Improving On Crap

Okay, the first generation of The Crapper, our fleet's Estes Porta-Pot-Shot, left a lot to be desired.

For a start, it had a tiny 8" parachute. This is a bad idea with a heavy model, and The Crapper is pretty freakin' heavy. I'm astonished that Estes includes B motors on its list of recommended motors because a C6 is barely adequate for this model and that's the upper end of the black powder motors its 18mm motor mount will support. Between the weight and the freakish amount of drag the outhouse shape poses, it's a model that begs for more Newton seconds.



One solution would be composite D motors. The Apogee D10 and the Aerotech D21 are both 18mm motors with over twice the total impulse of an Estes C6.

But composite motors are expensive. And the center tube of the Porta-Pot is 24mm, big enough for black powder D and E motors.



So this second Crapper, I'm making some tweaks. First off, Estes now provides a 12" parachute, but I'm going a step further. I have a 15" rip-stop nylon 'chute. It won't fit in the motor mount tube with the motor lug far enough forward for E9 motors, so I'm placing the parachute in the side pocket where the shock-chord mount goes. I've cut a bunch of the styrofoam out of the body to make room for the larger 'chute and to make sure it can be pulled free easily when the recovery charge blows the nose-cone.

And the other improvement, of course, is I'm going to make it a model than can be launched on D12 and E9 motors. For that matter, E30 composites would be possible but not probable.



The end result should be a higher flight and a gentler landing.