My son has selected the rocket competition for one of his three entries in the Winston Science Events. http://www.winstonscience.org/wsci/competitions.shtml He wants to combine feather flight with rocket flight. Judging will be based on: The student whose rocket represents the most interestingly re-engineered design. The student who best explains the re-engineering of the rocket. With regard to re-engineering, the judges will look at the following criteria: Quality of Construction Adherence to established engineering principles Imagination and creativity Use of interesting materials in the project Oral presentation I’ve been saving feathers from our cockatoo for eighteen years, so were in good shape there. The size will likely be similar to the size of our bird with a 32” wingspan. The Me 163 is similar to her overall design, large wing - with short body. I’ll help him with the design, but he’ll be doing the work as he has with Derby cars. Have any of you constructed a rocket wing? Any suggestions?
Can't be of any help really except to say that's a fantastic idea and I can't wait to see how it goes.
there were actually two LW commandos that had these birds armed with bags of red ants and would be released early in the morn and drop the bags on the Soviet forward positions and then return for another sortie at pre-evening. the Soviets had no defense but it was another late war idea, too little too late ><
It turned out rather well. It has swept wings, but doesn't look anything like a Me 163. Competitors were from Dallas Independent School District Magnet Schools. My son won First Place in the Elementary Division. He also took the only award out of the three divisions, elementary middle and high school, "Outstanding Award of Merit" presented by Judges. I took about 60 shots of his progress. I'll post a few pics later.
Yeah!!! I wanna see pics. Sounds very cool. I see a great modeler in the near future. Imagination is a valuable asset to have.
Thanks, my son appreciates the comments. Here it is! 23" wingspan, 16.5" in length, nosecone to feather tips.
He hasn’t flown it yet. The oral presentation was delayed until November 15th due to scheduling issues. The rocket plane is needed for the presentation. Can’t risk damaging it. He did well in an oral presentation at a recent Scout meeting. He did some test flights last weekend launching a standard rocket at various angels starting at 40°. The Estes C6-5 engine was used. A similar engine will be used in the plane, but without the ejection blast, the C6-0. The 40° launch with headwind gusting to 13 mile per hour, resulted in the standard rocket quickly leveled off horizontally at about 140 feet, which in line with the objective for the plane.
