit Mach 2 has a Thrust to weight ration of a mere 1 to 1.

However there are two major differences between the rocket/jet propulsion of the two craft.

1. The burn time for my rockets on the carbon fiber Starship is only a few seconds, so the F-22 has a clear advantage.

2. My carbon fiber Starship with Dual Rocket set up is about $300 and the F-22 Raptor goes for a mere $146,200,000 per aircraft. You could buy 48,733 Dual Rocket Powered Carbon FIber Starships for that and have some pocket change left over. Even if you wrecked one of the Starships every day...............you would not run out of them for over 133 years! Clear advantage to the Starship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NQ4vyPXNzo&feature=youtube_gdata

[JimClark]

Oh man just like the end of seasion tv shows that I hate " To Be Continued"
I wanted to see that puppy blast off. When is the second test?

Jim

[questtek]

Oh man just like the end of seasion tv shows that I hate " To Be Continued"
I wanted to see that puppy blast off. When is the second test?

Jim

So Did I! I checked the 9 VDC battery I was using for the RC trigger mechanism. It was down to about 6 VDC, not enough to provide enough power to ignite the two rocket fuses. Wind picked too much so testing over for the day.

I am going to the SAW event at Legg Lake tomorrow so see the FE guys break a few boats. I hope to try it on Sunday....or the latest Monday. Stay tuned, just like TV...................

[6S HYDRO]

jeez man 6 minutes of watching connectors and relays and no go, should probably test things out first before shooting and posting a vid in the vid section, or at least tell us that it doesnt actually go on this run

[Jeepers]

jeez man 6 minutes of watching connectors and relays and no go, should probably test things out first before shooting and posting a vid in the vid section, or at least tell us that it doesnt actually go on this run

you actually watched all 6 min of it?? jeez man you should have skipped to the end.

[6S HYDRO]

yeah i thought for sure it was gonna go

[graill]

I lost interest in a single rocket on a Venom Wave Jumper. Too low tech although it was fun to watch.

I retro'd a Carbon Fiber Starship and put on it two Class C rocket engines providing a total of 5.4 lbs of thrust in a 1.2 lb carbon fiber boat. This gives a thrust to weight ratio of about 4.5 to 1 (lbs thrust to lbs weight). By comparison the F-22 Raptor, a fith generation fighter aircraft that can hit Mach 2 has a Thrust to weight ration of a mere 1 to 1.

However there are two major differences between the rocket/jet propulsion of the two craft.

1. The burn time for my rockets on the carbon fiber Starship is only a few seconds, so the F-22 has a clear advantage.

2. My carbon fiber Starship with Dual Rocket set up is about $300 and the F-22 Raptor goes for a mere $146,200,000 per aircraft. You could buy 48,733 Dual Rocket Powered Carbon FIber Starships for that and have some pocket change left over. Even if you wrecked one of the Starships every day...............you would not run out of them for over 133 years! Clear advantage to the Starship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NQ4v...=youtube_gdata

487,334 to be exact.

[Diesel6401]

jeez man 6 minutes of watching connectors and relays and no go, should probably test things out first before shooting and posting a vid in the vid section, or at least tell us that it doesnt actually go on this run

[questtek]

jeez man 6 minutes of watching connectors and relays and no go, should probably test things out first before shooting and posting a vid in the vid section, or at least tell us that it doesnt actually go on this run

Sorry but a couple of guys asked me just how I planned to do this, thus the video. They are pretty smart guys and want to learn from my stupid mistakes……as you can see in the actual firing of the rockets in the following video taken this afternoon.

The bet was they would fire at different times thus spin the boat in a tight circle and flip. No indeed….it was worse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YyHDVZ49mg&feature=youtube_gdata

[JimClark]

did you have to dig it out of the bottom?

[Karfrik]

WTF??@!!!............lol

[questtek]

did you have to dig it out of the bottom?

ALmost, It had so much thrust it drove it down to the bottom into the mud. Good thing for flotation so it slowly floated back to the surface. I set up the balance point exactly the same as when running with an electric motor and the rockets were perfectly straight. But the front sponsons dug in with all the thrust at the start and turned it into a submarine. Have to move the balance point way back which is easy to do. One of the many FE guys watching said I should power the boat by the normal motor, get it up on plane, THEN fire the rockets.

[hydromaddicted]

I'd be way more careful just as fast as you went down the thrust of those can turn that little boat into a bottle rocket still

[questtek]

Carbon Fiber boat bottle rocket? Yes indeed, that is my exact intent and to certainly try to do it safely. (fire extinguisher at hand, recovery boat, no one else on lake, etc). I heard of one that hit 150 MPH. Hopefully my Eagle Tree GPS logger with 5 data point per second logger can pick up the speed. Once the correct rocket mounting angle/placement is worked out the rockets can be cascaded to give longer, sequential burn times.

[properchopper]

Omg !!

Late breaking news !! : After re-arming the Starship, Joe tried for another launch. Unfortunately the wind turned the boat around 180 degrees right before launch. Joe is recovering well at the SoCal Proctology Center after a successful removal of the boat.