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Useful model rocketry links
Most recent liftoff: October 18, 2009; recently added or modified items are now marked as . In
the course of fooling with model rockets recently, I came across
tons of good information. Following are some links that other hobbyists
might find useful. This is an informally organized list (translation:
I throw useful links into ill-defined buckets). I add stuff to it
as I come across things that look like they might be useful.
Model rocket plans, vintage Estes kit info
Historical reference
Rocket plans -- general
Water rockets
- Water bottle rockets -- don't laugh, they claim 1000 ft with two stage. Very clever; no pyrotechnics; clockwork timers.
(Fixed link)
Tubes and sizes
Nose cones
Need decals for that vintage kit? Try
Want to make your own custom decals?
Transistion sections
Parts sources
- Aerospace Specialty Products
- Apogee
- Belleville Hobby -- kits, parts
- Balsa Machining Service has lots of cones, transitions, fins, tubes, building supplies, etc.
- BRS Hobbies rocket parts
- Discount Rocketry Complete kits, or parts and building supplies
- Jonrocket -- body tubes, couplers, nosecones, parachutes, complete kits
- Tower Hobbies (Rocketfun.com) -- they often run specials, for $10 or $15 off per order. Get on mailing list.
- Uncle Mike's Rocket Shack -- odd and hard to find parts, such as bulkheads for cluster engines, motor mount sets, strange tube diameters, etc.
- Great Hobbies -- Estes engines
- AC Supply -- Estes engines
- Semroc -- parts and repro kits
- Thrustline -- no longer filling orders at this writing, but stay tuned
- Red Arrow -- large selection of complete kits from many manufacturers; parts
- Sigma Rockets -- in Canada
- Deep Sky Rocket Shop -- in the UK
- Rebel Rocketry
-- a shop Somewhere in Occupied Europe. They're rather secretive about
their location. Since they charge 19% tax, it must be... Germany. The
original home of secretive rocket manufacturing!
Totally Tubular (Jim Fackert) -- tubes, rings, couplers, and all that stuff. Tons of oddball components. Even Nomex paper.
Kit manufacturers besides Estes
Plans for specific model rockets
V2
Saturn V
Estes Astron Beta -- my first rocket, fall of 1969
- Estes Astron Beta plans (using short, standard-diameter1/2 A motors, no longer available)
AGM-63 Rascal
The Snark. - Old-school model,
built model-airplane-style (balsa bulkheads and stringers) and powered
by Jetex. Estes sure made rocketry simpler! From the April 1958 issue
of Science and Mechanics magazine.
More than any sane person wants to know about the Boeing Bomarc
Tech info, building tips
Tubes
Engine mounts
- How to build motor mounts
- Estes Tech Report TR-6, engine clustering (for example, how to have a single first stage booster engine fire three second stage engines)
How to finish balsa surfaces -- ever wonder how some folks get that glasslike finish?
- How to apply Aero Gloss Balsa Fillercoat Primer
- How to apply Aero Gloss Balsa Sealer
- Finishing techniques -- how to get smooth balsa
- Tired of overpaying for tiny little jars of sanding sealer or dope? Try this source; sealer in pint cans.
- Yet another brand: Brodak. And they have a book on finishing and painting, for a measly $5.
-
- Primer in big cans
- Sealer in big cans
- Colors in big cans
- Found as a result of this thread.
Interesting, I have shrinkage problems on thin balsa too, never heard
of adding castor oil. (Now I suppose I need to find castor oil.
Pharmacy! What's a pharmacy?)
Epoxy clay
Fins
Nose cones
Building tips
Links to lots of different parts resources, plans (lots of dead links though)
A. Shasta's home page
Compendia of tech stuff
- Estes Tech Manual (very elementary)
- Stribling's tech info (stability, altitude, Centuri technical reports)
- Stribling's general home page, with more links
- Centuri, TIR-30, "Stability of a Model Rocket in Flight"
- Centuri, TIR-33, "Calculating the Center of Pressure"
- More Estes publications Tons of great info. Alternative link here.
- Out-of-print NAR publications. How to roll your own tubes, plans for V2 and others.
- German site with lots of building tips -- make your own body tubes, nose cones, etc. (Click on "Know-how").
Periodicals
Engines
Brew
your own rocket fuel. What if McGiver were stuck out in the woods with
nothing but a campfire, a bag of saltpeter, and some sugar, and the
script calls for him to make a rocket? No problem... (Frankly, not recommended. Ready-made engines are tons safer, easier and better; don't be like the Radioactive Boy Scout).
Igniters
Launching methods -- what's a launch tower compared to a rod, or rail?
How to build a launch tower
Rocket math
- Rocket Equations
- Multistage rocket equations
- Estes Altitude Prediction Charts
- How
high did it go? Well, you could make a simple theodolite and do
the trigonometry -- better yet, get two friends, each with a
theodolite. Get a long tape measure for baseline. But then the trig
gets messy. Fortunately, your tax dollars hired some real rocket scientists at NASA to write a little explanation on how to crunch the numbers.
Stability
-- it won't fly for squat if it's not stable. Can use simulation
software during the design process. Or, go old school: swing test.
Rocket design rules of thumb
Simulation software, calculators
- ALTPRED (model rocket altitude prediction) and
- MRCPCAL (model rocket center of pressure calculator
- Virtual Center of Pressure (freeware)
Fixed obsolete link, Oct. 18, 2009
- Thrustcurve.org's compendium of rocket simulation software
- RockSim from
Apogee Components, Colorado Springs -- arguably the best
simulation, design, and center of mass / center of pressure calculation
package. Check rocket designs for CG, stability. Trial version
available. Nominally $100 after that.
Electronics for model rockets
Online forums, blogs, etc.
- Info Central -- info on design, construction, finishing, motors, recovery systems, etc.
Print resources

This is supposed to be a page of useful links, but I needed some place to put the absolutely useless.
Crikey. These people actually made a huge -- as in, 21 feet long -- flying Star Wars X-Wing Fighter!
Did that thing fly? Well, no, not really... Witness the disaster. Use the farce, Fluke!
These guys claim that it "actually flies." Well, yes, if chucking
stuff with a catapult qualifies as "flight." (All the CAD-CAM programs
on the planet, all the CNC routers and laser cutters in the world,
won't help if you have a fundamentally Bad Design. And the Y-Wing
didn't fly for diddlysquat either). But, it appears in this case, to
paraphrase the bear's question to the hunter, "You didn't come here to
fly rockets, did you?"
Is
anybody else out there in Rocketland as annoyed as I am by the kooky
doings portrayed in a "reality TV" series called "Master
Blasters"? The scenario: each week's episode features a buildoff
between two teams of "rocketeers", one headed by a father-and-son duo
who look like nothing so much as a pair of billygoats with a grooming
problem. There's the usual trash talk between teams, and stilted,
scripted issuance and acceptance of "challenges." These people, on all
the teams, are not masters of anything. My favorite example of this is
one week's challenge, to shoot a rocket-propelled Mini Cooper off an
inclined ramp and through goalposts 100 yards downrange. The losing
team had two things to guarantee failure: first, absolutely no
consideration of whether their contraption would be stable or not. But
first, during the pre-launch festivities, the visiting team managed to
light one rocket while the crew was still rigging it to its launcher.
Guy had to be taken away in an ambulance. And then, one of the two
rocket motors failed to light, turning the Mini into a large steel
pinwheel. The Billygoat Family at least added some long booms and
tailfins to ensure that the center of aerodynamic pressure was way
behind the center of mass. Theirs worked. Here's a YouTube clip showing the launches.

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