Monday, June 18, 2007

Under Construction: Talon 2 and Rhino II


In the smallish rockets that I build, the motor mounts have been pretty fun lately. The two main rockets that I'm working on at the moment are the Talon 2 and the Rhino II. The Rhino II is my second Rhino: the first is a cluster with 4 13mm motors; the Rhino II will fly with 5 13mm motors.




The Talon 2 my first Talon kit - it just has a 2 in the name because Giant Leap makes a bunch of different sizes of the kit. This kit is a 'high power' kit similar to the Bullet, but far more complex to build. The motor mount is shown below just before I assembled it into the rocket. The black on the one end is the motor retainer that uses snap rings rather than a screw-on cap like the retainer on the Bullet. The wire loop on the motor mount is the shock-cord mount - again, different from the U-bolt used by the Bullet.



The motor mount in the Talon 2 is 29mm in diameter and about 18" long: that's pretty big for as small a rocket as it is. It uses G-10 fins which is a new material for me to work with. G-10 is necessary for bigger, faster rockets because it is a lot stronger and less flexible than plywood. One curiousity is that it uses a nylon shock-cord with kevlar sleeve rather than a simple kevlar shock-cord - I'm not sure why that is yet.

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