A Tale of Two Joes

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By Steve Carr

For Christmas of 2002 I received the book "Rockets of the World" by Peter Alway. I have pretty much read the entire book and then reread different parts as ideas came to me. But most of the models I build are of the military variety and most of the rockets in the book are either scientific or exploration based. So the book sat idle as I built kits.

Working in the construction trade gives me access to some of the best trash for building rockets that one could imagine. Tubes of all sizes, scrap plywood, metal shims (they make great blast deflectors and motor retainers), and all sorts of left over hardware that a lot of times winds up in the dumpster (unless I see it first). It tends to build up after a while so what I don't want or think I can't use I either give away or if it is totally ridiculous I just pitch it. I still wind up with a lot of junk that I think may have some value some day.

I have been flying model rockets since the 70's. I never went dormant or quit flying for more than a season or two. I have always had rockets in my house. I have built pads of all types. I have flown my share of toilet and paper towel tubes. In 2002 I joined the NAR. That same year I joined my local NAR section, QUARK (Queen City Area Rocket Klub). Boy did that turn out to bee an eye opener. I had seen videos of mid and high power rockets, but until you experience it first hand, you don't fully understand the difference between black powder and AP. Needless to say I was hooked even deeper. I messed around with some 24mm reloads in some beefed up Esters' rockets with mixed results, but nothing truly successful.

My first true mid power rocket was a scratch built upscale of the Estes' Enduring Freedom Patriot. A 2.6 inch version with a 29mm motor mount made from Loc parts. I made a 24mm adapter for it so I could test fly it. I used an E9-4. Nice straight and only 200 feet with an almost late chute. Since then it has flown on everything from an F20 to a G64. This is the leader in my fleet as far as air time.

As I progressed through the mid power kits the very idea of kits started to become boring. They were all assembled the same and the only real challenge was the finishing and paint. Not to say that there are not kits that I would like to build. Just that I wanted to build some rockets with my own parts that I could call my own design. The problem with that is you have to have the right tools for the job. Over the years I have been able to acquire a bunch of tools and justify the purchase as what was needed to do the honey do job at the time. For making nose cones that required a lathe. But how do you justify a lathe. In the end I couldn't so she got diamond earrings and I got a lathe (on sale of course).

When I found out that QUARK was going to host NARAM 47 I new I wanted to do something cool as a project. I had planned on taking the while week off and do a lot of sport flying and helping out anyway I could, but an illness in the family used up all of my vacation and work left me with little time for any rocketing until May.

While practicing with my lathe one day I was looking for something other to make besides candle sticks. I had some nice poplar in the woodpile so I started turning nose cones. I made a reasonable one for an Esters' Strike Fighter and some smaller 13mm cones for minimum diameter rocs. I had some nice 3.5 inch tubing in my pile of stuff from work. A bit large for a low power rocket but good enough for my 29mm reloads. So I picked up Rockets of the World and started looking. The Aries caught my eye, but the size of the nose cone would make it way too heavy for my mid power motor. I passed it over but this is one for a future project. Little Joe caught my eye next. If I was to build this one the capsule could eventually wind up doing double duty as a Redstone also. Then I thought why not do the Redstone. A little large, maybe too large for mid power, but a definite possibility. In the end I started a thread on TRF with the question Little Joe or Redstone? After a few days I got a few responses and Little Joe won. I haven't built the Redstone yet but who knows.

LITTLE JOE

Once I had decided on Little Joe it was a matter of math. I consider my math skills far better than my writing skills. The tubing I was using is 3.57 inches outside diameter and Little Joe's outside diameter was 80 inches. So divide 3.57 by 80 and you get the number .0446. This is the magic number that all of the dimensions in the book are multiplied by to get the figures for my version. The body tube end up 14.5 inches and the turned part of the capsule 4.5 inches. With the escape tower adding another 6 inches to the overall length. The fins would raise the rocket another 3 inches off the ground giving an overall length of around 28 inches. Now this was kept fairly close to scale but not a contest entry by any means.

The first step in construction was to turn the capsule. I chose a nice tight grained piece of poplar slightly large than the od of my body tube. I rounded the blank and laid out the various points for diameter changes. I left 1,5 inches to fit inside the body. When I was done I had a reasonable facsimile of the capsule but not a while lot of detail. To fix this I used some cardstock wraps to show hatches and raised surfaces. The idea was to make a rocket that looked good sitting out on the pad.

The escape tower was a problem all to itself. The wood turning wound up being about 30% of the over all capsule. That meant that I still had 70% to build. Before I ever built the tower I laid out a triangle on top of the wood so I could anchor the tower. I wanted to launch the rocket with the tower in place. Rockets of The World gave no dimensions for the tower so I had to use what was given and guess or interpolate at the rest. Then I took my guesses and laid them out on graph paper. Wood dowels were my first choice for the tower, but after some thought I thought better and decided to go with some solid copper-welding rod. Its light and soldiering meant that I could finish it in one sitting. The hard part was getting the whole thing straight. I could pin 2 sides, but the third had to be put together out of the mold literally. The rest of the tower was some bt-20, basswood and part of an old plastic paintbrush. Nothing fancy but they help to pull off the affect. This was truly the biggest phase of construction.

The body tube is 14.5 inches long, seven of which are the motor mount. 1.5 inches is taken up by the nose cone. That left 6 inches for chutes. I have not done much simulation work but for this rocket I did just to make sure the thing would fly. Everything looked okay, but this is a heavy rocket for being so short. Roc Sim said it would be stable with the scale fins. I didn't agree with the delay on the simulation so I decided on the F40 with a four-second delay. A hard kick with a reasonable delay for a 24-ounce rocket. I worked on the Rocket for 3 weeks. Most of the work was done over one rainy weekend with an hour a night here and there during the week. When I painted this I really didn't put a whole lot of detail into it but I think I put just enough to make it look good out there on the pad.

In early July I was at a QUARK launch and the time had come to launch Little Joe. I had put a lot of work into it and was definitely nervous. I got some wow's and oh cools as I prepped it and there was some discussion over motor selection but all thought the F40 was a good choice. It definitely was a perfect flight. I couldn't have hoped for better. I got a couple of high fives and the "Next time you need a G64" From Jay Berry. The 'chutes space as I said earlier was small. I used an 18-inch chute for the nose cone and a 24-inch for the body. I use the nose chute to pull out the bigger chute. This is both affective and dramatic. The drama comes from the 12 feet of shock cord that has to do its thing before the chute fully deploys for the body. It looks like a separation.

LITTLE JOE II

After the first successful launch I knew I had to build the Little Joe II and I wanted to have its maiden flight at NARAM 47 in three weeks. By the end of the next day I had the capsule turned and primed. It was a much simpler affair. Just the outside diameter down to a rounded tip. I again had to do a little guessing on the escape tower dimensions but came up with good results. This was much easier because the Apollo escape tower was four sided as opposed to three sides on the Mercury. I could make two mirror images and clamp them down to solder the joining cross members. The tower wound up a lot closer to square. I laid out a circle on some card stock with the same diameter as the diagonal of the tower to position the tower on the capsule. I bisected a line through the center of the circle to give me four points to drill for the tower legs. The upper portion of the tower consisted of a 5.5 inch length of 13mm body tube and a turned nose cone and transition. The only off scale part that I made were the fins. The scale fins seemed a little small so I lengthened them by 1 inch. When I first drew them out on paper they had less area the Little Joe so I gave them about the same surface area. On both rockets the scale fins were about 1/3 of an inch. A little thicker than I thought so I just made them 1/4 inch thick. This was done with 1/8inch basswood and 1/16 inch balsa laminates. This made them very easy to foil and still be very solid. When I laminated the fins I left the through the wall portion 1/8 inch. With plenty of epoxy fillets on the inside of the rockets they were solidly attached. The centering rings are made up of some 1/4 inch plywood. A little over kill but the helped to balance the heavy nose cones. For motor retention I used two 6-32 T nuts per rocket. I made a one-piece retainer out of a 1/8 inch steel shim. This retainer is shared by the rockets. In both rockets I put two holes in the upper ring for the shock cord mount and used a single length of Kevlar in both. I threaded the Kevlar through each hole tied a loop in each end and looped them around the motor tube. I epoxied them in place. What this does is gives two point of attachment for the shock cord and also centers it in the body tube once the chute deploys.

I took a lot more time to finish this rocket than I did with the first. I bought some sheet styrene to do the corrugations on the lower body and used scraps of balsa to do the conduits. The staging coupler is five wraps of heavy nylon thread ca'ed to the styrene. The capsule and upper body roll patterns are painted and the fine details are done with fine tip marker. I made a wrap for the upper section of the escape tower. This proved much easier than trying to paint them. The decals on both rockets are courtesy of Mr. Bill Eichelberger who did a fine job for a reform school graduate. Just kidding. Just a note the grand total of monies spent on these rockets was a little over $20.00. That's it. Not bad. Scrounging paid off in this instance. I even got finished the weekend before NARAM.

NARAM 47

I only had one day to attend NARAM and that was Saturday. It was a nice, a little warm but cool than it had been or was to be during the week ahead. I loaded up the truck and left the house a little after 8:00 am. I rolled into VOA at 8:40 and by 9:15 was registered and set up. I took a walk up vendor row and checked out all of the goodies, I would be back. At Merlin Missiles I picked up my reloads for the day. Two F40-4's and a G33-7 for my Patriot. The Patriot really cooks on a G33 so it was the first flight of the day for me. I had a problem with the shock cord and the nose cone did not fully come off. It came in flat on its side for some reason never nosing over. When I found it looked like someone had laid it in the short grass next to the road. No damage whatsoever. Still not a very good beginning.

For my second flight it was Little Joe's turn. I took my time putting this one together, no more tangled shock cord. At launch it cleared the rod and nosed into the wind ever so slightly. At just past apogee out came one then two red and white chutes. A sigh of relief. Both parts landed within 100 feet of the flight line in the short grass. That was two birds safely back at the truck now it was Little Joe II's turn and it was to be a maiden flight. It never fails that I start to get nervous about these first flights. Whether it's a new bird or just a bigger motor in one than I had flown before I still get that feeling of tension. I loaded it on the pad, took the preflight photos and went back to the line. There were a bunch of rockets on the low power pad so I was startled when I got the call. My first thought was hope it lights and by that time it was moving up the rod. Same flight profile as its brother but the wind was stronger now and it did angle a bit more into it. A 500 foot flight with chutes right at apogee. Again both parts landed with 100 feet of the flight line only this time on the opposite side. The nerves were gone but now I had that feeling of pride when everything works out the way you hope it does. That was the end of my NARAM 47 flights. I spent the rest of the day taking pictures and making selective purchases from the vendors.