You learn from what's killing you.

March 10, 2008

Rocket assist balsa planes... PART 2

OK, you might have seen on the Church of Choppers blog, my first attempt at recreating the fun of a plane with JATO rocket. With a balsa wood glider.

Now, the first attempt failed miserably.

too much weight for the engine to move properly. even though my positioning was good, (right under the wing).
Now since i spend more time than i should at Micheals as they have all the crap i use to make patterns and whatnot there, when i go i always buy balsa gliders. One of my favorite things from when I was a kid!

now, i decided that the glider needs to have its own power and then once under its own power the rockets ignite and away it goes. So I went with the rubber band powered one!

First off i mounted the two black cat bottle rocket engines to the back and tryed it out, i wound the rubber band and let it go, the plane went but then the tail dropped and it crashed.















so, i moved the engines to right under the wing, so the added weight cant pull the plane down from the back or front. Wound it up and let it fly, perfect, went all the way across my shop and crashed into the door, breaking off the tail fin.



A little super glue later and its ready to fly, but for it to work i need two more people to test it out, so the rockets get lit at exactly the same time. If this is a success, i will get a plane with landing gear next time, and try it from a ground position.
i also need to experiement with removing the exploding part of the rockets... so i don't have to spend 2 dollars on a new plane everytime, well that and with Jose lighting them on fire...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'll be sure to come armed with balsa gliders — but only if we can strap on a peep. i want to see one melt in a blaze of hellfire. (& then you can eat it)

Dusty said...

Cut the tip off the bottle rocket. Like pinkynail thickness. Did it when we were kids so we could shoot them by the house and mom would not know.

davey said...

Dave, did I ever tell you about the time my Grandpa Ray used Jato Rockets on a B-17?

billybox said...

My brother Scott has some little spark plug fired ramjet thing that he picked up godknowswhere... I'm not sure he ever did anything with it. Its about 18 inches long, and shaped like a long teardrop. He thinks its slightly illegal for some reason that I'm not sure I understand. He was trying to decide what to strap it to last I heard.

I'm going to ask him if he still has it.