tentacles Posted November 13, 2008 Posted November 13, 2008 Rich, are you spiking it well with good strapping tape, or pasting in with paper? Plastic hemis CAN give a good break.. I think Linda Westfall proved that quite adequately at PGI. Her 5" shells on their whistle rockets were just amazing... Great symmetry, even with stars rolled pretty randomly to size. Their secret was 55g of Ocfa burst flash (Ba/K nitrate flash with antimony) and using the 300lb/inch strapping tape. Yeah, the expensive stuff... you could probably just use 3x as much of the cheap stuff, too. She put essentially 2 layers over the shell of 1.5" tape. Maybe what you need is a WASP, I've gotten some really good breaks out of 3's with minimal tweaking.
Richtee Posted November 13, 2008 Posted November 13, 2008 Rich, are you spiking it well with good strapping tape, or pasting in with paper? Plastic hemis CAN give a good break.. I think Linda Westfall proved that quite adequately at PGI. Her 5" shells on their whistle rockets were just amazing... Great symmetry, even with stars rolled pretty randomly to size. Their secret was 55g of Ocfa burst flash (Ba/K nitrate flash with antimony) and using the 300lb/inch strapping tape. Yeah, the expensive stuff... you could probably just use 3x as much of the cheap stuff, too. She put essentially 2 layers over the shell of 1.5" tape. Maybe what you need is a WASP, I've gotten some really good breaks out of 3's with minimal tweaking. Hmm... I guess I could try better containment... given what she's using! I use a complete cover of 3/8 strapping tape, then 2 layers of contact cement adhered medium weight paper strips. I shall try triple tape I guess... can't hurt! I have kind of migrated to NC granulated whistle for breaking them too... I guess I could mess with that as well. Thanks for the advice/ideas...
Pretty green flame Posted November 13, 2008 Posted November 13, 2008 You may also want to move away from contact cement and try wheat paste, works on plastic too. If you're not paranoid about flash, 2g of 70/30 will do wonders to your breaks, I started using black powder on hulls + 2g 70/30 (Flash bag tied to spolette) in 3 inchers and it woks wonderfully. Other than that, give them 4 layers of 70lb craft on (with wheat paste), I think with your NC whistle it should work. Looking forward to your next shell
Richtee Posted November 14, 2008 Posted November 14, 2008 Yeah, the expensive stuff... you could probably just use 3x as much of the cheap stuff, too. She put essentially 2 layers over the shell of 1.5" tape. Wow...nice difference! I wrapped 3 layers of the .375 strapping tape, then 2 layers of the paper, mainly to protect the tape from the launching blast. Much improvement. Good thing I got 96 rolls of this stuff for 30 bux ;{) Sorry no vid. Dang camera- it was black out at launch time, figgered not worth it. On the plus side..I get to actually WATCH the shell! :{)
kcnkickthecat Posted November 16, 2008 Author Posted November 16, 2008 I ran a 3" up last night using the red and blue from this system... not bad. Thanks, it looked very good.
tentacles Posted November 16, 2008 Posted November 16, 2008 (edited) Rich, glad to hear it helped.. I've just been using 1/2tsp RG granulated whistle (76/23/1 KP/KB/Fe2O3) in my 3's on the wasp with very good results.. Hardly perfect breaks, but that's due entirely to my stars being pretty randomly sized. Linda's shells at PGI were just stunning. I can dig up a video, I bet.. Here's a good one.. Not sure what stars these are, but most of her shells were flaming shit, but it doesn't pick up on videos very good.. I tried to chop off the first 25 seconds but somehow it made it larger. Anyways, here it is, with commentary: MVI_0152.avi Here's a video of one of the FS shells, these were really very impressive. These are 5" shells pushed up by a 3lb whistle rocket. MVI_0129.avi Edited November 16, 2008 by tentacles
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