Designing a custom launch controller?

Shouldn't the flag read "Insert before flight"? :wink:

Love the paint - looks really good.

kruland said:

Shouldn't the flag read "Insert before flight"? :wink:

Click to expand...

Yeah, I just stuck that on there for now. It's not staying. It will eventually go to the key for my dual deploy.

Nice job, and very professional looking

Your video is set to "private".

chadrog said:

Your video is set to "private".

Click to expand...

DOH! Fixed.

Nice work!

Hey, I like that! VERY sharp!

KUTGW!!! OL JR

luke strawwalker said:

Hey, I like that! VERY sharp!

KUTGW!!! OL JR

Click to expand...

Thanks guys!

Luke....I've avoided asking what your "OL JR" sig means thus far, even though I've always wanted to know. But what the hell is KUTGW?

Green Jello said:

Thanks guys!

Luke....I've avoided asking what your "OL JR" sig means thus far, even though I've always wanted to know. But what the hell is KUTGW?

Click to expand...

KUTGW: Keep Up The Good Work

OL JR: ???

Not sure what OL JR is, but KUTGW is "keep up the good work".

Green Jello said:

Thanks guys!

Luke....I've avoided asking what your "OL JR" sig means thus far, even though I've always wanted to know. But what the hell is KUTGW?

Click to expand...

KUTGW=Keep Up The Good Work...

OL JR= my nickname from high school... mid-late 80's, big ol' Texas farm boy, watched too much "Dallas" on TV (JR Ewing was my hero... LOL) hence... OL' JR. (my initials are JR too, so that helps...) It stuck and I like it.

Everybody seems to call me "luke" because of the play on words I use for a "handle" on here... "luke strawwalker". Again, it's a sci-fi nerd/farming thing... Everybody pretty much knows who Luke Skywalker was... a "straw-walker" is a reciprocating device inside a grain combine, which, when paired with between 2 and 5 more identical straw walkers, work to fluff and toss threshed grain straw towards the back of the combine over a series of steps, allowing threshed but trapped grain stuck in the straw to fall out and through the perforated surface of the walker, and get slung down a chute on the bottom until it falls into the cleaning shoe sieves. Being a farm boy and unrepentant sci-fi nerd, the play on words was just too obvious to pass up... hence, "luke strawwalker" (plus, how many other people would have THAT name?? Makes it easier to sign up for forums...)

My email is cowtrek... guess you can figure that one out... Hahahaha...

Later! OL JR

PS... why "Green Jello"?? I know what the stuff is, and it's rather tasty, but why use that for a handle?? Just curious...

THere was a thread around here somewhere that folks explained their monikers on... and a thread with "folks of TRF" or something of that sort with a real pic of yourself.... posted in both those IIRC... a long time ago in a forum far, far away... LOL

Very nice work. I am impressed.

OL JR, luke strawwalker, or however you wish to be addressed:

I have one further question. What is the origin of your signature? "The X-87B Cruise Basselope- THE ultimate weapon in the arsenal of homeland defense and only $52 million per round!", in case you've somehow forgotten what it is. Or for the sake of future forumgoers in the case you change your signature.

came from a comic strip 'bloom county' iirc anyway this ought to show the concept.
rex

Rex R said:

came from a comic strip 'bloom county' iirc anyway this ought to show the concept.
rex

Click to expand...

Thanks Rex! Yup, that's the one... worked in the library in high school and so I got all the Bloom County anthology books (and other comics that the librarian bought for the school) first, and that was in one of them... ran off copies of it on the school copier (handy having a key to run copies for teachers-- used to play with that thing a LOT because it could enlarge and reduce as well, which was high technology in 1987-88-89! The comic in the book though had some "side panes" on it as well, describing the "phases" of the cruise basselope... "deployment phase" had a GI opening the dog crate, with a wet nose sticking out of the crate, with him yelling "SIC!" and pointing east... "cruise phase" had the basselope happily bounding across the countryside toward his target, "launch phase" had the dog standing on a hillside overlooking the onion domes of Moscow, releasing the rubber band to toss the nuke over into the city with a resounding "THOING!", then was the "Enjoy a Milk Bone in a Commie-free World" Phase, with the dog sitting in the ashes happily munching away on his treat...

Funniest thing I ever saw, back in them Cold War days... LOL

I got the idea for the "homeland defense" aspect of it from a gizmo I saw at a farm show in Indiana a few years back... guess those guys who are tinkerers start getting cabin fever after being indoors for months on end, so they come up with some crazy ideas-- this guy had built an entire trailer, covered with various merry-go-rounds, hobby horses, carousels, see-saws, swings, you name it, all powered and operating, complete with teddy bears riding the rides, all powered by one single hit-n-miss engine... it was neat. Funniest thing he had was a machine labeled "TOP SECRET-- BIG $$$ HOMELAND SECURITY PROTOTYPE!" on the front... It consisted of a wooden box, about maybe 3 feet long and about 6 x 6 inches square. A groove ran along the top of the box, and there was a hole at one end, and a plastic piece of cheese at the other end... a flyswatter was mounted to one side of the box, poised above the cheese like a mousetrap. From a hole in the other end of the board, a rubber mouse would tentatively appear, as the machine whirred and ground away, after a bit the little mouse would run down the length of the board to the cheese, and a split second later, the flyswatter would be released, snapping down toward the cheese, but the mouse was released by a cog an instant before and would spring back down the track and into his hole... the flyswatter, after impacting the abandoned cheese, would lift itself back up and reset on its trigger automatically, and a second or two later, the mouse would reappear from his hole, and make another run at it, all ending the same way, over and over again... Funniest thing I think I've ever seen just standing there watching it... all carefully timed motors and gears and trips and cogs... running continuously without anybody touching it...

Sorta like that thread somebody posted of the box with the switches, that when you throw a switch, the lid opens and a machine finger comes up and turns the switch back off... HILARIOUS!

Seeing how the gubmint is a prodigious waster of our federal tax dollars and profligate waste is about what the gubmint does best, I decided to adopt that as my signature line...

later! OL JR

Here is the schematic and a pic of the one I just put together.





Connect to 12v, the top LED lights,
Plug in the safety key(1/4" plug) the yellow LED lights,
Push the black button, the continuity check is made. If its good, the piezo beeper comes on (I wired it to pulse),
Push the red button to make the rocket woosh.

45 feet of wire to make it safe.....

Cant wait to try it!

How did you paint the faceplate and how did you get the button grid painted?

cwbullet said:

How did you paint the faceplate and how did you get the button grid painted?

Click to expand...

First primer, then the whole thing a few coats of white enamel. Next I taped off the square and painted a yellow enamel square for a couple coats. Next I added strips of tape over the yellow square and painted what remained with black enamel. After adding the button labels, I did a few coats of clear. It was a fair amount of work, but I was doing it for fun really. It seems like the paintjob will be really tough. It's like the paint on a car since it's all on the aluminum faceplate.

Green Jello said:

First primer, then the whole thing a few coats of white enamel. Next I taped off the square and painted a yellow enamel square for a couple coats. Next I added strips of tape over the yellow square and painted what remained with black enamel. After adding the button labels, I did a few coats of clear. It was a fair amount of work, but I was doing it for fun really. It seems like the paintjob will be really tough. It's like the paint on a car since it's all on the aluminum faceplate.

Click to expand...

Time intensive, but it sounds fun. I might build one of these when I get home. Great craftmanship.

Thanks for the inspiration jello... im basically building your controller... a couple different changes (different power switch and launch button) but in the end the same concept... i do have a question though... how has it handled mpr launches

Perfectly, since I have a heavy duty 12V battery for it. Here is Saturday's result:

Leviathan on a G80-7T
[video=youtube;SasjS2eNxcM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SasjS2eNxcM[/video]