Warbirds Rockets

thingiverse

I remixed my "F-Bomb" rocket to produce these two rockets themed after some of my favorite warbirds. These rockets use many parts from the F-Bomb, basically replacing only the nosecone and the tail fin units. Everything else you will need to get from the original design. The F4U rocket flies, but demonstrates a little instability, so make it at your own risk. That is to say, it mostly goes up. Just not as straight as I'd like. I suspect the interesting fin arrangement may be causing issues, so I might remake the fins at some point. The P-40 rocket, however, is a very solid performer with perfect flights every time. My last flight on a D12-3 took it to 348 feet at 98mph. The nosecone for the F4U has several parts that will need to be assembled in this order... 1) On the base, slide on the rear motor bank. 2) Then slide on the front motor bank. 3) Finally slide on the motor front. You should probably glue this piece on. It will hold the other pieces in. 4) Over this assembly, slide the motor cowling and glue in place. The flat portion of the cowling (without the flaps), fits into the notch on the base. Both nose cones are designed to use a 6700zz bearing. A peg fits into this bearing and then into the spinners. There are two spinners for each nose cone. A "Display" spinner with the props and a "For flight" spinner that has no props. I leave it up to you to chose what you want on the rocket when you fly it, but I'm betting the display spinner could create unexpected results. I printed the decals on label stock and applied them to the rockets, but I don't really recommend this as they don't look as good as they would printed on decal stock (which would require you to print a base of white, then mask the areas the decals would go on). I've flown both these on D12-3s, but as you can see from the videos below, the F4U was a little wobbly in flight. This may have been due to the Pringles can for the body being a little short, the odd design of the fins, or it may simply have been underpowered. It flew well enough for me, though. The P-40 version flew very well. P-40 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F79Su97eT6o F4U Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yiRipgKEiE UPDATE: I split the P-40 display prop and prop hub into two separate STLs to make them easier to print. I also added the "hollow" prop peg I actually used on my rockets. I put 6mm x 3mm round magnets in there and glued one magnet inside the peg and another in both the display and launch version of the hubs. The peg then stays inside the 6700zz bearing in the nosecone and you can easily switch the display and launch version of the hubs.