Rocketry Planet

BACKGROUND:
The Black Brant family of sounding rockets has always fascinated me, mostly due to the fact that they were designed and built in Canada. These vehicles have been around since 1959 and have lofted experiments for many countries. Since the early 1970s these rockets have formed the backbone of NASA's suborbital program. Several hundred have also been used by Canadian researchers.

I've been involved with high power rocketry for a few years now and every one of my projects have been scale Black Brants including a 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, all in 1/3 scale.

My most recent venture is the Black Brant IX mod 1. The real rocket I used as my prototype was BB9 mod 1 36.097 launched from White Sands, New Mexico on the 9th of February 1994. This particular rocket carried the Canadian Space Agency payload GEMINI (General Excitation Mechanisms In NIghtglow).

The Black Brant IX mod 1 uses the TX664-5 motor for the booster. Dimensionally, it's the same as the standard Terrier booster used on the regular BBIX.

My model was approximately 17 feet tall, making it almost 1/3 scale, and weighed 40lbs. This was the largest most complex rocket I have built to this day.

CONSTRUCTION:
The airframe was constructed using PML 6" tubing with cutouts in various places to simulate the hatches, bolt access holes and connection points. The spiral groves were filled with automotive spot putty and sanded smooth with a palm sander, and later by hand.

I wanted the AeroTech White Lightening flame and burn time for the booster but didn't want to pay the huge costs of 98mm hardware. So instead I opted for a pair of AT 54mm K550s to heave this beast off the pad.

Simulations confirmed that the rocket would still fly safely , but just barely, if only one of the two motors lit. The motor mount consisted of a pair of 54mm LOC motor mount tubes epoxied together with four 3/16" ply centering rings. A steel 'U'-bolt was fastened to the forward ring for recovery hardware attachment.

The fins for the booster represented one of the bigger challenges in design and construction of the rocket. I wanted the scale facets of the real thing but didn't trust the use of built up ply. I solved the problem with a unique molded composite/built-up structure that resulted in a very light and very strong fin.

I started by constructing a 1/16" G-10 frame consisting of a flat sheet in the shape of the fin. To this I attached spars to each side of the fin. The skins were fabricated by laying up fiberglass cloth in a mold, saturating them with polyester resin and then clamping the previously built frame into the mold. This made for perfectly finished skins molded directly to the structural frame.

The real Black Brant IX stages are held together by a mere 3/4" long pin to prevent rotation. The rocket relies on thrust from the booster to hold them together until burnout, at which time they separate with the assistance of a drag ring attached to the forward part of the booster.

In trusting with the original design and from previous experience with other large two stage rockets, I decided that four 1/4" diameter by one foot long carbon fiber rods were more that sufficient to hold the stages together for the boost portion of the flight. The rods slide into aluminum tubing carefully positioned in the sustainer stage.

Like the real vehicle, stage separation would be accomplished using drag flaps at booster burnout. The interstage turned out to be the most complex part of the rocket requiring several pieces of various size tubing, centering rings, scratch built fiberglass transitions and countless other parts. The drag flaps themselves were made of 1/16" G-10.

In an effort to save both money and time (I don't care what anyone says a large well built rocket takes tons of both!), a good portion of the sustainer stage was cannibalized from my previous Black Brant 8, which can be seen in the most recent High Power Rocketry Magazine. The fins consisted of a 1/16" ply core to each side of which was molded 1/32" of fiberglass. The fins were far lighter and less expensive than the G-10 I originally planed for and have proved strong enough for the job. The fins were attached into a ply slot going right to the single 54mm motor mount tube. Again a whole lot of scale detail was added to the area to make it look real.

The sustainer airframe consisted of Cluster R tubing laminated with fiberglass to provide for a smooth surface. I originally bought the tubing because it was longer than LOC tubing and less expensive.

BIG MISTAKE!! This stuff is garbage as far as I'm concerned. The white paper tubes readily delaminate and are nowhere near as strong and easy to finish as LOC tubes. Do yourself a favor and stick to LOC tubes!

The payload required two large transition sections that were built using fiberglass and a built-up mold. For the large payload tube, I used a concrete form 8" in diameter, as it was inexpensive and not a load bearing part of the airframe, but it was a pain to finish. The guidance system fins were 1/16" G-10 and the nose was a standard LOC 5.38L. All the finishing was done with automotive scratch filling primer and Krylon spray paints.

The electronics consisted of all Adept products. In my opinion this company has terrible customer service but the electronics are well built and reliable, so I will keep buying them. I just wished it would take less than six months to get something you ordered from them.

The staging was accomplished with the ES236 dual sequential electronic stager via a cable from the sustainer payload section. The sustainer recovery used a RAS2 recording altimeter with an APD1 apogee detector for back up. Motor ejection would be used for booster recovery.

FLIGHT:
The Black Brant IX was to be launched at Sullivan Lake 5. This launch, held in Alberta, Canada, has become the national high power launch in Canada and is hosted every year by the Calgary Rocketry Association.

After arriving and helping set up the site on Friday afternoon, I was able to inspect the launcher I would use built by Vince Chichak of Edmonton. The launcher was of rail type made from part of a sailboat mast. Four screw heads attached to hard points along the length of the rocket would act as lugs and would slide along the rope guide in the mast.

The launcher easily held up to Vince jumping up and down on it to prove the quality of his work. By making the launcher as well as donating several of his great ignitors and know-how to my project, Vince helped make the launch a success. Thanks Vince!

Saturday morning came and the work of launch prep began. Three K550s had to be loaded, ignitors prepped, recovery systems assembled and of course, electronic system tested. With this finally accomplished by 2:00PM, I was ready to launch.

With Wally Gibney adding "checking for Satellites" to his usual LCO checklist and me about to die from the panic setting in of launching what would be the largest, most powerful nonprofessional rocket to be flown in Canada, the countdown began.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 LAUNCH!

The motors took a moment to come up to full thrust and then threw the 40 lb. rocket off the pad on a column of smoke and flame that had to be seen to be believed! The rocket streaked skyward still pointed straight up with a deafening roar.

After booster burnout, the stages slipped apart and the sustainer coasted upward for almost 5 seconds as the booster arced over and deployed its chute on cue.

With the upper stage ignited, sending it still higher, it was a few seconds before we were greeted with the roar from that motor.

After burnout the sustainer coasted for almost 15 seconds and to peak almost out of sight. The Adept payload did its job and the upper stage and payload section slowly drifted back to earth on their separate chutes landing minutes later.

The help of a local who knew the area allowed me to recover all the parts and with the altimeter beeping out 5193 feet and nothing more than cosmetic damage due to the combined heat off the booster motors, I returned to the launch site after the best flight I've had to this day. I intend to add a third stage to the rocket and refinish it, making the Black Brant X using a J350 in the upper stage and pop out fins, as the third stage has no fins on the real rocket.