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                                                                                          BADDABOOM

Baddaboom is the biggest rocket we have built so far. Grandfather made it for his Level III cert. flight. It flew at Mudrock, Aeronaut and XPRS in 2004. The Mudrock flight was a test with a K1100 motor to just under 8,000'. At Aeronaut, Baddaboom flew with an M1315 and encountered a problem. At Mach II, the plastic nosecone flattened over and sheared off. Even without the nosecone, Baddaboom continued in stable flight to over 14,000'. We made a fiberglass reinforced nosecone with a GPS/Flight inside and the cert. flight went perfectly to over 20,000'.

DSC00964.JPG (87418 bytes)        BB Avionics bay.JPG (2178173 bytes)      BB Fin attach.JPG (2125845 bytes)     BB Fin can.JPG (1951713 bytes)            BB nadine.jpg (193758 bytes)

                                        Baddaboom under construction                            XPRS Photos by Nadine 2004

                                                                                                                                       

 

     Baddaboom.jpg (44005 bytes)                     October Sky Baddaboom.jpg (34239 bytes)            Bboom-K1100.jpg (48930 bytes)

          XPRS flight to 24,000'                       October Skies 04 building pressure                 K1100 Flight data

 

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Sometimes everything doesn't go as planned and still works out ok. Baddaboom had a slow motion start followed by some aerial acrobatics at the July Mavericks launch. It still deployed a drogue and the whole thing got caught on the GPS plot.

bboom-gps-small.jpg (42416 bytes)

Baddaboom had an even less pleasant ride at XPRS 07. Evidently, the booster airframe had been cracked in an earlier machining operation and broke on the way up. Avbay, forward chute and nosecone remained intact, deployed and shredded a chute, but were relatively undamaged. The booster continued under power and came in ballistic destroying the from foot of airframe. We machined off the fincan and motor retainer so the body tube could be replaced. During this operation, the fins were moved forward and a sleeve added to support ultimate use as an upper stage. Launch guides were relocated and mounted with screws and pemnuts. The forward bulkhead was removed in lieu of a removable coupler as forward motor retention. The booster was lengthened slightly to accommodate an M1850. The reworked rocket will fly a test flight at Mudroc 08.