rocketsam2016
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- Joined
- Aug 31, 2016
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After eyeing this kit for some time I couldn't resist the good sale in November, and I'm ready to start building! I'd love to someday fly it on an M, but that won't be anytime soon since I want a lot more flights under my belt in the L2 range and MMMSC is limited to 10k feet.
I'm not making massive changes to the kit, but thus far I'm planning the following addendums/changes:
Madcow lists 14lbs which I took as the dry kit weight, so I was assuming 17-18lbs or so fully built and loaded other than the motor. However, all the fiberglass parts and hardware supplied with the kit plus the aeropack and the parachutes only comes to ~13.25lbs, so even after I build, paint, build the avbay sled + electronics and add the gps, this may come out lighter than I expected. We'll see!
I'm not making massive changes to the kit, but thus far I'm planning the following addendums/changes:
- Use RocketPoxy everywhere (except motor retainer) and inject internal fillets. The injection process sounds like a mess to me, but so does doing them with a dowel between a 75mm mount and a 4" air frame with split fins and people seem to like the injection method so time to try it out.
- Add two extra centering rings (making a total of 5) to make the dams for injection.
- Aeropack 75mm retainer epoxied on with jb weld
- 1" kevlar strap epoxied to two sides of the motor mount. The kit calls for attaching shock cord directly to motor, but I'll mostly be flying 54mm CTI which don't natively allow for that, and if I'm not adding a bulkhead might as well leave the motor charge in as a tertiary backup of the apogee split. I've been going back and forth for some time about the kevlar strap method vs adding a bulkhead, but (as with injecting) the kevlar strap method seems very popular so time to give it a shot
- 2 eggtimer quantums in the avbay. TBD whether I add a physical switch, though I suppose it'd be required if I use this for L3
- Eggfinder gps in the nose. I've already designed+built a twist-in enclosure to use the eggfinder in another rocket, so all I need is to cut a house-shaped hole in the nose cone bulkhead. More on this later.
- Using the included ~30' TN shock cord for the booster -> avbay connection, and bought a 25' tubular kevlar cord to go from avbay -> nose. I'm on board with all the arguments against too-long cords, but I fly near trees and I want a shot at getting this back from one.
- (tentatively) 60" fruity iris main and 15" fruity classic elliptical drogue. I've bought these but left them in the package in case the final weight is off from my estimates.
- Using a fruity deployment bag with the main, probably with a 24" fruity elliptical for the pilot. I've used deployment bags before and I'm hooked.
- I'm thinking about some sort of external mount for a couple of cameras. I don't mind the drag - this isn't a lean and mean rocket and I fly on the east coast, and I've got this crazy idea about doing either stereoscopic mounts for 3d or some sort of panorama.
Madcow lists 14lbs which I took as the dry kit weight, so I was assuming 17-18lbs or so fully built and loaded other than the motor. However, all the fiberglass parts and hardware supplied with the kit plus the aeropack and the parachutes only comes to ~13.25lbs, so even after I build, paint, build the avbay sled + electronics and add the gps, this may come out lighter than I expected. We'll see!