Rocket Powered Race Car

I saw estes advertising their new rocket dragsters and was thinking this might be fun to try. I was thinking of building something slightly larger that would be propelled with a small E or F 24mm motor down the sidewalk along a 200' tether. Anyone ever tried building one of these?

Reply to
Bill Wehner
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years ago (early-mid 70's) I built a scale model of Gary Gablich's Blue Flame. One early sunday morning in New Smyrna Beach Fl, my neighbor and I went to the beach with a couple of tent stakes, 100' of cord and his mom's best sofa pillow (just in case)...

We hooked it all up and installed a D13 motor in it. It was BT70 based with ball bearing aircraft wheels. We had the stakes 100' apart with the twine tied between them. A pillow at the far stake and the blue flame at the beginning. We lit her off...

...with only 100' of line, the motor was still burning when she went

*through* the pillow, shot into the air at an odd angle with a slow roll then hit the beach. After coming to a complete stop, the parachute popped out the back... much to the amusement of an older gentleman walking the beach that morning. He commented "that was the most exciting thing I've ever seen!"

Scared to death we'd get caught by someone we grabbed everything and shoved it in the back seat of the car and spead for home. We noticed a burning smell and I checked the pillow and it was smoking. With it sitting in my lap, the car started to fill up with smoke so we rolled the windows down. That helped, but not much so... ...I held the pillow out of the window...

Now, a 40MPH wind against a smoldering pillow will make for quite the large fireball... ...so I droped the exploding pillows (lordy, don't let the ATF know that pillows explode!) and it caught on the rear bumper... by the time we got home we had to explain how our rocket car didn't really work as planned, how we destroyed her best pillow and why there was a scortched mark on the back of dads car...

not a good day. but a *great* memory... :) jim

Bill Wehner wrote:

Reply to
jflis

Now there's a 'launch' to remember!

Reply to
Bill Wehner

I would suggest using motors as recommended by the manufacturer. Is the 24mm E or F motor recommended for such use?

Alan

Reply to
Alan Jones

Bill, I never built one of those but I did modify a remote controlled 1/10 scale HPI RS4 car to be powered by su 29mm motors.I found I had to add about 5 lbs. of weight to keep it planted to the ground using a F25W and a G40 just made it loose control.If you want to see the video of the F25 run email me at snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net and I will send it to you.

Reply to
jkoppk

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