Welcome to the JATO Forum!!!

[Johansson]

Oct 20, 2016 12:01:25 GMT -5 minkhant1701 said:

Hello,

My name is Min Khant.I am from Myanmar.I am very interesting to build my own aircraft engine. But I don't know where to start. I am neither engineer nor programmer. I am just a pilot.

I think this forum will help me alot.
Btw if you have any idea to come to Myanmar, I will help as I can.

Thanks.

Welcome Min!

[btboone]

Hi Guys,
I'm Bruce Boone from Roswell GA USA. I'm a mechanical engineer, inventor and tinkerer, and I've always been into building stuff. I now have a full shop including CNC lathes and machining centers and have lasers specialized for cutting, welding, and engraving. Previous projects include 4 lasers built from scratch, built human powered vehicles (faired bicycles for speed runs) and designed a human powered helicopter and had designs for a human powered hydrofoil using a sine wave swimming type motion. I used to work designing paper towel dispensers including the one where you wave your hand in front to get the paper, and worked in the nuclear industry prior to that. I used to make my own line of titanium bicycle components in the late 90's which became a full time job, and that morphed into making titanium wedding rings, which I still do for a living.

I have a fellow machinist up the road that owns a shop with high end 5th axis machines making aerospace parts. He has made a quarter scale jet plane that goes 300mph, from scratch using 22,000 photographs and everything is perfect down to the rivet. This got him in the door to making stuff for Lockheed and other manufacturers and he's exploded in growth ever since. That project got me interested in checking further into what's possible. I've seen the off the shelf turbine engines that are out there and I started wondering about the possibility of making some high thrust engines from scratch. I love the concept of the twin engine jet pack that is currently in development and see that it might be within the realm of possibility to make a working one. I know a lot of basic aerodynamic stuff from the human powered vehicles and from working on the 96 Olympic bikes. My son is college age and will be working for the place up the street, so I thought it would be a great project for the three of us to try and tackle. At this point, I don't know what I don't know, so I'll try and glean any knowledge from the forum on what it takes to make an efficient and powerful engine, hopefully in the 150 pound thrust range.

[racket]

Hi Bruce

Welcome to the Forum :-)

If you're interested in more "aero" type home made engines, perhaps a look into the GTBA Site might be of interest www.gtba.co.uk/

Cheers
John

[btboone]

Thanks John. I have seen those. That is some crazy work. I'd love to do stuff of that caliber.

[CH3NO2]

Hello Everyone,

I've been a life long enthusiast of rocket propulsion. I built my first water cooled GOX/Propane engine in the 6th grade. Entered it into the school science fair and took 1st place. Shortly after I built all kinds of solid propellant rocket engines. Some of which worked well, some worked about as good as a regular fireworks fountain and some exploded rather violently.

Then I researched jet engines in the local library. The jet engines looked much more complicated than a rocket engine but I gave it a try anyways. Using propane as the fuel, a dog food can as the combustion chamber and the cut off lids cut/shaped into a compressor and turbine. Of course it didn't work but it was fun trying.

Then I started calling every local aeorspace company I could find in the phone book. I wanted to speak with a "Rocket Scientist".
So I called Rocketdyne and spoke with the receptionist. I guess she thought it was cute that a little kid wanted to speak with one of their rocket scientists because she laughed when I asked. She then transferred me to their engineering department and put me in touch with one of the scientists working on the SSME. When we spoke he thought it was amusing too but he didn't really have time for me so that call fizzled out.
Then I called JPL in Pasadena. It was pretty much the same result.
Then I called Marquardt in Van Nuys Ca.. Was put in contact with an incredible man "Carl Stechman". Carl Stechman was the Chief Scientist at Marquardt. He was one of the original developers of the R4D attitude control rocket engines used on the attitude control system of the Lunar Landing Module. This guy is AWESOME. He was actually happy to speak with me on the phone. He sent me my first copy of George Suttons book "Rocket Propulsion Elements". He sent me data sheets on the engines he was working on and pictures of it hot firing in their high altitude test chamber Cell 1. This guy is soo cool he came to my house for a BBQ. I showed him my GOX/Propane engine and we fired it up for some fun. He then told me I had a combustion instability and made some recommendations. Then he went to his car and came back with with a R4D rocket engine combustion chamber and its MMH/NTO injector.
He gave it to me as a souvenir and I still have it today.

So I went to school, then went to college and majored in Chemistry. My first job out of college was Dynamic Propellant Technologies (DPT). All solid rocket propellant formulations and manufacturing. That was fun... but also a bit dangerous. Being in the mixing room where solid propellants are being mixed in batches of hundreds of pounds. Working with the Naval Air Warfare Center we had  Fuels, Oxidizers, plasticizers, catalysts, Ammonium Perchlorate, sub-micron aluminum, beryllium hydride, RDX. It was all over the place. Although we met code and passed regular inspections, just one spark and there wouldn't be enough time to run out of the building. It was really cool working with all these dangerous, high energy chemicals but it also made me nervous. Always kept the shop door open with a clear B-line to run straight out if anything were to happen. Probably wouldn't have made a  difference anyways.  It's a good thing  I  didn't stay.

Not long after I was able to get back in touch with Carl Stechman. He was still working at Marquardt so I was hired on there and I worked as Carls assistant. It was sooo awesome to work there. Marquardt had the most amazing R&D and testing facilities. This place was like Disney Land for scientists and engineers. They had multiple vacuum chambers for testing rocket engines in the 2 newton to 250 LBF rocket engines. But that was just the beginning. Marquardt was primarily a Ramjet R&D development and testing facility. They had three different wind tunnels for testing ramjets. Transsonic, supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels. The facilities were so large and complex it was stunning. They had multiple libraries of nothing but metallurgy, fluid dynamics, rocket engine and ramjet sciences. I would go through file cabinets of test reports on supersonic inlets, Bomarc combustion chamber designs, VX chemical weapons development, munitions development and all kinds of crazy, exotic and classified materials. They even had test reports on Project Pluto. A nuclear powered supersonic ramjet that they built and tested in their wind tunnels back in the early 70's. Project Pluto was developed to be a very large supersonic cruise missile that could fly from the US to Moscow at supersonic speed. Freakin Nuts. I was compelled to dig into these reports. However, the program was terminated and later declassified due to the S.A.L.T. Treaty.

My first project task at Marquardt was development and test of a 5lbf Hydrazine monopropellant rocket engine.

The next development project was development of a new injector for the R4D-16 125LBF Hydrazine/MON3 hypergolic bi-propellant rocket engine. ~325 seconds Isp with a 300:1 expansion ratio. This delta V engine is in orbit on many commercial and military satellites.
arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2000-3161

The next development project was a 2000LBF 98% Hydrogen Peroxide / RP-1 rocket engine with a silica/phenolic ablative combustion chamber.  A very educational experience.  And I must say High Test Peroxide is some fun stuff to play with.

I could have worked at Marquardt for the rest of my life but as the saying goes, good things dont last forever. Marquardt was purchased by Primex aerospace in Redmond Washington. The Marquardt facility was closed and moved to Redmond Washington. I was offered my same job, a raise and relocation $$$ to move to Redmond Washington but I didn't want any part of it. Washington state has the highest suicide rate in the US and its because they only have sunshine about 2 months out of the year. Hell no.  I grew up in sunny California and couldn't handle the gray, miserable, overcast weather.

So I stayed local and got my next job at Boeing. I had a shoe in there because they used the R4D-15 and R4D-16 rocket engines almost exclusively on their satellites for Delta V. They hired me right away. This was at the same facility that used to be Hughes Aerospace. Another amazing facility with amazing people.  Working on satellites is an amazing experience and working with all of the Boeing Scientists was a honor and a great privilege...   Way too cool but there was a catch.    The drive to and from work was at least 4-5 hours every day. Parked on the infamous 405 Freeway completely clogged in traffic both ways.   The drive to and from work sucked and my wife and I just had our first baby. I did 5 years of hard time on the 405.  The commute became a problem so I was looking for alternatives.

I could do rocket propulsion all day long if I had access to the proper chemicals but one way or another, liquid and solid rocket propulsion has all kinds of regulatory and safety roadblocks. Can't really do it as a hobby....
So the only thing left, that wont chemically melt my face off, isn't carcinogenic, tetratogenic or detonatable, is Jet Propulsion. So now I'm here, retooling and readjusting my propulsion focuses because I still need to play with FIRE! 

[racket]

Hi Tony

AH , boys and their toys :-)

It'll be interesting to hear what can be carried over from rocketry to turbines , combustion should be one area , maybe turbine pumps, and LOL....probably some others I know nothing about.

You'll find that theres no end to things with turbines ..............its a bottomless pit of complexity that we can only hope to get a general over view of , if we start to delve deeper it turns into quicksand that soon consumes us :-(

Cheers
John

[CH3NO2]

"If we delve deeper it turns into quick sand that soon consumes us." Good'ol philosophy. The more we know, the more we know we don't know.

I never worked on turbo pumps or turbo machinery. All the liquid rocket propulsion systems I worked on were pressure fed, blow down systems. The liquid biprop engines were all final stage engines based on radiation cooling supplemented with film cooling or they had ablative liners. Very simple compared to the regeneratively cooled, turbo pump fed, first stage main engines but they all have their place in propulsion.

And yes, I do plan on carrying over some of the rocket science and applying it to jet propulsion. Particularly in the combustion chamber and after burn sections. Experimenting with the chemistry of the fuel is MANDATORY. This should make it interesting.

[Johansson]

Wow Tony, that is one hell of a career! It must have been fashinating to work at those places, especially during the Cold War era when no expenses were saved in order to be ahead of the competition regarding long range missile development etc.

[CH3NO2]

For clairification, I started working at Marquardt in 2000 so I was long behind the cold war but I did get to see all of the amazing things that came from it. And yes, all of the development programs were government funded "Cost Plus" programs. Cost was no object. And the things the scientists could do because of it were extreme. Much of the development work I was impressed by was done in the 60's and 70's. I wish I could have been there at that time. OMG You, me, John... we all would have loved to work there.

I would say Marquardt was along the lines of Skunk Works but their efforts were even more hidden from public knowledge.

Who wouldn't want to work on a nuclear powered supersonic ramjet cruise missile?

And test fire it in a supersonic wind tunnel? With every imaginable resource available, cost no object... The golden days of aerospace. The exhaust plume of the nuclear powered ramjet engine was radioactively dirty but they could get away with it back in thoes days. Marquardt developed and tested the supersonic inlet for the engine. They didn't make the reactor or body though. That wasn't their thing.

Marquardt started in the 50's in Van Nuys what used to be a large empty valley outside of L.A., with nobody around. Now its a densely populated town.

Project Pluto never had a chance to fly because the program was canceled by the SALT treaty agreement. But then again the program was always intended to be used as a bargining chip in diplomatic negotiations with the Soviets. From what I was told, it was a very large cruise missile designed to fly at mach 2.2 - 3. Carrying a thermonuclear warhead, it could fly supersonic, on the deck, from the US to Moscow and have the ability to circle around the target area for up to 2 weeks before being flown into the Kremlin.

There would be almost no way to shoot it down because it could fly so low and so fast. A dooms day machine. A bargaining chip.
Its no wonder we were able to bring the Soviets to the table. Soviet diplomats were given tours of the Marquardt facility to see it, take pictures and be given just enough information to know it was a credible threat.
It worked.

The reason Marquardt isn't around today is because their main expertise was in ramjet propulsion... which was superseded by rocket propulsion. ICBM's could easily do what Project Pluto could do but even faster and without the dirty exhaust plume.


It was so sad to see that facility closed down and demolished in 2002.

[lucgoncalez]

Hello everyone.

My name is Luciano. I'm 36 years old and I live in Brazil. I'm a car mechanic and I'm in love with engines. I want to build my own gas turbine one day.

I speak a little English, so I may have a little difficulty answering and I have to use the translator most of the time for do not to make mistakes, sometimes I can write something wrong, sorry.

Special thanks to Johansson for telling me this board via YouTube. Thank you.

I think that's it.

[racket]

Welcome to the Forum :-)

I hope we can speed up your turbine build

[Johansson]

Aug 6, 2017 19:01:18 GMT -5 lucgoncalez said:

Hello everyone.

My name is Luciano. I'm 36 years old and I live in Brazil. I'm a car mechanic and I'm in love with engines. I want to build my own gas turbine one day.

I speak a little English, so I may have a little difficulty answering and I have to use the translator most of the time for do not to make mistakes, sometimes I can write something wrong, sorry.

Special thanks to Johansson for telling me this board via YouTube. Thank you.

I think that's it.

Welcome Luciano!

[dan]

Hi there,

My name is Dan McCullough, and I am from Liverpool. I have a mundane engineering job by day, but love to play with motorcycles and engines in my spare time. 

I've got a decent background in electronics, programming (Labview and Arduino), hydraulics, and general engineeringy type stuff.
in the past I maintained and constructed test cells for Garrett Turbochargers which generated compressor and turbine maps, as well as endurance testing. Fun work which I wish I was still involved with.

Looking now to re-kindle the obsession with hot masses of noisy spinning metal.

Dan

[racket]

Hi Dan

LOL..............you've come to the right "home" :-)

Cheers
John

[j79guy]

New to this forum, but certainly not new to turbines. Founder and owner of S&S Turbine Services Ltd in British Columbia, Canada, and founder/director of The Aerospace & Technology Museum of British Columbia. One of my associates/business partners, AgentJayZ, has over 500 videos on you-tube, on all subjects, turbine related. Joining this forum to use as an information resource and possibly, I may have a surplus turbine or two that some of you may need! Engines I deal with regularly include: GE; J79, CF6-6, LM1500, LM2500, LM1600, T58 RR; Spey, Avon, Gnome, Olympus, Tyne. Orenda; -10, -11, -14, OTF3 Ivchenko; AI25TL. I also have in inventory; Curtiss Wright J65, RR Nene-10.
Recreational turbine projects I've been involved with: North American Eagle-II LSR car. Steve Fossett (Ex-Craig Breedlove Spirit of America-II car.) LSR car. Several outlaw jet boats. (T58 engines.) Allison C18 in a Sangster drag boat. (V-drive.)
Currently, looking for Viper overhaul manuals, preferably Mk-535, but also of interest, Mk-200, or Mk-300 series overhaul manuals.
Cheers, Robin Sipe.