Krazed III

RIP Crazed I and Crazed II

A little history...
Crazed I CATOed when I tried to fly him on a hybrid motor, I was hoping to get away without using GOx in my WCH motor by using a bit of BT propellant, but the slug ended up in the nozzle, which soon lead to a forward closure failure, which released ~500ml of liquid N2O into the airframe, which he didn't like. With Crazed II I forgot to arm the electronics :cry:

In any case, Crazed started out as a PML Amram4, which was modified for CPR3K, and hybrid motors (required adding a few inches in length). I have lost track of how many flights he has flown, over 10 for sure, and probably 20-25 miles of flight (when you count the descent ) For his first few flights I fed him 3/4grain pro38's, then for our level2 cirt we let him have a j540 redline, hit 5800ft IIRC. We flew that 1280ns case once more (another j540) but then the whole ATF mess started, so we bought a WCH hybrid, but he CATOed on the first flight, due to user stupidity ( it was too small of a motor for this rocket anyway, we have since built a custom MDR rocket for him, and had a successful flight)... So then we decided to go for the hypertek, and got perfect launch after launch, until about 11am 11/26/06 when I forgot to arm the electronics...

But that is all in the past now, it is time to rebuild, and make him better, stronger, faster, and with 30% more fiber

Crazed was a little fat and slow for my taste, hitting 3k feet was considered a good flight So the first order of business was to take down the weight from 12+lbs to something more suited for a hypertek. While we are at it lets build him to be able to take that 1280ns case and hit mach. Thus was borne Krazed III

At first I was thinking of just buying some tube, fins, and a chute, but then I found the transonic II from Hawk Mountain, which was almost exactly what I wanted, and cheaper than just buying the bare parts! So I ordered it, a CPR kit from PML, and a few other odds and ends, and ended up here:

(man that compression is ugly!)

Then it sat for about 6 months, and today I finally got around to building it (last day of summer break ).

First build up his heart:


Then put on some underwear...


He sure grew up fast!:


And then add in the last few bits:

Still need to paint him and make up a way to hold the backup electronics in the nose code, but for the most part he is built.

He ended up weighing just under 2kg (1.997kg!), and if I didn't make to many errors simulating him in rocksim, we should hit just under 7kft and just over 500mph with the j317 hypertek, or almost 9kft and over 800mph on a J800T XD

Don't need any nose weight in this one, the Cp is about 8" from the bottom of the rocket...

But the real reason that I built him is to launch the GPS tracker that I am building. You guys don't seem to interested in it, but I have most of the code done, and have the tracker itself mostly assembled. Can't wait to test out all of them sensors!

The launch is coming up, so it was time to throw some paint on him.

Of course, you can't launch the GPS tracker with any old paint job, so it was time to break out the System.

We discovered that if you use run of the mill spray paint, spray it on, wait 5 minutes, then spray it with florscent paint, the florscent paint will craze over and form a 'desert playa' patches, the size of which are dependent on how heavy you put on the top coat. I light coat gives a very fine pattern, with features about 1/4" in diameter, a heave coat gives the result you see in the pics.

First coat of blue, and then the coat of red

The red/blue turned out kinda pink and ugly, so we added a cloat of candy blue, and a clearcoat

beats a lot of airbrush jobs I have seen!

I officially have to do that paint setup on my next rocket. It looks amazing. What brand of spraypaint was it?

Cool,

A question though. How did you get certified at 17? I thought you had to be 18. Is it some sort of minor certification? If so, I'm interested!

There is Lvl 1 Jr. Cert with the NAR, but that is it. Of course, you can build the rocket yourself and do everything else but launch it in an adult's name (if they're willing to take responsibility...)

ghost said:

There is Lvl 1 Jr. Cert with the NAR, but that is it. Of course, you can build the rocket yourself and do everything else but launch it in an adult's name (if they're willing to take responsibility...)

Click to expand...

Yeah, but "..." is Lvl 2 certified. Is there a level 2jr?

I don't think so. Maybe "..." is >=18 and just hasn't updated his sig...

Maybe he flies off of someone else's cert, like jraice and cjl does.

I fly under my dads cert, which he got flying my rocket
Although next year I am probably going to get my level 1 and 2 at the same launch if they let me.

For those of you that want to try and replicate the paintjob, I put up a page at here

On an unrelated note, I am launching him next weekend, and need to get the code in the GPS tracker done by then. Gotta love late night coding If only I hadn't spent last week trying to get the 20W Ho:YAG laser that I got off ebay to start lasing...

I'm going to have to try this for sure!

So when is that thing going to get a K1275R?

Sadly, never.:cry:

Last weekend we sent him up on a hypertek J317. We lost sight of it at motor burnout, and the gps tracker crapped out at apogee. After a day of searching the Mojave desert without any luck, he has been declared dead.

For more information, see its webpage