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The Outlander project began as all good HPR projects begin. A lot of talk at a rocket launch about building a big project for Midwest Power III. Brent Lillesand, Dean Gelinskey, and I thought that the Outlander would be really cool. Nothing really happened for a few months after we had talked about it until I took a look at the two 11.5” PML tubes I had sitting around in my basement one night and decided that upscaling the body tube of the Estes version to the 11.5” tube size would make for good fun. They scaled up at an “x 7.38” factor and I started to run numbers for the size of the nosecone, length of the tubes, and tanks. The rocket ended up with a 32” diameter nosecone, 7.5’ tall, with a nine-foot plus footprint at the ends of the legs.
Brent and I began talking the project up with some of the rest of the guys on the team. We decided to postpone the project until the conclusion of our work with the University school of Milwaukee’s NASA student launch initiative team. The SLI trip took place in May 2005 at the Marshall Space Flight Center. That is another story.

When we returned we had some rocket launches to host and didn’t get on the project until June. I decided to jump start the project by dropping a layer of 6oz. Fiberglass onto an 11.5” tube and emailed everyone who had expressed interest in the project. We decided to meet at Dean Gelinskey’s garage to do the work on the rocket. Gabe Kolesari worked with Ken Herrick on the EX motors to lift the rocket. I asked Charlie Marks to handle the build up of the nose cone section. Brent, Dean Gelinskey, Brad Deimel, and I started to work on the project by designing the legs, motor mount, and fins.

Many design innovations were put into place in the build up of the hinges for the legs. The legs have built in stops in the plywood inner, through the wall fin section for extension and contraction motion of the legs. Brent had a 4’x4’ x1/8” piece of G10 that he donated for the centering rings. We decided to go with 4 – 3” motor tubes after Gabe found out that the three-inch motors would be easier for Ken to supply. The motor mount assembly has four centering rings with a 3/8” threaded rod in the center to align them as well as to provide an attachment point for the motor retention and parachute attachment hard point. The entire motor mount assembly was epoxied together using JB weld rather than the West systems epoxy to combat the extra heat that the EX motors would generate. The remainders of the motor mounts build up used west systems epoxy with chopped carbon fiber and power poxy with Kevlar pulp. We decided early on that the pads on the feet of the legs were to be expendable. Making them strong enough for the rocket to land on would be adding weight and complexity to a losing cause. The 7.5” tanks on the bottom of the body would house the electronics to recover the rocket as well as house Brent’s booster vision video camera.

Charlie Marks manufactured the nose cone of the rocket. It is a beautiful piece of rocketry craftsmanship. A plywood skeleton had foam hot wired into the skeleton and was then covered with Kevlar cloth and west systems epoxy. The nose cone is actually made up in three pieces to facilitate recovery of the cone separately and allow us to add the lead we needed to the tip of the cone for ballast to bring the CG up to an acceptable point. We knew that the Estes outlander model would be stable with the CG even with the bottom of the smaller vertical tanks by running the model through the wind tunnel that the University school team used to check the stability of their rocket. The wind tunnel testing took place at Charlie’s Rocket Workshop. Charlie will be presenting this subject at NARCON 2006. Go to www.narcon2006.org for more information on this years’ convention

How to launch a strange project such as this rocket came up many times. Charlie came up with using a 21’ x 1” black pipe as a launch rod. This slides through a 1 1/4” PVC launch lug that is epoxied onto the rocket with six layups of Kevlar over it. The pipe will be dropped through the rocket and screwed into a custom launch pad that Charlie built for the occasion. We will have two 10’ ladders with us to do this. The pad will be staked down into the ground to prevent it from tipping at launch. Copper Thermite igniters will be used to ignite the four EX motors that Ken Herrick has built for the project.

You will notice the holes in the horizontally attached 5” tanks on the rocket. These will carry four Cesaroni “G” motors that will light as the rocket takes off to impart a little spin stability as well as a cool puff of dark smoke.

Recovering a rocket of this size and complexity takes a plan and some advanced electronics. The rocket will utilize four parachutes for the four main sections to be recovered. The tip of the nose cone will recover using a 96” spherachutes parachute. It weighs 23lb.s with all the ballast we have added to it. The nose cone will recover under a Skyangle XL. The base of the nose cone will recover under a 72” parachute and the booster section will be recovered under a 28’ paragear surplus parachute that has had new lines sewn on at Top Flight recovery. Dean Roth is the recovery specialist on the team. He has designed a sabot that will eject the main parachute from the body tube. The nose cone will carry a Missile works WRC remote control as well as a Gwiz MC. The booster section will also carry the same package mounted in one of the four 7.5” tanks. A Missile Works Timer will air start the “G” spin motors when the rocket leaves the pad.

Painting chores for the rocket have been handed over to Dean Gelinskey. Dean is well versed in automotive paints and will do a great job making the rocket look good. Brent Lillesand is working to bring that little decal sheet that comes with the Estes kit up to Team Outlander size in vinyl.

Team Outlander members include; Scott Goebel, Brent Lillesand, Dean Gelinskey, Ken Herrick, Charlie Marks, Brad Deimel, Jerry Selensky, Dean Roth, Kevin Klein, Fred Jarosch, and Gabe Kolesari whether he wants to admit it or not. Special thanks to Angie Kolesari for sewing the deployment bags. Many thanks to Al’s Hobby who sponsored the EX motors for this flight. Thanks also to Top Flight Recovery for assistence with our main chute.

You will want to come to the launch to see this thing go. Don’t forget to bring candy for the trick or treaters that Tim has invited to attend!

Scott Goebel
WOOSH president
Outlander team commander and chief motor casing cleaner