My Apogee Aspire build thread.

Today my body tubes arrived from Apogee so I thought I would get started on assembly. I decided to make a baffle for the rocket to stop any ejection gases and also to have an attachment point for the Kevlar shock cord. I used (5) half moon disc cut from some scrape balsa I had laying around. I used CA to tack them in place and then after each one dried I coated them with BSI 5 minute epoxy to protect from the heat and to apply fillets to the seams. It actually turned out pretty good.



The fins were cut, airfoil sanded and skinned with copy paper. I reinforced both the leading and trailing edges with thin CA and reshaped the airfoil to match them. It didn't need much work to reshape just some light sanding.



I went to Pay Load Bay and printed off the correct fin wrap to align the fins correctly on the tube.

The only reason I decided to build this rocket aside from it being very cool and a high flyer is I had a couple of the 29mm nose cones from Apogee and some scrape balsa laying around. I actually made two sets of fins (second set stills needs to be trimmed from the paper skins) because I plan on building two of these in case I lose the first I can still have another to launch.

Hope you enjoy the build thread.

Using a slip knot I attached the Kevlar shock cord. I also applied some Titebond II to the knot to add extra security from it coming loose. I'm using about 48" of elastic and 60" of Kevlar. I know it's probably overkill in length, but it's not like Kevlar, well at least that size is that expensive...no zippering on this flight!

Looks good bro. I guess we are both baffled today. I'm tinkering with mine as well

hornet driver said:

Looks good bro. I guess we are both baffled today.:rofl::rofl::rofl: I'm tinkering with mine as well

Click to expand...

True true!

Are you just flipping the half moons 180 deg. or are you going 90 deg.?--I like the design.---minimal backpreasure.

180 deg

Thanks, looks like it's easy to clean the clay out of too. I may rethink my current baffle. Any downside or problems with your design? You tend to fly a little more power than me, does the off center eyebolt give you any problems--stress cracks--breaking loose ? Do you use nomex along with it or are you straight chuting---just pikin your brain---Bill

looks to me as though he will need to use some wadding, with my baffles I like to cover about 2/3 of the tube.
rex

hornet driver said:

Thanks, looks like it's easy to clean the clay out of too. I may rethink my current baffle. Any downside or problems with your design? You tend to fly a little more power than me, does the off center eyebolt give you any problems--stress cracks--breaking loose ? Do you use nomex along with it or are you straight chuting---just pikin your brain---Bill

Click to expand...

I haven't had any issues with the design. It does make it easy to clean out the clay. As always for extra precaution I will wrap the chute in wadding, but that's it. Another option if you wanted to make the top plate round and drill holes around it I suppose you could do that, but with (5) half moon disc I seriously doubt anything will get past it. The epoxy makes it plenty strong and the screw stays secure.

I got the fins mounted on the rocket today. I used the "double" glue method and they really grab good!

I took JR's advice and used the empty egg carton to hold the rocket and fins. Works pretty good! Thanks JR!

To make sure the fins aligned as straight as possible I used (2) the thickness of the fin and eyeballed them. After they dried I applied glue fillets to add strength. Next up the epoxy clay fillets.

looking good... i still havn't launched mine but i plan to soon... i did build the 24mm adapter so im going to at least get 1 or 2 24mm flights in before i do any 29mm... I like your baffel idea and was contemplating doing one as well but opted out to keep the weight minimal and i also used some elastic on the end of the kevlar....

good job so far bud :headbang:

After I mounted the fins I used epoxy clay and made the fin fillets. This stuff works great! I did all the fin fillets at once and when they set up, they were hard as concrete. I came back and filed and sanded the fillets and blended them. I used a little FnF and filled in any low areas. I decided to use Rustoleum HBP. I applied a couple coats, sanded in between and on the 3rd coat I wet sanded the entire rocket. Now it's ready for paint. Let's see what paint am I gonna use up??:lol::lol:

I'll paint it white first and then random neon green in areas and then randomly tape VH lines and then after it dries paint the entire rocket flat black. Peel the lines back it should look pretty freaky...not too concern really. If I get it back on an F10-8 great, if not oh well. I need to find some neon green plastic for a chute, if not I'll use an 18" chute.

I am sooo glad to see this thread! I've had two Aspires and loved them. One was dedicated 24mm and the other 29mm. I fired the 24 a bunch of times and finally lost it. One of those things where I saw exactly where it came down, but couldn't find it! I lost the 29 due to it turning itself into confetti. I had papered the fins, good clay fillets, but still came apart on about flight 5. I assume it went supersonic on a G-80. I've always wanted to build another and carbon fiber it. Has anyone here done that?

Here is the link to the finished pictures and I also have some in photo albums under my profile

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?50863-Crazy-Paint-Job