Chad staging

Not CHAD, though. GHS mentioned that with "vented" staging in a normal fashion, anything beyond 12" didn't appear to work. That was his experience though, dunno about others.

Tod "Building the Mother of All Leyden Jars tonight" Hilty

It's more like 10" BTW

You'll zap your eye out!

-- Eric Benner TRA # 8975 L2 NAR # 79398

CHAD staging is just taping a booster motor to an upper stage motor and letting it hang out the rear of a single stage rocket.

Most people call it "gap staging" and some call it "vented staging" like is mentioned in another reply to your post. I've done it as far as 4", but I don't know the max distance offhand.

tim

ROFMLAO!

- iz

Ah! That was it!

When you went 4", did you vent the tube, if so, what size holes and how many?

I gotta find my book. Thanks,

Randy

FWIW Randy, the longest gap staged model that I have in my fleet is about 2". For that I used two holes, at 1/8" in diameter, and 180 degrees apart on the BT.

It's worked flawlessly over gobs of flights...

tah

Not CHAD staging, but gap staging. And yes, that's what I remember Harry referencing.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

IIRC Peter ALway has used this, probably in a 2 stage scale model. You'd ahve to check with him to find out what his maximum distance was.

I think it's safe to assume that as distance increases, reliability will drop.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

I've got three rockets like this:

4 x 13mm diameter tube, gap 2.5", 2 holes 6mm dia in each tube (MIRV Gryphon kit). 3 x 24mm diameter tube, gap 3", 2 holes 5mm dia in each tube. 34mm diameter tube, gap 3.25", 4 holes 6mm dia.

It was "open air" gap staging, with nothing between the motors. I had read about it in one of Alway's scale books and was planning to do a scale Aerobee Hi and WAC Corporal. Both have seperate boosters and need open air gap staging to look right.

I did a boiler plate to test how reliable the gap staging method worked. I had good reliability on my tests, so I started extending the distance on the test model about 1/2" at a time just to see what would happen. IIRC, I had two successful flights at 4" but the third flight didn't stage. The scale Aerobee that I eventually built flew well, but I lost the upper stage after only a few flights due to wind and my own stupidity for flying it with two C's. I never got around to doing a WAC Corporal.

IIRC, the Estes Omega used gap staging. You might download the Omega's plans from JimZ and see how it was done. I have heard that people got reliable staging from it.

tim

That was my experience. :/

tim

see the Altimeter Port Sizing at

- iz

WHOA..... they're talking staging vents - not altimeter vents.

I knew that! (yeah, Altimeter staging vents, yeah, that's the ticket!)

"never mind" = Emily Latalla

- iz sleep deprivation, a legal high! ;)