38/640 questions

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Why no interest form the local HPR community? Mentoring university students can be a challenge, but it is very rewarding.

No volunteers interested. Don't know why. It made a tough project even more difficult.
 
First off. Two rockets were SEDS USRC 2017 competition rockets. TRA record attempts. Scratch build MD. No experience No mentors. One had an interstage implosion. Nothing to do with the "failure to prep rocket", and the other had a CATO on sustainer stage due to inexperience with HEI. Chattanooga still has no HPR mentors interested in helping the university. If you would like to mentor we would gladly appreciate it. We drove from Tenessee to Utah in three days. Then Virginia months later with a second rocket. Most teams fly once. Then to Florida and placed third by simply exceeding minimum competition requirements to design around. On a single stage when the other stage CATO'd. Sixty Eight other teams did not even finish or fly rocket. Twenty only flew a rocket. Very few recovered anything at all. TTU used the wrong altimeter and was disqualified. SEDS doesn't give a **** if your rocket is a crumpled pile of flaming sh*t at the end of a flight by a point system as long as APRA altimeter is safely recovered. The custom nosecone I designed survived and so did another team member's AV bay along with my design of booster airframe tube. Sustainer went smaller pieces than confetti post CTI Cato. point system is rigged for altitude. And bonus granted for exceeding it. If your altitude is high enough you can write off a stage and you still win by points.

Purdue also attempted 20,000 ft plus on 640 N-s and failed to recover their rocket. They didn't launch a second. You can make fun us some more. UTC USRC is open for mentors. None wanted too. And we nearly up blew sh*t. Imploded stuff. And learned by doing. The best mentors we had were the RSOs. Terry and Bruno walked off without mentoring. So we learned the hard way and it was humbling. Didn't even know one bad hawk existed. My cert rocket shock cord snapped. Got all pieces back in fly able condition. Don't use random paracord. Not all are equal. YES we could use a mentor. Would you like to mentor next year's team? This thread was suppose to be about 38/640 motors. Not SEDS rockets or how college teams suck and destroy stuff from zero experience.

I was not making fun of you. I simply commenting on the fact that if you have three rockets fail then there is something wrong. A mentor can be a good thing, and I am sorry you cannot find and keep one.

I have not mentored a college team before. I have worked a couple of the College launches at Bong in Wisconsin in a role of day of troubleshooter, so to speak. You are right that inexperience sure can be a problem, and trying to learn all of the aspects needed to successfully fly a rocket can be tough to do on the fly. A rocket is a complex thing to design, construct, and fly.




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If you were in over your head, why proceed?
Engineering students thrive in a in over your head environment. There's an advanced supersonic wind tunnel math project you know nothing about. You attempt to solve the problem at hand. By Senior year it's expected of you. The rest had flunked out of program and they thought they were stupid. Some very bright students. No it's just hArder than anything else expectation wise minus med school or a military experience in a war zone. There's the inside joke of that final minute is your most productive. They weren't kidding.

All the exams you get are math word problems where you critically think your way through the problem. Then you attempt a solution. Many are not even taught. You just try to think your way through it with what you understand. My stomach is paining me right now because over half your course grade weighs on that test score. There were tests I and many others have failed. Because the professor has the most experience in the logical assumptions of how to mathematically set up the problem. And sometimes it's not ever easy when the prof intentionally makes it confusing or complex because that is what is expected of you. There are some courses with some profs where you study all your weekends to teach yourself the material. And then you hear other students in lazier relaxed majors whine about a scantron exam with study guides while you had to memorize a bunch of pages of formulas and how to apply it all. Then run out of time on a fill in blank exam with everyone's scores sub fifties.

If it took taking internships on a heavy industrial environment to raise funds over the summer, nearly getting crushed by tugger/roller systems then so be it. Don't like supporting mechanized factory operations? Don't like design? Don't like hard deadlines with ever increasing pressure? Don't like taking classes multiple times and professors calling you stupid for failing? Stay out of engineering.

"by Golly Engineers never quit." A quote from Dr. Jones. A former AFRL engineer and fluid mechanics prof. Dude was a legend. He had to put a bear in a B-58 Hustler cockpit when it harmonically vibrated and killed the test pilots. Then the Airforce was using bears and destroying strategic bombers in flight until the vibration issue was solved. It had killed pilots on ejection in early phases. I guess whoever engineer drew shortest straw had to put bear in cockpit.
 
And then when you fail blame everyone else for not helping you.

This job sounds great!
 
I have blamed myself in the past for my mistakes. Many people out there will not blame themselves. Some of the professors were fired from companies after not making it in real world.
 
Is this a thread about Andrew's 38/640 or Andrew_ASC's life story about his experience?

Andrew, it appears you have an AMW case. Unfortunately I think that AMW stopped making loads when Paul passed away. AMW's site does not show any 38mm loads in stock.

I think you may have experienced a moment of "buyers impulse"... And now you may learn a new lesson, if you so choose to learn it -- you'll experience it anyway... Buyer's remorse. You need to understand what you are buying BEFORE you buy it. 38/640 as you learned applies to two different manufacturers, and that's a tough break.

While it is nice to see the unbridled enthusiasm, we also wish to help you learn these lessons early on. I'm a terrible teacher about life lessons because, well, I went through all this and probably didn't learn what I needed to learn (then) until much later in life.

Hopefully you find good purpose for this casing. Maybe you can reach out to Scott Kormeier at Loki Research to see if his loads are compatible with the casing that you have.

Hope you are able to use your new acquisition in one way or another.
 
Is this a thread about Andrew's 38/640 or Andrew_ASC's life story about his experience?

Andrew, it appears you have an AMW case. Unfortunately I think that AMW stopped making loads when Paul passed away. AMW's site does not show any 38mm loads in stock.

I think you may have experienced a moment of "buyers impulse"... And now you may learn a new lesson, if you so choose to learn it -- you'll experience it anyway... Buyer's remorse. You need to understand what you are buying BEFORE you buy it. 38/640 as you learned applies to two different manufacturers, and that's a tough break.

While it is nice to see the unbridled enthusiasm, we also wish to help you learn these lessons early on. I'm a terrible teacher about life lessons because, well, I went through all this and probably didn't learn what I needed to learn (then) until much later in life.

Hopefully you find good purpose for this casing. Maybe you can reach out to Scott Kormeier at Loki Research to see if his loads are compatible with the casing that you have.

Hope you are able to use your new acquisition in one way or another.


I have the AMW 38 /640 and there are 3 great loads for it, see post # 47. They used to be a great deal when Aerotech came out with them, a little more than half price than a comparable RMS load. Now the same price.

AMW 640.JPG
 
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