Richard,
My ballast of choice is lead BBs. They seem safely captured in epoxy. I
would also argue that by using lead they occupy less volume so I can get
the center of the mass of the BBs further in to the tip of the nose cone
and so I need less weight. Less weight is safer. If I tried to put the
weight in the AvBay for instance, I'd need a lot more weight to balance the
rocket and the additional weight would reduce the safety some.
Thanks,
Michael
On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 2:05 PM, R Dierking <applerocketry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Then why do even people with model rockets use metal?
The RSO wouldn’t want someone with an aluminum nose cone on a HP rocket
but accepts rockets with a nose containing bolts or lean shot. And, having
taken a nose apart that had bb’s set in 5 minute epoxy, the epoxy cracks
and releases the bb’s.
*From: *Allen Farrington <allen.farrington@xxxxxx>
*Sent: *Monday, January 30, 2017 1:59 PM
*To: *roc-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject: *[roc-chat] Re: Prohibiting Metal for Nose Weight
Tripoli has an official statement on using metal...you can find it on
their website here:
http://www.tripoli.org/Portals/1/Documents/Safety%
20Code/Metal%20in%20Rocket%20Construction%20v2.0.pdf
Allen
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 30, 2017, at 1:50 PM, R Dierking <applerocketry@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Next time the NAR and TRA safety rules are revised, there should be
something about what kind of nose weight should be used or how about
shouldn’t be used.
Don’t the codes already say something about minimizing the use of metal?
Why add it? There’s no good reason why metal has to be used; there are
other things that would work fine.
And, just to get ahead of the one response that’s going to ask if a rocket
with other types of weight could hurt someone just as bad. Yes, I realize
that. But, again, if you think through the various failure scenarios,
metal (bolts, lead shot, bb’s, what ever…) is a poor choice for nose weight.
What other things could be used? Things that would be even better for
both safety and performance.
Richard Dierking
