Anyone built amateur rockets or jet engines ?

[Sid]

I've been doing this since I was kid - the rockets anyway. I did have a project underway to build a jet powered go-kart a few years ago but the engine ( a large turbocharger from a diesel truck ) produced roughly 0% thrust while having about a 90% chance of incinerating anyone who went anywhere near it... development stopped when I moved to another country, which is probably all for the best.

I'm going to make a hybrid rocket at some point in the future, but for the moment I don't have a workshop - all my engineering machinery is sitting in a friends garage until I can build a 'Skunkworks' to house it.

I'm not sure what to use as an oxidiser, I can get 40% Hydrogen Peroxide but I'll have to concentrate it a lot further somehow ( got a few ideas about that ) - Nitrous Oxide might be more convenient however and a lot less explodey.

[astropapi1]

I've only made R-candy so far (planning on making a tutorial thread), but I wanna do some bigger stuff.

I'm interested in the technical side of things, not just like the launch-a-SRB-straight-up-and-scream-YEEEAAHHHH!!1!1 kind of rocketry.

[Sid]

I'm interested in the technical challenge as well nowadays. Rockets which explode have turned from a feature into a bug now for me

I doubt I could afford to build anything liquid fuelled which is light enough to fly, and anyway I live in a place where wildfires are a huge hazard for much of the year. It's not really safe to fly an experimental rocket. No problem to build a test stand though.

I do keep thinking about a boost glider powered by those small Estes motors - I think they are safe enough to use here because of their reliability and short burn times. Not really much different to the fireworks the locals love so much ( except I doubt that Estes use a cement mixer for making their black powder ) - my neighbours don't look like Kerbals but sometimes they behave like Kerbals...

[Tex_NL]

No the most powerful but by far the easiest jet engine would be a pulse jet.

They can run white-hot and make one hell off a noise.

[TwoHedWlf]

Pulse jets. When you absolutely, positively have to make every single person within 10 miles want you dead.

[Sid]

A friend helping me on the rocket project was involved with pulsejets. Well kind of......as a target

He's an older guy who lived in the south coast area of England as a young child in WW-2 and remembers the V-1's flying over the Channel from Nazi occupied France

I would maybe like to build a pulsejet but realistically I don't have the skills - I'm a good machinist but sheet metal fabrication isn't something I know much about, or have the tools for.

[Grove]

It would be cool to see one melt.

[ZedNova]

I made a jet engine once when i was 16, it had enough thrust to push itself very slowly if on wheels, but it fit in your hand.

Also it caught fire all over and got red hot after 1 1/2 minutes of running it with the throttle open all the way.

[DragonRoco]

I fly two stage model rockets. The kit was form Estes and was called the 'Solar Flare' flies good and it sounds awesome. I'm thinking to get a payload rocket that has two motors in the first stage to lift a camera or other payloads.

[satcharna]

I've built rockets, using time-honoured techniques originating from the Korean peninsula.

Yes, I pour black powder in a tube and put a stick on it.

[OdinYggd]

I've done Estes kits before, at one time having quite the collection including a 2 stage and 3 stage model.

Never actually tried building a jet engine, though I see how it could be done easily enough. The hard part is the combustor, if you get that figured out you can do the rest fairly easily.

[Sid]

I loved the Estes motors, but never actually bought a complete kit. The neighbours and their kids used to come over to some of the launches - it wasn't a space technology outreach education program so much as " Hey, hold my beer and watch this "

My amateur rockets had to be launched discreetly and away from human habitation, because making a solid fuel rocket engine in the UK ( where I was living ) is actually illegal. Plus they blew up a lot

[satcharna]

My amateur rockets had to be launched discreetly and away from human habitation, because making a solid fuel rocket engine in the UK ( where I was living ) is actually illegal. Plus they blew up a lot

Does this apply to all solid rocket engines, or just to the more advanced ones? Example, would making your own firework rockets be illegal as well?

[Sid]

Does this apply to all solid rocket engines, or just to the more advanced ones? Example, would making your own firework rockets be illegal as well?

It's any homemade rocket engine\firework\whatever. You are making an 'explosive mixture' as far as the law is concerned. My view was that stuff is only illegal if you get caught doing it

Even the Estes motors were considered illegal in the UK until something like the mid 1980's

Ironically shortly after I gave up making illegal solid fuel rockets as a hobby I applied for - and got - a licence to manufacture firearms. Which isn't easy in the UK...that really stopped me doing anything fun. Except for building and shooting guns, which is also fun of course

Edited July 21, 2013 by Sid
Moar struts

[Buzzkil88]

i have dabbled in amateur rockets with my dad for years. Our last one was made out of a custom aluminum body and some good ole ammonium nitrate for oxidizer and magnesium powder for fuel. My dad is a pipefitter and has always been the go to guy for my custom rocket bodies. I would love to share some pics and stuff but what we are doing is 100% illegal here in illinois... i mean mexico... Its actually illegal for me to be handling the fuel since we are not farmers or chemists or licensed professionals. sshhh.... Our last one was our best yet and it carried my dads Casio G'zOne Commando smartphone in the nose. We use the phone to find the rocket body via GPS. It was buried half way up the body in a field.

We use a variety of home made ignitors. one is a christmas light bulb with the tip chipped off and you fill it with gun powder (dont break the filament) seal it off and then all you have to do is plug it in an outlet. bang. Another is a customized high performance spark plug. The hardest part is getting the fuel. If you can't get fuel, buy some tannerite of the internet. Its a type of reactive exploding target for shooting (ammonium nitrate and aluminum oxide powder. Tannerite by itself does not make a good propellant, nor does it ignite, but a few google seaches and you know the rest... lol

Disclaimer : kids dont try this at home, or at your neighbors, or at a friends or any where.... these chemicals are highly volatile and dangerous. Rockets are bombs if not done properly. Bombs are not rockets.... You can, and likely will blow your garage up or blow your hands off... Do not handle near open flames. Do not handle while smoking. Do not handle at all since you have no idea what you are doing. We didn't start off with the big boy toys... we started with little model rockets and worked our way up over a period of years.