That's the title of a traditional old Irish sea shanty folk song.
In my case, the wording can be changed to:
"What Shall I Do With An Unstable Super Shot?"
In my previous post covering the October 31st launch at the Dove Valley field, I described the flight of such a model rocket.
Flying on a C6-5 motor, the "shot" wasn't quite so "super".
The bird left the pad, cartwheeled wildly in the air, and executed a perfect lawn dart.
This particular model was built back in the late 90s by a friend in Colorado Springs. He and his kids had gotten into model rocketry back then, but lost interest. In 2020, he gave me his collection of built models and several unbuilt kits.
Curious as to why an E2X kit that is supposedly engineered for good flight performance would go so far astray, I pulled out the instruction sheet for the model to see if there was anything missing or if C6 motors were not recommended.
The first thing I looked for was any mention of clay weight for the nose. There was none, and the illustrated kit parts list did not include any either.
Next was the recommended motor list.
Yep. There it was: C6-5 and C6-7 motors were included!
Hmmm ..
So, what am I to do with this model? I normally don't concern myself too much with delving into the performance of mostly-plastic beginners' models, but this one has piqued my interest and put me into 'engineering efficiency' mode.
Subsequently, I have identified several courses of action I could take with the Super Shot:
1. Do nothing. This would mean limiting the model's flights to A and possibly B motors without encountering stability issues. Up until last week, I had only flown this bird on A8 motors. 125 feet max. Ho-hum! At this juncture, I would have to run stability calculations before even trying it on B6 power.
2. Tamp in some nose weight. This would be the easiest of all the choices. At least it would move the CG forward enough to take care of the stability problem, allowing the use of full power. The only issue here is that doing this would add more weight to an already heavy model rocket.
3. Build a payload section. This would require a bit more effort. The problem here is the model uses none of the standard Estes body tubes. The Super Shot's tube measures an inside diameter of 26mm, slightly larger than BT-50. I would need to either roll a tube or find a vendor that carries a similar size. I do have a plastic tube coupler that originally came with the kit. At least I would have a workable payload bay to carry an altimeter or whatever.
Another viable option would be to turn a balsa reducer to facilitate use of a BT-50 or BT-20 tube. Not overly difficult.
4. If I wanted to go completely off-the-wall, I could convert the bird into a fun egglofter. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to use the aforementioned tube coupler with a plastic Easter egg epoxied on. Heck, I haven't flown an egg in a rocket since the HOTROC -4 regional contest in 1983!
5. Ditch the kit nose cone and use the rocket as a first stage booster for multi-staging. All that would be needed is an adequate inter-stage adapter.
So, it's time to get busy on this project. I'll put up a post here on the blog when I get the final version completed.
Cheers!