What did you do rocket wise today?

Still getting over the giddiness of hitting Mach 1.5 with my punisher over a week ago.

Been doing quite a bit of work on a number of rockets. Have a bunch "in progress" that I want to complete and the first one below was a purchase. Typical of most times I purchase a rocket, I end up reconfiguring/refinishing it. Don't get me wrong, superb rocket here, a Polecat 5.5" Hawk, but didn't quite like the av-bay design. Moved it to redundant setup and now filling holes in the airframe which is kinda like Swiss cheese. RocketPoxy is my filler of choice here.



Didn't take pictures of all six rockets I'm working on, but did capture this minimum diameter build. Did the final sanding of the coupler/av-bay to get the perfect custom fit for the Loki 54-4000. Feeling pretty good about this one. Weighs in at a pretty svelte 28 ounces--not bad for a rocket that's 5 feet long.

EXPjawa said:

Yesterday, I finished putting the glue fillets on a mild upscale of the BSG Laser Torpedo, and installed the recovery harness/chute. Its ready to fly, though still naked.

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One of my fave rockets!! Looks fantastic Can't wait to see it dressed!!

Krusty

Got another 2 feet of 6" tube and a coupler. So now my Formula 150 will be just short of 10 feet tall...

Received my Eggtimer Wifi switch today and sat reading and looking at it. Really looking forward to building it!

Received my StickerShock order for my second Wildman Punisher. It's gonna look sweet. I also received notice that my order from Madcow is going to arrive next this Saturday, 3 1.6 mini and a couple of 2.6. A lot of fiberglass to work with along with the numerous other projects. A lot of rockets to haul after the snow melts. Maybe I'll sneak up to the launch site before then and do some 'testing'....:wink:

I looked longingly at the Rocketry Warehouse Black Friday email. I just wish they included photos of the new kits and a bit more info.

I started counting hours to Wildman's club sale tomorrow... And built a sled for my Shredder. Thought about a lot of other things like what I want to buy this weekend and how to budget for it. I will stick to my budget. I will I will I will.

decorated a 'tree' for the club Christmas party...should do well on a B6-0, note the 'stand' is for display only.
Rex

Rex R said:

decorated a 'tree' for the club Christmas party...should do well on a B6-0, note the 'stand' is for display only.
Rex

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Pretty green. What color is that?

rusto #7252 racing green metallic applied over white cardstock(no primer)
Rex

With what method do you cut your tubes?

georgegassaway said:

Latest addition to workshop, a 60" wide shelving unit, 6 feet tall, 18" deep. Got it to hold a LOT of boxes of various models, had run out of shelf space to store more. Have not even started to use it for real, the ones shown are test fits. Need to sort and organize models and boxes and do some labeling.

- George Gassaway

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I think your cat puked on the floor

with that one I didn't have to cut any tubes, had some left over parts from a big bertha . the shroud was cut with a hobby knife. for low/mid power a razor blade in a vise usually works.
Rex

Sharon and I spent a bunch of $$$ on the Wildman Members sale. Picked up a couple of the 4" Red Punishers with the Bad Hawk harnesses. AP retainers for some of our current builds in progress, and four RRC3's.
Since we were in a spending mood, we also got in on the Eggfinder sale and added some Eggfinder TX's and TRS's.

I tried to stop there, but Sharon had to hit up the Perfectflite site for a few SLCF's.

Now we just have to wait for the BIG sale on Saturday!:horse:

krusty said:

One of my fave rockets!! Looks fantastic Can't wait to see it dressed!!

Krusty

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Thanks! I literally just finished painting it. I should have decals on it by this weekend

Well I was 3d printing all of the plastic for Estes #1977 Geo Sat LV. Had a brown out and the job crashed. Another 4 hours of work flushed down the drain. Will have to order a UPS for the printer.

Unfortunately this is one of the years that Estes did not print the lengths of the body tubes so I am going to have to guess about a lot of it. :eyeroll:

CrazyOB said:

Well I was 3d printing all of the plastic for Estes #1977 Geo Sat LV. Had a brown out and the job crashed. Another 4 hours of work flushed down the drain. Will have to order a UPS for the printer.

Unfortunately this is one of the years that Estes did not print the lengths of the body tubes so I am going to have to guess about a lot of it. :eyeroll:

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Estes body tube reference
https://www.psc473.org/howto/EstesTubes.pdf

BT55 - 18"
BT50W - 2 at 9.5"
PST-60R- 5"

And I confirmed with my original as well.

Chris

Thanks Chris, very handy document!

Today I finished up two projects:




I also did some work on my upscale Cobra as well as masked & painted a roll pattern on another project that I haven't mentioned here yet. More on that later.

Inventoried reloads

michigander said:

Inventoried reloads

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I need to do that. Instead I built 5 av-bays and sleds.

michigander said:

Inventoried reloads

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We did that too! Filled out our wish list for the next year of flying. Only 67 motors....

Sprayed some primer on a 4" scratcher I've been playing with.

Started putting together the PML Mini BBX and Terrier booster two stage setup I bought a long time ago. The sustainer is almost complete after one day of epoxying like crazy.

I've never built a PML rocket before. I really like that they include almost everything in the kit to build it as designed, including a chute, which is a lot different than the fiberglass kits I'm used to. They are pretty old school, and it is apparent that most of the design work on this product was made like 10+ years ago but it still works.

I ordered the non-CPR version which is designed to do single motor deploy only, but easily modified it to have a coupler avionics bay and dual deploy. It's also designed to have the sustainer ignited by a timer in the interstage, but I used some conduit and a couple of strategically placed holes to allow me to ignite from a Raven in the sustainer avionics bay. It'll separate drogueless at apogee and fire the main from the payload tube, and I will probably discard the piston. I did injected fin fillets which is different than the method suggested by the directions. The two pieces of brass tube designed to be used as rod guides were repurposed to make a plywood sled that rides allthread between some laser cut bulkheads in the coupler. There's not a lot of room in there so I'll probably shove an eggfinder in the nosecone.

The stock interstage setup is way slicker than the standard "extra piece of coupler" I've seen on other kits, though it essentially couples in the same way. Because it's only a 29mm mount up top, it's easy to fit the igniter leads around the thrust ring and into the sustainer motor without clearance issues.

All in all this is shaping up to be a pretty nice, lower performance two stage flier. It will be nice to have easy motor options that won't scrape the waiver in a two stager.

T34zac said:

And I always forget to add the item that is the subject of my post...

https://youtu.be/403qPbBbyXo

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Nice flight!

4kids49 said:

Nice flight!

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Thanks! My fastest to date.

Finished painting my 4" Frenzy XL, now I'm just waiting on my stickershock order to arrive.



Higher res photo available here: https://rocketrycenter.com/showthread.php?tid=306&pid=3234#pid3234

T34zac said:

Finished painting my 4" Frenzy XL, now I'm just waiting on my stickershock order to arrive.

View attachment 277011

Higher res photo available here: https://rocketrycenter.com/showthread.php?tid=306&pid=3234#pid3234

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Love it! The red white black color scheme on the fins is striking.

rharshberger said:

Love it! The red white black color scheme on the fins is striking.

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The black is actually bare carbon of a T2T layup. I wanted the paint to focus on that.