Night of Nozzleless Rockets - Assorted Whistle Rockets
Date: 2006-01-16
Description
Four Whistle rocket motors, three on Rich Wolter tooling, one on SBR tooling. Two Benzoate Whistle motors on Wolter's tooling, and Two Salicylate Whistle motors one on Wolter's tools, one on SBR.
You might recognise the SBR whistle motor from the upper stage of rocket that was disassembled because its boost stage was sure to CATO. The boost stage was modified and tested well, inspiring the BP nozzleless tests also performed.
The second Benzoate Whistle motor had D1 Glitter pressed as the last two increments above the core. All the others were Whistle all the way. All were fused with blackmatch and used the same sticks hot-melt glued to the case. The bulkhead in all but the SBR was paper wadding, the SBR had a clay plug.
Comments
The Wolter versions worked great. The SBR blew up.
I love whistle rockets! They go like a bat out of hell, and the sound is always interesting. I think Benzoate Whistle on the SBR toolset would work, I'll have to try it.
The glitter delay worked pretty well, but it did decrease the whistle somewhat. Putting more propellant above the core before the delay might help.
Based on the static thrust tests the Salicylate Whistle motor could carry a good payload. The Benzoate Whistle version is a bit weak, but a few 1/4" stars or a report would be easy.
The Wolter/Salicylate motor appeared to eject some burning fragments of its grain. This has been observed before in static tests or rockets and whistles. It does not appear to be fatal, it is probably a kind of erosive burning and must have a performance impact that I will have to minimise in future motors of this type.
You've gotta love Tanya's Adam Savage impression on the CATO video.
Attachments
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Wolter Benzoate Whistle Video | video/x-msvideo | 1.826 Mbytes |
| Wolter Benzoate Whistle with D1 Glitter Delay Video | video/x-msvideo | 2.153 Mbytes |
| Wolter Salicylate Whistle Video | video/x-msvideo | 1.666 Mbytes |
| SBR Salicylate Whistle CATO Video | video/x-msvideo | 2.658 Mbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture #1 | image/jpeg | 54.007 kbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture #2 | image/jpeg | 35.611 kbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture #3 | image/jpeg | 43.167 kbytes |
| Wolter Benzoate Spectrogram | image/jpeg | 59.526 kbytes |
| Wolter Benzoate + D1 Spectrogram | image/jpeg | 63.858 kbytes |
| Wolter Salicylate Spectrogram | image/jpeg | 59.742 kbytes |