When does fiberglass become necessary?

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Neah, you are just might be getting cranky with age....
:lol:

The first and only question my kids asked when I gave them complete freedom to order their own rockets was: "which one goes the highest?"

And you know what - I remember sorting my rocket preferences by exactly the same criteria 30+odd years ago.
I bet so did YOU, and most everyone else here, if you think back to your younger days!

Geee, lets go "low and slow" - that was NOT how any of us got excited about this hobby.
We all wanted to go high, and fast!

The only major difference now is that it's WAY easier and cheaper to go crazy high and stupid fast today, then it was decades ago.

Frankly, I'm super happy that my eight year old has soldered together her very own GPS transmitter/receiver, and built her first mid-power FG model. I exited the hobby as a teenager long before either GPS or FG components became affordable and readily available.

Kids are having so much more fun these days then we did.
Good for them!




Hurts nothing, other than the wallets.
:surprised:

Which is all music to the ears of the vendors, of which there are easily 10x of what I remember from the last time around (largely due to the online storefronts).

a

P.S.: You want non-formulaic certs? Consider adding the following:
Level 4 cert: hit Karman line.
Level 5 cert: enter Earth's orbit, and return with full recovery.
Level 6 cert: enter Mars's orbit, and return with full recovery. Present model to cert team for inspection after flight.

I have no problem with those who want to fly high and fast. In fact, I appreciate the ones who take the time to study the state of the art and then try to advance it, and we’re fortunate that many post here. They are the ones who drive this hobby. Without them, we would stagnate.
I think it’s absolutely great also that you worked with your daughter while she assembled her own gps gear. Thank you for that, and I truly mean it. Parents like you drive our hobby forward too. That’s extremely admirable.


Steve Shannon
 
The trouble I think, is the people who rush ahead and don’t take the effort to learn how to do it right. Just glue it up and shove a motor in. The shocking amount of recovery failures stands out. If someone takes the time and learns and is through and covers all bases I don’t see a need to spend months or years to prove they’re capable between certs. It’s the ones plugging forward blindly that cause issues. I’m still new in my return to the hobby. Maybe been back at it 7 years or so. But even in that short time I’ve seen it increasing
 
One quick thing to add...complexity matters.

While I love my FG rockets, and they are very durable, there's added complexity to building and flying them. Surface prep and using a quality epoxy is more important (potentially unforgiving) than with paper. And, as a few have said above, the added weight or FG dictates stronger/bigger recovery gear and bigger, more expensive motors. BUT! Nothing like putting the largest motor that fits into a FG rocket and watching it teleport out of sight like a cannon shot.

When I was at Tripoli Vegas' Oktoberfest once, I flew my Wildman Darkstar Jr. (FG rocket) once on a AT J500G, which is an impressive flight well over a mile high. Someone nearby thought that was a cool combo, grabbed a similarly sized paper rocket and slammed a J500G into it. It was disassembled most spectacularly about 300' above the ground, one of the more impressive shreds I have ever seen.

I find myself gravitating back towards paper some as the simplicity is refreshing. After having flown more complex & expensive setups, there's something to be said for light weight, simple and relatively inexpensive rockets that need no real 'prep' to get ready to fly. My LOC Graduator takes less time to prep than it takes me to build the H128W it flies on so well, every time. A mix of paper and FG is what I am settling on.
 
The trouble I think, is the people who rush ahead and don’t take the effort to learn how to do it right. Just glue it up and shove a motor in. The shocking amount of recovery failures stands out. If someone takes the time and learns and is through and covers all bases I don’t see a need to spend months or years to prove they’re capable between certs. It’s the ones plugging forward blindly that cause issues. I’m still new in my return to the hobby. Maybe been back at it 7 years or so. But even in that short time I’ve seen it increasing

That’s it! That’s my concern. I’ve seen bright young people who devour everything, trying to learn whatever they can. I have no problem with them advancing as quickly as possible through certification levels or reaching for the stars. I’m thrilled to see their progress and thanks to the internet there are lots of resources for them to learn what they need to know.
The ones you described are the ones who bother me. They don’t know what they don’t know, and some of them don’t seem to care.


Steve Shannon
 
I've seen two TAPs have recovery failures in the last six months. It happens to the best of us.
 
One quick thing to add...complexity matters.

While I love my FG rockets, and they are very durable, there's added complexity to building and flying them. Surface prep and using a quality epoxy is more important (potentially unforgiving) than with paper. And, as a few have said above, the added weight or FG dictates stronger/bigger recovery gear and bigger, more expensive motors. BUT! Nothing like putting the largest motor that fits into a FG rocket and watching it teleport out of sight like a cannon shot.

When I was at Tripoli Vegas' Oktoberfest once, I flew my Wildman Darkstar Jr. (FG rocket) once on a AT J500G, which is an impressive flight well over a mile high. Someone nearby thought that was a cool combo, grabbed a similarly sized paper rocket and slammed a J500G into it. It was disassembled most spectacularly about 300' above the ground, one of the more impressive shreds I have ever seen.

I find myself gravitating back towards paper some as the simplicity is refreshing. After having flown more complex & expensive setups, there's something to be said for light weight, simple and relatively inexpensive rockets that need no real 'prep' to get ready to fly. My LOC Graduator takes less time to prep than it takes me to build the H128W it flies on so well, every time. A mix of paper and FG is what I am settling on.

That’s a very good observation. What I’m finding is that due to constraints in my life right now I’m flying more simple flights. It’s either that or I don’t fly, and I want to fly. So I build quantum tube or paper rockets with single deployment and launch them on smaller motors, but I’ve got a few larger fiberglass projects in the works that will fly on L or M motors that I keep chipping away at.


Steve Shannon
 
I've seen two TAPs have recovery failures in the last six months. It happens to the best of us.

TAPs are not infalliable.

Also, while recovery failures can happen to anyone, I’m talking about people who setup a system that had zero chance from the start, and the “whatever that’s rocketry” attitude many seem to assign to it. It’s not just “crap happens”. It’s a growing attitude that’s way too lax on getting rockets down safe. The LDRSs we hosted had horrific recovery rates in some cases people tossing crashed rockets into a pile of their crashed rockets and grabbing another to go back out to the line. But that gets into an issue of generally laxed fliers and the “how many how fast” can I fly crowd issue, not just the “hey I’m gonna fly some FG real fast and put a 24” chute on a five pound rocket with some clothesline for a harness”
 
TAPs are not infalliable.

Also, while recovery failures can happen to anyone, I’m talking about people who setup a system that had zero chance from the start, and the “whatever that’s rocketry” attitude many seem to assign to it. It’s not just “crap happens”. It’s a growing attitude that’s way too lax on getting rockets down safe. The LDRSs we hosted had horrific recovery rates in some cases people tossing crashed rockets into a pile of their crashed rockets and grabbing another to go back out to the line. But that gets into an issue of generally laxed fliers and the “how many how fast” can I fly crowd issue, not just the “hey I’m gonna fly some FG real fast and put a 24” chute on a five pound rocket with some clothesline for a harness”

Gotcha. I am not seeing that at MDRA, but my exposure to the rest of the world of rocketry is very limited. Any ideas how to go about changing this attitude? This could be a thread in itself.
 
I think there could be some merit to the argument that the availability of fiberglass kits may increase the attitude being discussed, but in my brief foray into HP (cira the turn of the century) this has been discussed before. And from what I've seen both in person and on videos, there has always been a higher than desired failure rate. Including many whose outcome could be predicted by the interview leading to the flight. A paraphrased example, went like, "I don't know if its stable but I did add a bunch of lead to the nose." Not good. This leads me to think that RSOing may be to blame to some extent.

Unless you bring data, it's all personal opinion, I reckon.
 
Begs the question...

At every launch I have ever attended, flight cards were collected by the LCO as each rocket is launched. Somewhere on the flight card is an area to mark down the results of the flight. I have never seen an LCO do this. Maybe some do. Maybe all do and I just don't notice. But even if they do, is anything done with the information? Seems like this information could be used to set up conditions under which people could fly. "Hmm, Joe Blow has a failure rate of 90% over the last six months. He's going to get an extra-long inspection and interview at the RSO table until he proves that he knows what he is doing. Whereas John Q. Public has only one failure in his last 36 launches; we'll give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time."
 
Gotcha. I am not seeing that at MDRA, but my exposure to the rest of the world of rocketry is very limited. Any ideas how to go about changing this attitude? This could be a thread in itself.

not sure. Personally I think it comes out more at major launches, at least in my limited experience. To me they feel more like shooting galleries than rocket launches.

Id love to see fewer good flights, than just one rocket after another punched into the air. I like smaller launches were you can follow someone’s flight from prep, to loading to flight to recovery and then at times see flight data. You can learn from that.

Ive tried moving my own flights to less, better. I recognize maybe that’s not what everyone wants. I do think more follow up is a good thing, and it’d be cool to have a flight report board at events somehow, or to have more focused contests. So far, I’ve seen little interest in more than “how many rockets can be flown in a week?”
 
Begs the question...

At every launch I have ever attended, flight cards were collected by the LCO as each rocket is launched. Somewhere on the flight card is an area to mark down the results of the flight. I have never seen an LCO do this. Maybe some do. Maybe all do and I just don't notice. But even if they do, is anything done with the information? Seems like this information could be used to set up conditions under which people could fly. "Hmm, Joe Blow has a failure rate of 90% over the last six months. He's going to get an extra-long inspection and interview at the RSO table until he proves that he knows what he is doing. Whereas John Q. Public has only one failure in his last 36 launches; we'll give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time."

Good point.

I've wondered about that myself. Making that stick may require a committed flight watcher. After the LCO pushes the button and goes about tracking/announcing, the watcher takes the record.
 
Begs the question...

At every launch I have ever attended, flight cards were collected by the LCO as each rocket is launched. Somewhere on the flight card is an area to mark down the results of the flight. I have never seen an LCO do this. Maybe some do. Maybe all do and I just don't notice. But even if they do, is anything done with the information? Seems like this information could be used to set up conditions under which people could fly. "Hmm, Joe Blow has a failure rate of 90% over the last six months. He's going to get an extra-long inspection and interview at the RSO table until he proves that he knows what he is doing. Whereas John Q. Public has only one failure in his last 36 launches; we'll give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time."

Good point. Our launches are small enough that the RSO/LCO team knows who to watch out for and who gets to extra inspection. Unfortunately, we are hit & miss on keeping detailed flight records, but I think I will push for better record keeping, especially since I write the launch report.! Doh!!!
 
I think NARHAMS marks and saves the flight cards. I have never noticed anyone at MDRA mark results. They used to compile the flight stats but, except for Red Glare, I haven't seen those in years.
 
Also, while recovery failures can happen to anyone, I’m talking about people who setup a system that had zero chance from the start, and the “whatever that’s rocketry” attitude many seem to assign to it. It’s not just “crap happens”. It’s a growing attitude that’s way too lax on getting rockets down safe. The LDRSs we hosted had horrific recovery rates in some cases people tossing crashed rockets into a pile of their crashed rockets and grabbing another to go back out to the line. But that gets into an issue of generally laxed fliers and the “how many how fast” can I fly crowd issue, not just the “hey I’m gonna fly some FG real fast and put a 24” chute on a five pound rocket with some clothesline for a harness”

Hey Dave! Hope you're not talking about my Wildman JR with the (main) of a drogue chute at 200 feet? The harness is 900# kevlar, it hits the ground <30 fps.....
See you at URRF5! "one for the thumb??"
 
I underlined a sentence in John Coker’s post that really stood out. I feel like this is something that this “normal progress” is happening less recently. I feel like more people are trying to leapfrog past those experience building steps in an effort to achieve higher altitudes and greater velocities. I’d like to know if others are seeing the same thing that I am.


Steve Shannon


+1.....

And Coker +1...

The normal progress is that hobbyists work up from model to HPR rockets one step at a time and get comfortable with what works for them.

Well said and quite valid...

Teddy
 
TAPs are not infalliable.

Also, while recovery failures can happen to anyone, I&#8217;m talking about people who setup a system that had zero chance from the start, and the &#8220;whatever that&#8217;s rocketry&#8221; attitude many seem to assign to it. It&#8217;s not just &#8220;crap happens&#8221;.

Agreed. Simulations, ground testing, and experience can eliminate most failures. "My t-shirt says I am a rocket scientist, so I am absolved of any blame if my rocket crashes" is a lame excuse.
 
quote_icon.png
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann
The trouble I think, is the people who rush ahead and don&#8217;t take the effort to learn how to do it right. Just glue it up and shove a motor in. The shocking amount of recovery failures stands out. If someone takes the time and learns and is through and covers all bases I don&#8217;t see a need to spend months or years to prove they&#8217;re capable between certs. It&#8217;s the ones plugging forward blindly that cause issues. I&#8217;m still new in my return to the hobby. Maybe been back at it 7 years or so. But even in that short time I&#8217;ve seen it increasing



That&#8217;s it! That&#8217;s my concern. I&#8217;ve seen bright young people who devour everything, trying to learn whatever they can. I have no problem with them advancing as quickly as possible through certification levels or reaching for the stars. I&#8217;m thrilled to see their progress and thanks to the internet there are lots of resources for them to learn what they need to know.
The ones you described are the ones who bother me. They don&#8217;t know what they don&#8217;t know, and some of them don&#8217;t seem to care.

Mandatory time between certs will not solve this problem. It must be handled at the local level. At the QCRS launch yesterday I attempted my first dual deploy flight. I felt I was ready but the prefect could tell I was worried about the flight. So before launching, he questioned me about how I built and prepped the rocket. This actually gave me confidence and allowed me to enjoy the flight (which went great) more. Rocketeers looking to learn and advance will love this extra scrutiny as the help it is. The crash and burn type will hate it and look elsewhere.

Jeff Gebhardt
 
I just worry that it has become too formulaic to achieve the three levels of certification, then fly as high as possible at BALLS, declare triumph, and move on to the next hobby.

Now you've done it. The contrarian in me now feels the need to clone a Wildman Micro at 13mm and get a TRA L2, just to make my own 13mm APCP motors.
 
+1.....

And Coker +1...

The normal progress is that hobbyists work up from model to HPR rockets one step at a time and get comfortable with what works for them.

Well said and quite valid...

Teddy

It used to be that way in business, too. Guy comes out of college, gets a job at the ground level, works his way up. These days, kids come out of college immediately expecting to go into management. And when that doesn't work out, their helicopter parents call the company and complain.

Two incidents I know of at my own company. One was a young woman I was interviewing. She kept saying that she wanted to make a difference, that that was her goal. She expected the company to provide her with the means to "make a difference." So with each role we considered, that was her main thrust. Finally, we got to talking about our company's community outreach efforts, wherein we support various charities that the employees bring to the company's attention. This apparently was a game-changer for her. Now she could do whatever job she was qualified to do, but "make a difference" in her community outreach.

Another one is from a friend of mine who is a manager. He brought in a first-year employee for his first annual review. He was reviewed and given a small raise based on his accomplishments. Well, apparently the raise was not big enough, because his parents called the president and CEO of the company to complain. This was a 23-year-old.

"The times, they are a changin' ...."
 
Fiberglass? Hell, most of my 8" to 10" diameter 72" to 108" tall rockets are made of a foam structure, I only use cardboard for the motor tube, I can fly on 29mm I motors, cardboard is heavy:)

Frank
 
It used to be that way in business, too. Guy comes out of college, gets a job at the ground level, works his way up. These days, kids come out of college immediately expecting to go into management. And when that doesn't work out, their helicopter parents call the company and complain.

Two incidents I know of at my own company. One was a young woman I was interviewing. She kept saying that she wanted to make a difference, that that was her goal. She expected the company to provide her with the means to "make a difference." So with each role we considered, that was her main thrust. Finally, we got to talking about our company's community outreach efforts, wherein we support various charities that the employees bring to the company's attention. This apparently was a game-changer for her. Now she could do whatever job she was qualified to do, but "make a difference" in her community outreach.

Another one is from a friend of mine who is a manager. He brought in a first-year employee for his first annual review. He was reviewed and given a small raise based on his accomplishments. Well, apparently the raise was not big enough, because his parents called the president and CEO of the company to complain. This was a 23-year-old.

"The times, they are a changin' ...."

wow..

Teddy
 
Not sure what this has to do with fiberglass or this thread, but lets give it a roll ...


It used to be that way in business, too. Guy comes out of college, gets a job at the ground level, works his way up. These days, kids come out of college immediately expecting to go into management. And when that doesn't work out, their helicopter parents call the company and complain.

Are you sure you are not extrapolating from an unfortunately small sample size?

I've hired a bunch of young people over the past few years, majority from ivy league institutions, with none of the above BS.
Or maybe the good education is the reason for lack of BS - if they don't like what I'm paying them, they can turn around and land another job elsewhere.

The MBAs do expect to be "leaders" out of the box, but are usually smart enough to quickly adjust once the reality hits them in the face.


Two incidents I know of at my own company. One was a young woman I was interviewing. She kept saying that she wanted to make a difference, that that was her goal. She expected the company to provide her with the means to "make a difference." So with each role we considered, that was her main thrust. Finally, we got to talking about our company's community outreach efforts, wherein we support various charities that the employees bring to the company's attention. This apparently was a game-changer for her. Now she could do whatever job she was qualified to do, but "make a difference" in her community outreach.

Another one is from a friend of mine who is a manager. He brought in a first-year employee for his first annual review. He was reviewed and given a small raise based on his accomplishments. Well, apparently the raise was not big enough, because his parents called the president and CEO of the company to complain. This was a 23-year-old.

"The times, they are a changin' ...."

If you are putting up with that much crap from your applicants, perhaps you need to be more selective in the hiring process?
Or pay a bit more, and recruit at better schools to get higher quality applicants?
:confused2:

a

P.S.: If I ever got a bitchy call from a relative of the people who work for me, that would be the end of that person's career, if not employment. Full stop.
P.P.S.: I did, once, have a person reporting to me who drove Aventador to work. It was really easy to tell if he was in on time, or late for work. Good luck motivating a 21-year old who drives a Lambo! He did cycle out on his own.
 
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What does it have to do with fiberglass? Nothing. But earlier in the thread there was a lengthy discussion of how there seems to be an upturn in the number of people who want to jump right to HPR/FG/Cert levels without gaining experience along the way. Reminded me of these stories.

I'm not saying those two incidents were typical, but they did happen. Twenty years ago, something like that would have been unthinkable. My analogy is that whether it is jobs or rockets, there is a growing ideology that the way to the top is not necessarily rung by rung.

I will stop hijacking the thread, now. :blush:
 
I will stop hijacking the thread, now. :blush:

Too late for that...

What does it have to do with fiberglass? Nothing. But earlier in the thread there was a lengthy discussion of how there seems to be an upturn in the number of people who want to jump right to HPR/FG/Cert levels without gaining experience along the way. Reminded me of these stories.

I'm not saying those two incidents were typical, but they did happen. Twenty years ago, something like that would have been unthinkable. My analogy is that whether it is jobs or rockets, there is a growing ideology that the way to the top is not necessarily rung by rung.

This thread developed nicely. It is also directly relevant to a situation I'm involved with right now. I made a new friend at a launch last October. He came to fly an Estes kit with a 29mm motor mount for the L1 cert. We were parked nearby, and helped him address some issues pointed out by the guy who was going to sign the cert. It seemed pretty clear to me that he was new to the hobby, and it was not clear that he had done anything other than build the kit stock and shove a motor in. I wasn't signing the cert, so I helped him with a couple of small issues and he bagged the cert on a soft H. He then put an I into the rocket and we were treated to a high speed de-kitting a couple of hundred feet off the rail. The result served to stoke the flier's enthusiasm, and since then he has plunged into learning as much as he can about building and flying high power. I have a buttload of lessons learned the hard way and from others that I am now sharing with him. It's fun for me, I have a new friend, and he is having a blast just learning about the different ways to build and set up a basic 3FNC/TWT/DD rocket.

I think it's up to the person signing the cert to decide if the flier is demonstrating the requisite knowledge and skill to safely fly without oversight at the level they are petitioning for. I might not have agree to sign his L1 cert, but since another (and far more experienced) L3 was doing it, I figured the best thing I could do for the flier and our hobby was to help him be successful on the cert flight and his next project.

Net-net is that in this case, I believe that this flier moving through the levels quickly will not diminish his qualifications for L2, or for L3 when he tackles that. We don't need to experience a lot of failures to learn from others what works and what doesn't, we just have to be inquisitive, open to input, willing to do some research, and find friends (like here in TRF) who are willing to share. And hopefully we build another group of knowledgable fliers who are going to pay it forward, just like those who helped (and are still helping) us.
 
Too late for that...



This thread developed nicely. It is also directly relevant to a situation I'm involved with right now. I made a new friend at a launch last October. He came to fly an Estes kit with a 29mm motor mount for the L1 cert. We were parked nearby, and helped him address some issues pointed out by the guy who was going to sign the cert. It seemed pretty clear to me that he was new to the hobby, and it was not clear that he had done anything other than build the kit stock and shove a motor in. I wasn't signing the cert, so I helped him with a couple of small issues and he bagged the cert on a soft H. He then put an I into the rocket and we were treated to a high speed de-kitting a couple of hundred feet off the rail. The result served to stoke the flier's enthusiasm, and since then he has plunged into learning as much as he can about building and flying high power. I have a buttload of lessons learned the hard way and from others that I am now sharing with him. It's fun for me, I have a new friend, and he is having a blast just learning about the different ways to build and set up a basic 3FNC/TWT/DD rocket.

I think it's up to the person signing the cert to decide if the flier is demonstrating the requisite knowledge and skill to safely fly without oversight at the level they are petitioning for. I might not have agree to sign his L1 cert, but since another (and far more experienced) L3 was doing it, I figured the best thing I could do for the flier and our hobby was to help him be successful on the cert flight and his next project.

Net-net is that in this case, I believe that this flier moving through the levels quickly will not diminish his qualifications for L2, or for L3 when he tackles that. We don't need to experience a lot of failures to learn from others what works and what doesn't, we just have to be inquisitive, open to input, willing to do some research, and find friends (like here in TRF) who are willing to share. And hopefully we build another group of knowledgable fliers who are going to pay it forward, just like those who helped (and are still helping) us.

Thank you. Very well said.


Steve Shannon
 
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