Recovering the Estes Quark

This is a bit of musing about modifying the Estes Quark excerpted from my
rocket blog . I'm hoping to get some
insight from this group concerning my thoughts on modification.
The first rocket my son and I built was an Estes Quark. After it left the
launch pad, we never saw it again. Trail of smoke, puff of ejection
charge, and we never saw it come down. Apparently, this is a very common
occurrence, if the log entries on EMRR are any indication.
I've been thinking a lot about the frequent "lawn dart" and "lost" entries
and what might be done to improve chances of recovery and increase safety.
Even if Estes thinks this kit isn't dangerous, I'd sure hate to be hit in
the head by that pointy nose cone. If it can bury the nose in the ground,
I'm sure it'll at least give me a headache.
So, what can be done? Posts on RMR from ages past indicate that the Quark
used to come with little weights to attach to the ends of the long fins.
When the motor ejects, the center of gravity shifts to the back and the
rocket becomes unstable... instead of nose-diving in, it tumbles, which
slows its fall. This sounds like a good plan, and it may be the solution
I go with, but I also want to work on visibility. One poster recommended
putting reflective stickers on the fins. Again, sounds like a good idea,
but I'm thinking along other lines.
What I'd really like is a nice metallic red streamer. Problem is, the
standard Quark has its nose cone glued in and the motor is ejected to
reduce recovery weight. And the motor butts right up against the nose
cone. The NC is hollow, so there's room for a streamer in there, and I
suppose that one could manage to rig a standard separation recovery
system, though there's precious little area to attach a shock cord to the
body tube. I'd like to keep the basic construction "stock," which means
gluing the NC in place.
One RMR poster said he'd tried anchoring a streamer into the NC and taping
the other end to the motor. I'd already thought of that, and his did
exactly what I predicted... the ejection charge melted the tape and the
streamer didn't deploy. This idea may still have some merit, if the
streamer can be anchored to the motor in a more solid manner. This would
result in both the rocket and motor coming down together on the streamer,
which is a good thing in my book. No motors dropping out of the sky on
their own that way.
Say I inserted a pin through the back end of the motor housing to clip the
streamer to. Will a Mylar streamer survive a direct blast from the
ejection charge? While being heat-resistant, I'm afraid it probably won't
fair too well, and there's just not much room for anything like a baffle
or whatever. But I might try this anyway, just to see what happens.
The other, probably more viable alternative I've been thinking of is to
mount a thin tube, like a drinking straw, to the outside of the Quark.
Close one end and streamline the thing with epoxy. Roll up the streamer
and stuff it in the tube, tying it to the outside of the engine housing.
I think this would probably be a lot more reliable, but it's going to
create more wind resistance and interfere with the Quark's nifty high
flights. It might unbalance things... twin tubes and streamers would fix
that, but at the expense of an even larger profile. But it could be a
very neat little rocket that way anyway. Might have to try this one as
well.
Thoughts?
--
Carl D Cravens ( snipped-for-privacy@phoenyx.net)
Wichita, Kansas, US -- Read my model rocketry journal at