Five Stage Model Rocket

My own design, notice the wings (all comes back in one piece) of a 5 stage rocket, each stage on a 'D' black powder motor. Filmed in the late nineties. Using quickmatch to ignite each stage. This is the Falcon 4. You can hear each stage fire. The camera zoomed in as it followed it up, so it went very high, higher than it looks. Reached 1 mile in altitude according to Alticalc estimates, and I recovered it ok - Laurie Calvert.

Note: I rotate the camera as I film it, so it may give a funny effect but believe me, it was going vertical. Notice too the strengthening struts at the bottom to support the long wings. It had these wings to give stability because I wanted it all back in one piece, not five seperate pieces. But big wings make it prone to wind, so I launched on a non-windy day. I was pleased with this original (to me) design. As the motors seperate, it gives a little kink in the flight.

www.calvertfilm.fsnet.co.uk

The engines were taped together in line, with about an inch of expendable body tube also holding both motors in position, and painted black. You can see the black line of motors 3 seconds in. The final motor is in the engine mount in the regular position. As each motor burns and sets off the next, it falls away. The nice thing about this design is that I only have one piece of rocket to find. Normally a body stage will fall away with the motor on normal staged rockets.

It wasn't built for speed or altitude but rather as an experiment to make all five stages work, and to get all of the rocket returned. This is quite hard to do. This was my second attempt. The first design had a kink in flight on the third stage. This was the maiden (and only) flight of this design. I just keep it stored now.

It was an Estes Thunderstreak model (or any 24mm body tube design) with 4 extra long balsa wings, and four strengthening balsa struts between them, as you can see. The last motor was in the regular mount. The others were just lightly taped to each other and painted black. I had about 1 inch of quickmatch (fast-burning fuse) between each motor, to ensure ignition. And that was it.

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[MilitiaHQ]

I built a 4 stage rocket using cut down Estes rocket engines. I found using the D-12-0 booster as the 1st stage booster, followed by a series of 2 X C-11-0 boosters as the 2nd and 3rd stage and the 4th stage was a C-11-7 upper stage. On top of the rocket i made a gaffer tape tube and filled out the hollow with FFF Goex black powder. And sealed it tight, the dow i used for the stabilizer stick was about 5tf long. Slow lift off but she flew for about 90 seconds before a huge explosion.

[Calvertfilm]

@MilitiaHQ 90 secs? Very cool.

[roberteden]

So is the black part the engine itself or are they in a tube? Did you just tape the engines to each other or put them in a tube? Im not sure I understand how you assembled it just from looking at the image in second 3.

[Calvertfilm]

@roberteden Hi. It's all in the video description - saves me typing it again :-)

[dsnyder05]

@MilitiaHQ lol, where do you get 90 seconds. Burn time on small black powder motors is around 1.5 - 2.5 seconds, so at best you have 10 seconds of burn. Sorry, but gravity won't let the rocket coast for another 80 seconds.

[r0ck3tsm0k3]

@trollolololololo In model rocketry, single motors generally offer better altitude than many small motors of the same total impulse. That is because the mass fraction (particularly for black powder motors) is much lower. So much extra is used for all those clay nozzles etc. But as said, this was not about altitude but rather the challenge of an impressive 5 stages. A single 24mm F would go much higher.

[TheodoreJudah]

That was impressive - well done.

[MegaRocketLaunch]

@Calvertfilm oh ok so you do it for a chalenge .. meh that works great flight

[k2477456]

@SilverRedix1 i prefer 34DD lol

[Calvertfilm]

@trollolololololo Yes thank you for that comment. That is true. But I was fed up trying to find several parts of rockets, which would often disappear into the undergrowth. So the remit for this design was that it must be a one-piece design - what could I come up with? It was not about performance.