BruceTharpe

My Feedback: (1)

Yeah, and could you imagine trying to sell a Jet GUN with a spring-loaded needle to kids nowadays? Might be put in jail

JFranco

My Feedback: (2)

Co2 dragsters are very popular in middle and high schools now. They sell double launchers for the cars.
Here is one of the more popular competitions:

http://www.f1inschools.com/pageindex.html

build light

At that time period I would bet good money that the propellant was the same freon that was used in automobile air conditioning systems of the day. This is the same stuff that was used for frosting glasses and beer mugs. It was sold in cans of one liquid pound.
This allowed more propellant to be used as one would fill it with the liquid and as it expanded turned to gas. Had the bladder been charged with gas it would have behaved more like a pop gun expending its limited fuel almost all at once.

Robert

Trisquire

Pick your poison. Global warming or a hole in the ozone.

50+AirYears

I believe the Estes did in fact use the R-12 refrigerant. Back then, it was a bit over $1.00/can. Of course, the 1 pound cans actually held 15 ounces, and the '30 pounders' we used in the garages I worked at only held 28 pounds. A 1 lb can could give a fair number of flights, depending on how well you handled the filling.

I'm surprised the Greenies haven't been lobying to shut off Volcanos. Just Mt Pinatuba is estimated to have put out more CFCs than everything man had made from the 1930s to the day of the eruption. And that was only one volcano.

Silvaire

My Feedback: (50)

Stanzel made a rocket plane with a bladder that used compressed gas. My brother got one for Christmas around 1963.

I bought one NIB on feeBay a while back - complete with a full can of gas. I don't think the can is marked as to what it contains, but I am under the impression that it is R-12 Freon. I remember spraying some on an oleander leaf (I was about 8 at the time living in Arizona), and I was amazed when the leaf turned a light yellow color and had frost on it!

spaceworm

If you expose Freon to a flame, you produce phosgene gas, as used for poison gas warfare before the Geneva convention banned it. Please don't try to light your Freon powered vehicle.

Trisquire

Do you have pictures of it? I don't think mine went as far back as 63, but it might have been based upon the Stanzel version.

Tom

boberos

That jet gun was a great idea.
As a kid I used a hammer & nail to puncture the cartridge.
Didn't get many flights before I ran out of money.
No long flights either!

Mr_Ed

I had to go into the shop and look. But, yes, I still have my old
jet gun. It definately shows signs of lots of use.

When I was quite young, my older brother helped me build the
Monogram Hotshot. It went fast, but not nearly as fast as the
scratch-built cars my brother and his friends built. They used
ball bearing wheels and such. We also built boats and aircraft
to use the little CO2 bottles. The boats weren't as successful as
the cars. They had a tendancy to get stuck in the middle of the
pond or turn into submarines. The aircraft????? Well, let's just
say, I didn't understand about proper balancing.

Also, the local middle school still uses these cars in their technology
class. The kids build cars to the teachers specs then race them
in the hallway. The winner gets to race the teacher in front of
the whole school and gets his/her name put on a plaque that's
displayed in the technology wing.

Mr_Ed

build light

Whizzing! I ran across an article in the Feb 1947 issue of Popular Science and there they were! Completely relevent to this thread and shows a picture of a jet gun posed for action. I hope you enjoy the article!

http://books.google.com/books?id=uyUDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA65&lr=&rview=1&pg=PA10 2#v=onepage&q=&f=false!
Robert

50+AirYears

Loved that old mag. I was just about 3 when it came out. I remember the jet gun was all right for the Monogram race car, but but very awkward for planes.

Amazing the attention paid to modelbuilding back then, with ads for the Thor B .29 ignition engine, (IIR, infamous as a slag engine) Champion V series spark Plugs for model ignition engines, and even an ad for Ambroid Cement, showing the old probably lead tube with a screw eye in the spout. I either opened sucsessfully, stripped out without opening, or actually twisted the top of the tube off trying to open many of these for the first time.

The pictures of the early Navy Jets, especially the North American XFJ-1, with what looked like straight wings, while the rest of the Fury family had sweepback and more closely resembled the F-86 Sabre family. And the picture of the Ryan FR-1 Fireball flying with the Jet only, the propellor in full feather.

The article on carving the French Flitlock was good.

And it had what was he first COLOR picture I've ever seen for the XF5U-1 showing the plane in flight with a yellow top surface, what appeared to be a black underside, and apparently natural Aluminum for the fins. Excellent color doc for a rubber powered model that's on my FF to-build list. An amazing magazine back the, much more informative than most of today's equivakents, Much broader coverage.

Do you think that new-fangled color television will ever catch on?

To quote a favorite Bob Hope Song:

Thank's for the memories!

N1EDM

My Feedback: (2)

I remember seeing one in our LHS shop when I was a kid, but that was just something for the 'rich' people.... it must have cost at least 95 cents or more!!

We used to hold a nail up against the CO2 cartridge and whack it with a hammer. 9 out of 10 times, we missed

Bob

build light

The guys in the link in my last post were Douglas Aircraft engineers! They could most likely afford the little tools!

I ran across some low res plans to share.

Robert