spudman
Member
Hi folks. I have a bit of a technical question. I recently assembled a rocket kit that I bought nearly 30 years ago. Yes...life sort of "got in the way" of relaxing and taking the time to get back into my childhood passion of building & flying model rockets! Anyway, the kit was the North Coast Rocketry "Patriot" #3512. This was from the era when North Coast Rocketry was apparently run/owned by Estes. Anyway, back when I bought the kit, I also bought two North Coast Rocketry motors. They are F62-4 (29mm) motors, which the kit instructions recommended. Yesterday, when I was nearing completion of my build, I attempted to slide the motor into the motor mount tube and to me anyway...it felt rather tight. It was going in, but I knew if I continued pushing it in further, it would take a pliers or vise-grip at the very least to get it out. I used a digital caliper to measure the outer diameter of the motor and found it to be 28.6mm. Knowing that I'd prefer not to use the motors that I bought 30 years ago (although they were stored indoors and might very well be just fine yet), I began looking for a new motor online. I came across the Aerotech Economax 29mm F67-4W at Apogee Rockets and figured this would work well for my rocket. There was no actual outer diameter of the motor listed on the website (obviously, it was listed as a 29mm motor), so I called Apogee to see if they could help. While the gentleman I spoke with didn't have that exact dimension either, he did say that a 29mm motor is designed to fit inside a 29mm motor mount tube, which totally makes sense to me. And therein lies my problem. I stumbled across an old review of this Patriot kit from NCR where the reviewer mentions that he wishes that NCR or Estes had included a slightly larger motor mount tube...because the motors seemed to fit overly tight. Too late for me now of course, as the entire motor mount assembly is epoxied into the main body tube. So here's my question; does anyone have the Aerotech F67-4W motor (or any Aerotech 29mm motor) that they could measure with a caliper for me in order to give me an exact outer diameter? I'm thinking I'm going to be OK with ordering them, but I guess I'd just like to be sure before-hand. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!