What did you do rocket wise today?

bclark989 said:

As of last night, "Legionnaire's Revenge" is ready to fly (ignore the mess...need to get another shelf):

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What mess? I see no mess.

bclark989 said:

Last year I built this Hyperloc 835 for my L2. It was named "Legionnaire's Lament":

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I failed:

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Ouch. I failed my first attempt to, more or less resulting in total airframe loss. I feel you.

Today I researched nose cone profiles. Power Series with n=0.75 seems to be the winner.

Spent a bit of my afternoon chasing down a package from BMS that FedEx lost. FedEx's response "if you haven't heard from us by the 19th of Oct, call us", that just kind of pissed me off. BMS has some of the best customer service, so I am not worried in the least, just annoyed that less than 200 miles away (according the the tracking) FedEx lost the package, and then tried to say "it must have lost its label".

Played with my Eggfinder and smoked on my AV Bay build.

I discovered the speed limit of unreinforced balsa! Estes Star Orbiter, stock build save for a baffle installed in the coupler and buttons in place of lugs ...

Economax G74-9W to (guessing) 1800+ ... up and down parts good, but figuring sometime near motor burnout the balsa more or less disintegrated!

From the ground it was a good clean flight until I went to recover and found this:




Definitely not landing damage

dmgrime said:

I discovered the speed limit of unreinforced balsa! Estes Star Orbiter, stock build save for a baffle installed in the coupler and buttons in place of lugs ...

Economax G74-9W to (guessing) 1800+ ... up and down parts good, but figuring sometime near motor burnout the balsa more or less disintegrated!

From the ground it was a good clean flight until I went to recover and found this:

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Definitely not landing damage

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Jeez. If you were anywhere near the card weight, that motor is like 600 mph. Yeah, I'm surprised it held together that long.

The weird thing is the up part was perfect - No evidence of shred. It shall be repaired!

dmgrime said:

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Unless I'm hallucinating, that picture shows part of a fin ripped clean off the BT... without taking any of the BT with it. That's surprising to me. What kind of glue did you use?

(this is unrelated to the whole issue of having reached the speed of balsa with this model)

I opened (and drooled all over) my Estes Saturn V that I received last weekend for my birthday.

I ordered some Econojet motors from Tower Hobbies, along with some bearings for an RC car chassis that I'm building.

Received and built two Eggtimer Quarks, they only took an hour each (well sort of), I had to stop in the middle of them and solder a wire that had come loose on the iron of my soldering station. It took a soldering iron to fix a soldering iron. The worst part was it is a brand new soldering station and yes its a cheap Amazon one, but it works fine for now (since the fix).

Put together a dry-fit mock-up for a new project. That's an 18" ruler, octagonal structure averages about 9.6" across the flats.

Quadrotor I presume?

Flying launch pad?

Quadcopter, yes.

Flying launch pad..... not really. Though it sort of could be. And the real thing was the ultimate flying "Launch Pad" for NASA.

Hopefully, a 1/16 model of this:



The octagonal descent stage will be the core of the model, with all the critical flight components (including GPS module so it can not only land where it took off from, but hold position in the sky when windy). Ascent stage will be for looks only, cardboard 1/48 paper model patterns, scaled up 3X and printed onto poster paper.

But first I will fly the descent stage by itself, no legs, but with ballast to simulate the final estimated mass, and something on top to simulate the aerodynamics of the Ascent stage. If it passes the first phase of testing, then I'll complete it to add the legs, Ascent stage, gold mylar, engine nozzle, and so forth. If not, I'll use the parts for an airborne video Quad.

This won't be rocket powered, it will be Quadcopter prop thrust power only.

It will not be built to look very accurate.... it will be built to be nice to see flying. In any case, if completed, it will be the best looking Lunar Module Quadcopter in the world! That's based on my Google searches failing to find any Quad LM's by anyone, so if it exists, it'll be the "best" by default. Though in 2009 someone did make a 1/20 model using a modified Co-Axial R/C helicopter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R726M2X6J5U

Here it is a few years later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2y6hR9TJCk

If mine does indeed pass the first test phase, then I'll start a build thread to include pics of assembly. And video.

Below, an image of the mock-up next to a Phantom 1.

Very cool, look forward to that!

Makes me wonder if Randal Redd might have done something like this. I'll be watching

Strange as it may seem. I became a forum supporter. Hopefully that is not like a j0ck supp0rter.
Just kidding!!!!

I tried to talk my son into letting me have one of his frisbees, which would have made an awesome saucer rocket. He wouldn't let me.

djs said:

I tried to talk my son into letting me have one of his frisbees, which would have made an awesome saucer rocket. He wouldn't let me.

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Mold release and some fiberglass . . .

Ordered WAY too many kits from Estes' sale.

Found this "Vacmaster" thing on the side of the road in a free pile, and am hoping that I can adapt it to do vacuum bagging on fg and cf stuff.
It appears to work, but I have no idea what it is supposed to do other than package food, so I need to look up the owners manual and find a wiring schematic to get the heating element out of the way or whatever I have to do to try to make use of the vacuum pump inside. I'm clueless, but have other projects going on right now so there's plenty of time to figure out if it will be useful.

Ordered a new recovery harness from One Bad Hawk....

TopRamen said:

Found this "Vacmaster" thing on the side of the road in a free pile, and am hoping that I can adapt it to do vacuum bagging on fg and cf stuff.
It appears to work, but I have no idea what it is supposed to do other than package food, so I need to look up the owners manual and find a wiring schematic to get the heating element out of the way or whatever I have to do to try to make use of the vacuum pump inside. I'm clueless, but have other projects going on right now so there's plenty of time to figure out if it will be useful.

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Some have used these things as-is, if they could fit whatever they wanted to vacuum-bag into the original seal a meal type food bags meant for this kind of system, let it do its thing and the heat element melting the bag to fuse the edges so it won't leak.

IIRC, the problem with trying to just use the vacuum pump in this, to pump a much larger custom bag, is that it's incredibly difficult to get a PERFECT SEAL with clamps, clay, whatever. So, even when it's pumped out the air and has good vacuum, once the pump stops, and even if you have a check valve to keep air from getting past the pump or simply pinch off the line, there will be some tiny leak somewhere.

So, the pump needs to keep running for hours and hours (or days depending on the resin/epoxy you're doing, and use of a hot box or not). A little cheap pump like that usually can't take continuous use and will wear out or burn out.

There are some continuous use pumps sold, but they are a lot more robust than the "Seal a meal" type pumps.

Of course, you got this for "the right price", so worth trying to use it. But I wanted to point out before you permanently disassemble it, that if you could make use of the original seal a meal type bags, this may be very useful for that, but once the heating element is gone and you can't use the original bags anymore so it only has to pump a brief time and stop after sealing, that pump may not last long if it ends up running hours.

BTW - for many years I used this EZ-Vac continuous pump. Worked great, albeit a bit pricey.

https://www.acpsales.com/OnlineStore.php?cat=4839



Later got a pump from eBay that was a converted refrigerator pump. Very noisy though, annoying for continuous use.

These days, I'm fortunate to have access to a pump system with vacuum reservoir, a tank that the pump sucks the air out of so that a very slow leak in the bag is handled by the vacuum in the tank, the pump kicks on and off as needed to keep the vacuum in the tank at the desired range (say 15 to 20 " Hg range, it is adjustable). So, most of the time the pump is off for many minutes, maybe an hour, then on for 20-30 seconds to re-pump out the tank. There are probably much less expensive DIY options to this one, fortunately I didn't need to buy one, I have access in exchange for making composite wings for the owner as well as for myself.

https://www.acpsales.com/OnlineStore.php?cat=5515



What WOULD be interesting would be to take the pump from this seal-a-meal, and DIY your own reservoir tank (such as large diameter PVC pipe parts) and pressure activated switch like the above system. That motor ought to survive the short on and very long off cycles pretty well.

TopRamen said:

Found this "Vacmaster" thing on the side of the road in a free pile, and am hoping that I can adapt it to do vacuum bagging on fg and cf stuff.
It appears to work, but I have no idea what it is supposed to do other than package food, so I need to look up the owners manual and find a wiring schematic to get the heating element out of the way or whatever I have to do to try to make use of the vacuum pump inside. I'm clueless, but have other projects going on right now so there's plenty of time to figure out if it will be useful.

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See this article from John Coker to get an idea how to use it:
https://www.jcrocket.com/kitchenbagging.shtml

Reinhard

"Finished" my Quinstar, although I may do a clear coat.
Used calligraphy ink applied with a foam brush and some sharpies

les said:

"Finished" my Quinstar, although I may do a clear coat.
Used calligraphy ink applied with a foam brush and some sharpies

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Spiffy. They are a blast to fly!

Very cool!

Thanks for the Vacuum info/tips on the last page guys!

Looks like I should play around with it as is and try bagging some fins first, then just putz about designing a system like George described, but use an entirely different set of parts.