raiderzone

It was a plastic round shell, i just threw it together but it turned out ok. The burst was kp on chrispies 3:1 and 2g whistle mix. I love the glitter tail it really works well and adds a nice touch. Next time i might stick a colour comp in for the delay

Cheers for your comments, i will make more and you bet ill film them.

Excellent job on the rocket. Nice height, glitter tail, and garnishment. Looks like you really dialed into the fuel.

i actually wanted to know the procedure, not which one it was. sorry if i made that unclear.

Thanks guys.

For this rocket I used whistle rocket tooling from Wolter. I have the whistle rocket kits ranging from 2oz to 8oz and they all work great. For 1lb whistle rockets I have successfully used stinger missle tooling from Greg Boyd. I have had good results pressing these on a 1 ton arbor press by feel and using a tube sleeve. I refuse to build whistle rockets over 1 lb because quite frankly, I don't have the nads to work with that much high energy fuel .

Fishy1 - The procedure that I followed on Passfire for making the whistle rocket mix is also available on the Skylighter newsletter archives at:

http://www.skylighte...cle.asp?Item=48

See the section titled "How To Make Whistle Rocket Fuel In Under 8 Hours"

How about a nice shower of dragons eggs ?

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I think both will work well with stingers. I have already seen some dragon eggs on the commercial stinger missiles known as "Hestia Sky Cruiser" and they worked quite well. The crossette idea sounds cool as well, esp if you group them in four like the Rebenklau style format. Unfortunately, I'm still trying to perfect both at the moment. I'm having problems getting consistant results with crossettes as I often have them jetting or breaking to hard or soft. Still working on the correct priming for the dragon eggs, but these should be less of a problem then the crossettes.

Definitely more to come...

FYI, I made a small batch of dragons eggs using the Bismuth Trioxide formula, and since I had no silicon, I first tried a plain meal prime, which didn't work, they just *poof* as the BP burns off. I then tried a hot prime of Potassium Perchlorate 70%, Magnalium 20%, Red Gum 10% from Passfire. That ignited the eggs, but was a touch hard to ignite itself, so I primed over that with the BP meal, and now the eggs easily take fire and *bang* with a nice flashing pop

Thanks for the info. I prefer to take the KISS method when it comes to pyro (plus I'm lazy). I have reviewed a few
texts and have verified that the Potassium Nitrate does hinder the crackling effect of the dragon eggs. I prefer
to not take the extra step of waxing the microstars, so I will with a perchlorate based prime. I will probably
try a different perchlorate based prime in AFN V, only because you mentioned that the dragon egg prime from Passfire is hard to ignite. I prefer to not prime stars twice because I'm lazy, but appreciate you providing the info so I have something to fall back on. Will keep you posted on my results.

BTW - Here's a video of the 3/8" Dragon Egg I pressed out of curiousity. As mentioned in an earlier post, it was quite loud and did not section off into smaller eggs as others have posted.

http://raiderzon.pyr..._dragon_egg.mpg

Best of AFN III lists a Dragon Egg prime of :
Potassium Nitrate 57.2%
Sulfur 11.4
Charcoal (air float) 11.4
Silicon 11.4
Aluminum, dark pyro 5.7
Dextrin 2.9

The trick is to wax coat the eggs prior to priming. Otherwise KNO3 will ruin the crackle effect. I spoke with David Armstrong, who wrote the Passfire article on dragon eggs, who told me he just melts ordinary paraffin wax, puts the stars in, and strains them out immediately onto paper. Separate as they cool on a piece of paper.

To prime, put the dried, coated stars in a bowl, spray with 50/50 alcohol/water and dredge them with the prime powder until coated.

His other trick is the cutter he made from a pair of 'noodle cutters' as he called them. I bought some as "rolling mincer' from Oxo inc. He mounted 2 sets of blades so they make 2 mm strips of comp, then cuts crosswise to that to make 2 mm square eggs, which he claims allows him to make 1000 stars in 20 minutes work

Frozentech -

Thanks for the advice. I've actually been looking for the noodle cutters in the Passfire article and had no luck until finding them. Going to order the "rolling mincer" ASAP .