mtnmanak
™
- Joined
- May 5, 2020
- Messages
- 2,118
- Reaction score
- 2,936
While I have been sitting around (literally) watching the paint dry on my Sirius Refit USS Atlantis build, I grabbed the next rocket in my build pile - happened to be a North Coast Rocketry Cluster Duck.
This is a pretty straight forward build, not sure it will be of much interest to most people, but if you were thinking of building a mid-power rocket with a whole lot of motors, this is a pretty good rocket to introduce a big cluster. It has a core 24mm motor and 6 x 18mm outward motors for a big 7 motor cluster. The nice thing is that it is heavy enough that it won't fly off to the moon with all those motors. At the low end, with a D in the 24mm tube and A's in the outer tubes, the Duck only flies to less than 400 feet. Makes for a nice low flight on a big noisy cluster. Crank it out with an E in the center surrounded by a bunch of C's and she'll hit over 1500 feet.
Initial impressions are great. Really quality materials.
Decision up front - planning to make the body and nose cone purple. Heresy, I know. Black fins and yellow motor tubes. We'll see how it goes. I change my mind about color every 5 minutes or so. Other than that, not many design changes. Planning to stuff the engine blocks in further on the outward motor tubes and not sure if I will stick with the funky steel cable-to-dual kevlar/elastic shock cord recovery setup, but can't see any real changes other than those. Will also add 1010 rail buttons on one side. Only other change I am planning is sequence - I am going to paint all the individual parts prior to assembly, so that may influence the order in which I complete the build.
Parts in the bag are great. Plywood on the fins is very high quality, Very smooth right out of the bag and well cut - all of them are exactly the same size/shape/dimensions. Love the little locking/alignment tabs for the fins into the aft centering rings since this is not a through the BT wall fin installation. Tubes are really high quality. Pretty big seams on the main BT, but I think that makes it easier to fill them, actually. Often those tiny seams are the hardest ones to fill and get smooth. Both seams need to be filled on the BT.
This is a pretty straight forward build, not sure it will be of much interest to most people, but if you were thinking of building a mid-power rocket with a whole lot of motors, this is a pretty good rocket to introduce a big cluster. It has a core 24mm motor and 6 x 18mm outward motors for a big 7 motor cluster. The nice thing is that it is heavy enough that it won't fly off to the moon with all those motors. At the low end, with a D in the 24mm tube and A's in the outer tubes, the Duck only flies to less than 400 feet. Makes for a nice low flight on a big noisy cluster. Crank it out with an E in the center surrounded by a bunch of C's and she'll hit over 1500 feet.
Initial impressions are great. Really quality materials.
Decision up front - planning to make the body and nose cone purple. Heresy, I know. Black fins and yellow motor tubes. We'll see how it goes. I change my mind about color every 5 minutes or so. Other than that, not many design changes. Planning to stuff the engine blocks in further on the outward motor tubes and not sure if I will stick with the funky steel cable-to-dual kevlar/elastic shock cord recovery setup, but can't see any real changes other than those. Will also add 1010 rail buttons on one side. Only other change I am planning is sequence - I am going to paint all the individual parts prior to assembly, so that may influence the order in which I complete the build.
Parts in the bag are great. Plywood on the fins is very high quality, Very smooth right out of the bag and well cut - all of them are exactly the same size/shape/dimensions. Love the little locking/alignment tabs for the fins into the aft centering rings since this is not a through the BT wall fin installation. Tubes are really high quality. Pretty big seams on the main BT, but I think that makes it easier to fill them, actually. Often those tiny seams are the hardest ones to fill and get smooth. Both seams need to be filled on the BT.