Manufacturer: | Scratch |
Ex-Parrot
by Anthony De Boer
No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage! | |
Yes, it's the infamous Dead Parrot from the best-known Monty
Python sketch. This one never actually had a design on paper or a Rocksim file (if Rocksim handled rockets with feathers on them then I wouldn't be the only one needing serious professional help) and is entirely a product of my own fevered imagination and the "This Looks About Right" school of design. As a rocket, the forebody consists of 8.5 inches of BT-80, an NC-80 on top, a launch lug, and a pair of beady red bird eyes with a bit of gold glitter paint behind them. The rocket has a basecoat of blue Krylon followed by a lot of coloured feathers hot-melt-glued in place. The aft section starts with a coupler to slide into the BT-80, a piece of 24mm tube for a motor mount, one bulkhead, a pair of wide swept fins of 3" balsa as wings (can't call them through-the-wall fins, more like under-the-wall), with 2x3" balsa crosspanels on the fin ends to give it some yaw stability. A pair of bird feet appear just under the coupler. The parachute tucks into the aft section around the motor tube. On a D12-3, with a guesstimated Cd of 1.5, it RASPs out at 100 metres. |
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... and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting
on its launch rod in the first place was that it had been NAILED there. Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, the wind blowing across the launch field would have blown it off the pad, and VOOM! "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! Well, let's try 12 volts through its igniter then... Whooooshwhiiwhiiiiiiflonkpoof! Yes, it wasn't quite stable enough in the yaw axis, probably wanting bigger crosspanels on the wing ends,
or maybe "top" and "bottom" fins on the main body. It spun about its yaw axis twice about ten
metres above the pad, then landed about that far away, and then the parachute popped out. Oh well, with modifications
this bird may fly again. |
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