What did you do rocket wise today?

Ordered parts from Madcow to repair/rebuild my super batray, got a shipping notice 4 hours later!

Spent the night making up some printable sanding tools:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2962420

Should be pretty useful for sanding fillets.

Papered an Estes Fletcher as if it were tip to tip - including the vacuum bagging.

Just in case I get some of those D Q-Jets, doncha know.

after not doing much of anything rocketry related for the last six months, I started working on a Estes Big Daddy today. I also started to finally get to working on the finishing touches of my Aero0bee 150, by installing the ejection wells on the avionics bay bulkheads, and getting ready for my ejection tests, which I might attempt tomorrow.

Charles_McG said:

Papered an Estes Fletcher as if it were tip to tip - including the vacuum bagging.

Just in case I get some of those D Q-Jets, doncha know.

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I’ve always wanted to do this! Please tell us how it works out.

Loaded truck to make first trip to Tri-Cities Saturday for June Swoosh.

Charles_McG said:

Papered an Estes Fletcher as if it were tip to tip - including the vacuum bagging.

Just in case I get some of those D Q-Jets, doncha know.

View attachment 346259

Click to expand...

BDB said:

I’ve always wanted to do this! Please tell us how it works out.

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Why wait, grab a d21 and get cracking!

Lugnut56 said:

Loaded truck to make first trip to Tri-Cities Saturday for June Swoosh.

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See ya there! Today I loaded up and just got in to the hotel. Looking forward to the next two days of flying.

Yesterday I finished the external fillets on my BlackFly. Today I started modding it's nose cone similar to the mod I did on my Big Daddy.

Attended Swoosh at Tri-Cities and joined Tri-Cities Rocketeers. Launched a few LPR and watched several HPR launches before high winds shutdown the event. In addition to the launches, it was worth the drive to meet the folks that were there.

Stopped at Hobby Lobby on the way back to the hotel last night. Picked up a Goblin with the coupon.

Joined Tripoli, went to TCR's June Swoosh Day 3 (of course I attended days 1 and 2 as well as the set-up and earlybird launch on Thursday as well), flew 15 flights between Thursday and Saturday LCO'd for about 4 hours over the last two days, and will do some more today. We now have enough members locally who are Tripoli to create a local prefecture (yay for EX). Bummer that our waiver has been reduced by 1000' due to a bureaucrat (we have has a 10K waiver for the last 4 years and suddenly they tell us we can only have a 9K after the new waiver has been in place 3-4 months).

Went flying with my son and grandson at Sixty Acres. Flew 9 Q-Jets and gathered some data via AltimeterThrees.

Will update my line in the Newton tally thread to account for yesterday's club launch and today's flying in a day or two.

Decided to run with this drawn paint job on this Estes Fletcher. No, it’s not the papered one - which is -much- stiffer, BTW.

Day two of how-to-rocket class. Launch day tomorrow!

Wayco said:

Took three tries to get the main to come out correctly, ended up with a 1.6g charge for both main and drogue deployment. Backup charges will be 2.5g.

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Intriguing. What was different this time around? Larger parachute? tighter pack?

Nytrunner said:

Intriguing. What was different this time around? Larger parachute? tighter pack?

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This was a new build, I always do ground tests before flying. First try was 1.3g, and the burrito was still in the payload tube. Second try was with 1.6g, and the N/C came off with good force,but the shock cord pulled loose from the burrito where I sewed it to the nomex pad, leaving the main chute and pad in the payload tube. I re-tied the shock cord to the pad, (instead of sewing it) and tried a third time, still using the 1.6g charge,with good results.

Put together my new Aerotech Mantis launch pad. Impressive piece of gear. If only I could get a day without wind and rain that coincides with one my days off...then I might get to use it.

Just did a heck of a lot of internet surfing on it.

Sanding, sanding and more sanding of my IRIS-T. About 3/4 done I think.

Also did some nice work on the nose cone assembly. That is going to be the coolest.

Edited another launch video, this one includes the farewell flight of my Sea Wolf. Tear.

that was a bummer of a flight, yet very impressive

Finally sanded about 9 layers of paint off my Broken Arrow 54. I'll start the repainting soon now that it's the summer build season here in too-hot-to-fly Vegas.

Placed a large motor order this morning from Balsa Machining, and then finally joined Tripoli

Primer. It’s a million degrees here in Vegas, so that was greaaaaaat.

Just moved house and my garage has eleventy boxes to unpack before I can get to the newly acquired “rocket nook”...

No rocket activity in the last few weeks but today, I fixed my TV by baking it in the oven... (LG has a known dry joint problem with the HDMI chips.)

Re-flowed the board at 200°C for 10mins and.... IT WORKED!!

Saved $300 on a replacement second hand board, and $1500 on a replacement TV (it’s an 8yo 60” plasma)

So not directly rocket related but used skills acquired through rocketry and will enable money saved to be spent on rockets instead...

That counts, right?

My old printer is still in pieces, so I'm learning the kinks and quirks of a DaVinci 1.0 that I bought used (but mostly unused) a few years ago. I had upgraded it to Marlin, but never got around to using it. It's getting close to turning out some nice prints. Just ordered some PETG to play with.

Also ordered a power supply for the Proxxon sander I just got. $12 instead of something like $80 for the Proxxon supply.

Edit: 13mm Fin Can came out very nice. Some sanding in progress, might try some vapor polish on it. Fins 1.2 mm thick at the root, 0.8mm at the tip. There are fillets, but they don't show well in the pic. Tube thickness is 1.0mm, but I'm pretty sure I can slim that up a lot. 2.7gm at the moment.

I ate a rocket and drank a ejection charge.
(Last ingredient Parma Pizza, and some kind of tea.)