BaddAzz "Lil Mizz Judy" Build Thread

I'm posting this build thread in MPR because that's how I plan to fly this kit. I'm going to use this rocket for small field park flights, and various F class motors should put it up in the 1-2000ft range which is exactly where I want to be. However it should be mentioned that Eric at BaddAzz Rockets is offering this kit as part of a L1 certification special. It's a pretty sweet deal so some of you may be considering this kit for entry into HPR. Just be aware that H class motors will put this rocket up in the 5000ft range or more. Comfort levels vary but I like to get my rockets back so at those heights I'd want to set this kit up with an altimeter and a cable cutter for dual deployment or with some kind of tracking device...just something to think about if you're planning to cert with it. But even if you have no intention of taking advantage of the L1 special it's worth considering this kit. It's a cool design with high quality components at a great price ($35 plus shipping was the initial offering). Note that this kit is not up yet on the BaddAzz website so you'll need to contact Eric directly about ordering and availability.



PARTS LIST
-plastic nose cone
-plastic boat tail
-plastic coupler
-three fiberglass fins
-one fiberglass centering ring
-aluminum motor retainer (ignore the yellow Estes fin guide that it's sitting on, not part of the kit)
-aluminum nose weight spindle do-hicky (more on this later)
-ACME conformal launch lug OR fiberglass stand-off and lug (more later)
-shock cord
-18inch Top Flight Thin-Mil Parachute
-bamboo BBQ skewer
-decals

What is not included with this kit are any instructions, so think through your steps first. If you are used to working with paper or fiberglass there will be a small learning curve to working with these plastic components.

TIP: Before you do anything else, wash the plastic parts thoroughly with Dawn or some other kind of dish soap. Eric molds these plastic parts himself and says that the release agent he uses will cause you trouble downstream when you go to paint if you haven't cleaned it well.

TIP: Eric also recommends using epoxy that is specifically formulated for plastics. I used 5min Loctite Plastic Epoxy throughout this build which I picked up in Home Depot. All of the bonds appear solid.

After washing the parts, before I did anything else I test fit and then sanded all of the areas that would receive epoxy with some coarse-grit paper to promote adhesion.

TIP: Be very careful when you sand the plastic parts. Fiberglass is pretty hard and it can take some elbow grease to rough it up well, but these plastic pieces are actually quite soft. I was imagining something hard like PVC but this plastic is not like that at all. It sands beautifully...and easily. You can remove a LOT of material before you even realize what you're doing so pay attention when you're sanding on the plastic.

I put a ring of 1" masking tape around one end of the coupler. I felt that this would be enough sticking out to mate with the nose cone. The rest would be glued into the boat tail, and I planned to glue the centering ring directly onto the aft end of the coupler. I measured the distance from the motor retainer to the centering ring at that location and it was close enough to catch my planned casing (more on this later). The masking tape was there to keep that portion from getting buggered up while sanding and would also catch any excess epoxy that might spill back when the coupler was glued in.



But the fins were the first things to be glued. The fit of the fins to the boat tail was perfect. If you are familiar with the LOC Precision "Loc-N-Fin" design then you'll know exactly what to do here. The fin tabs extend through the wall of the boat tail and are then locked in by putting short lengths of the supplied bamboo skewer through the pre-drilled holes in the tabs. You don't need much length to catch the curve. I cut bamboo bits that were about 1/2" long.



TIP: You're going to need to sand down the thickness of the bamboo skewer a little bit in order to get it to fit through the holes. While you're at it do yourself a huge favor and sand a taper at one end of each of your bamboo pieces. Getting these locked in place requires some finger dexterity and the taper will help immensely.

I then gave the fin tab and bamboo bits a good covering of epoxy. I glued these fins one at a time, but with the 5min epoxy your turn around time is quick.



I taped the fin can to the end of a dowel and used the same epoxy to make external fin fillets. I just put on a nitrile glove and pulled a finger through the epoxy to make it smooth.

Thx for the build report.. I have the kit on my pile for 2 months now...I can only learn from your experience...so cool...please post lot of pictures...

Yes I certainly will, I have finished the build and have all the pics. I just need to find the time to post everything, but hopefully in the next few days I will have the complete report up. The kit goes together very quickly.

Oooohhhhh I like the looks of this. Can't wait for it to be on the site. I love boat tails!

Actually I have a couple hours now so lets see how much I can report...

So that was it for the fins. If you want to put a taper on your fin edges it would be easiest to do so before you glue them in of course, but I didn't bother with this kit because the challenge for me will be keeping this rocket from going too high. No need to maximize the aerodynamics.

Next I attached the included aluminum motor retainer. The retainer is drilled and tapped with 2-56 mounting holes in both 3 and 4 hole patterns (at 90 and 120 degrees).

TIP: If you decide to mount the retainer with screws you can use a flashlight to mark the boat tail for drilling because the plastic is translucent. Of course you could just mark the boat tail at 90 or 120 degrees and hope for a match, but this way you will see exactly where the holes are. Either way, if you choose to drill the boat tail do NOT drill all the holes at once. Mark one, drill, then thread in a screw. Then mark, drill, and insert the second screw, etc. This will give you the best chance of getting all your holes to line up. There's not much room for error here.



But I decided not to use any screws to mount the retainer. The mounting holes are not very far in from the edge of the boat tail, maybe 1/16" and with this soft plastic I was not sure how well it would handle the ejection stresses. The deciding factor for me was the fact that my boat tail was bored out off-center. You can see what I mean here, one edge of the boat tail was significantly thinner than the other side.



This was the only component in my kit where the fit was not so good. It caused the retainer to sit noticeably off-center. It wasn't too big of an issue because I just sanded the outside of the opposite edge until the retainer looked more centered. But this meant that the aft end of my boat tail was now quite thin all the way around, so at this point I really did not trust the mounting screws to not tear out. The answer was simply to glue the retainer in instead.



TIP: If you decide to glue the retainer on, put a ring of tape around the inside of the retainer to act as a dam. The mounting holes are drilled through, and it's possible that some epoxy could seep out and bugger up the fit for your motor casing.

Now on to the centering ring...

TIP: Before you do anything with this, figure out what is the shortest length motor you will want to fly this rocket on. You need that measurement to know where to locate the centering ring. The design here is minimalist and actually pretty elegant, it uses no motor mount tube at all. The motor casing is held in back by the retainer, and in front by one centering ring, and just floats inbetween. So of course if your centering ring is too far forward for the length of your casing it will not catch and the motor will not be held securely in-line.

As I mentioned earlier, I planned to glue the centering ring directly to the aft end of the coupler. I tested this distance from retainer to centering ring with my 29/40-120 case and the centering ring caught the motor about 1/2" down from the forward end. Fine. So I glued the centering ring to the coupler...



Then I ran some sims and realized that the reloads for the 29/40-120 case were actually the largest I would want to use. Most of them were too much in fact. I want to keep this bird under 2000ft. Okay no problem, I hadn't actually glued in the coupler/centering ring unit yet. I could just cut the ring off and glue it in separately further back. So I took some measurements to see how much lower I could fit the ring by itself and saw that I would gain another 1/2" or so before the curve of the boat tail stopped it. This would reduce the span by enough to now catch a CTI Pro29-1G case. But I don't have any Pro29 cases so after running many sims I found that the sweet spot for me (for the altitudes I wanted) would actually be F class motors like the Aerotech line of Econojets. But those single-use motors are only about 3" long, and glueing in the centering ring as far back as it would go on its own still wasn't far enough to catch the front of these 3" motors. It would require me to sand down the outside of the centering ring quite a bit, reducing the diameter until it sat just forward of the fin tabs. But the only thing I like less than sanding is painting and I really didn't want to do this, soooooo I came up with this solution.



I left the kit centering ring where it was, glued to the coupler. And I took another spare centering ring and a 3" piece of LOC 29mm tubing and glued them together, then glued this into the boat tail so that the longer end of the tubing projected rearward toward the motor retainer. The end of the paper tube floats about 1" forward of the retainer.



Note that I spaced the location of this spare centering ring such that the shorter forward end of the paper tube would meet and be glued to the original centering on the coupler (so the paper tube would be held at two points). I just glued these two units in separately so that I could get good fillets on the inner ring. It was also important to use the long 29/40-120 casing to ensure that I had all of these elements in-line before the glue set. I made sure the casing would slide through retainer, paper tube, centering ring/coupler.

This is a pretty wonky solution and certainly loses all the elegance and simplicity of the original floating design. But with this added motor tube I can now use any of the shortest 29mm motors. The lesson here is to plan your motors first and then locate your centering ring accordingly. This spare centering ring and 29mm tube are not part of the kit, so if you need or want to do something similar you'll need to source those parts separately.



TIP: Wherever you decide to place your centering ring, tie your shock cord to it first before glueing it in. It will just be much easier to do on the outside. I intentionally made the loop on mine long enough that it extends past the lip of the coupler. I figured that would be twice the surface area pressing on the edge, though the coupler is beefy enough that zippering it isn't very likely.

You can see that I also used a different shock cord than what ships with the kit. It comes with a very thin black cord, I'm not sure what it is, it feels like a waxed nylon maybe but there is no stretch to it. It certainly feels very strong, but I have heaps of 1/8" kevlar so I used 10ft of that instead.

Where can I get the file you used for your sims? I assume there is a rocsim file somewhere in the Ether, but I haven't found it. I've been planning to get one of these come payday, but would like o play what if motor games in the interim.

Hi Guys,
Here is the RS9 file!

View attachment LiLMizzJudy.rkt

Eric1 said:

Hi Guys,
Here is the RS9 file!

Click to expand...

Thanks much, I will now turn this nearly hijacked thread back to it's owner...my demands have been met.

-Chris

No worries Chris... I just came home a day early from a HPR launch (200 miles away) I had my Lil Mizz Judy with me and was all set to send her up and have a launch report to include here, and as it turns out I didn't fly a single rocket. 20-25mph sustained winds with gusts to 45-50mph, the only thing I shreaded was my tent. The entire contents of my weekend is in a sad pile in my living room, I'm avoiding cleanup with a beer on the porch. Oh well, sometimes you punch a hole in the sky, other times she lands one on you. Anyway, I will have the rest of the build pics posted in the next few days, and a launch report T-5 and holding.

Don't know if you have one, but does an aeropack 24-29 adapter fit in the motor retainer? Playing in open rocket it looks like his thing would go 1000+ ft on an F39. I would like this to be my baddazz windy day alternative to my Defender MkII, which teleports to 2000ish ft on an F39. I spent quite a bit of time in an adjacent (not nearby) wheat field last Saturday looking for it. I also like that reload as it falls in a really nice price/performance/non-hazmat shipping fee nitch.

Looking forward to the rest of your thread. Very informative thusfar.

Good question, I don't have one of the Aeropack 29-24 adapters so I can't say for certain, but I think you would not be able to use an adapter like that because of the floating motor case design of this kit. That adapter is meant to sit inside a 29mm motor mount tube, but there is no tube here. There's a ring on the front and back of the adapter that is sized to the larger motor mount and helps to make sure the smaller motor is kept in-line. Without a motor tube to sit in, the adapter would only be held at the aft end, and I think you'd have a lot of potential for wiggle and off-axis thrust.

Now you could solve that of course by simply adding your own motor tube as I did. Unfortunately I did not do so with any thought toward using that Aeropack adapter, so in my case I still wouldn't be able to use it because I didn't extend the tube quite close enough to the retainer. That Aeropack adapter is only about 1" long, and my motor tube terminates about 1-1/4" before the retainer. I just wanted to make sure I could catch the short 29mm single-use Econojets which are about 3" and that was plenty. If you're building with the Aeropack adapter in mind though you'd just need to make sure the tube was close enough to the retainer to be able to catch the forward ring on the adapter, or simply extend the motor tube all the way to the retainer and be done with all this fiddling.

In my case however, I think I could use the LOC Precision 29-24 adapter. I don't have that either but it looks to be a simple coupler tube, but longer than the Aeropack and I bet it would be long enough to snug into my 29mm motor tube as built. So I think I'll pick up one of those and give it a try, heck I already have the 24/40 case. And you're right, the F39 would be a great motor for this rocket for small fields. In fact the motor that I had ready for the first flight was the F42 Econojet which has an almost identical profile to the F39. No hazmat shipping for Econojets either but because they are single-use you still end up paying twice as much per flight, reloads are definitely the way to go. The F35 in the 24/60 case would also be a great motor choice. And of course once you've adapted down CTI has a ton of motor options in their Pro24 line.

Beez I'll check stock. Pretty sure I have a 29-24 adapter that will work.

Beez and Eric,

Thanks very much for the input guys. I was envisioning using one of the extra 29 mm CRs I have laying around, put it in near the aft end and put in a 29 mm MM tube that will run close to the retainer.

Also, I have a 24/29 LOC adapter, but that is just a carboard tube with no thrust ring to seat in the stock retainer, or way to retain the motor. I am sure you could rig up a masking tape (or more elaborate) solution, but I am a paranoid overbuilder.

Again, thanks and looking forward to the rest of the build.

Chris

Eric- I didn't know you had motor adapters too? You've got to get your website updated, how can we place orders for all of these goodies you have squirreled away if we don't know about them! The LOC adapter, being just a thick cardboard tube, costs next to nothing and would probably work just fine but I'm certainly interested in seeing your creation.

Chris- Yes I took a look at the instructions for the LOC adapter and that's exactly what they say, make a thrust ring out of masking tape and add a bit more tape up front to friction fit. Low-tech functional but I'm sure you could upgrade that, maybe cut a small ring of 29mm fiberglass airframe and glue that on the butt.

Okay on with the build pics...

I mentioned in the parts list in my first post that the kit will come with an ACME conformal launch lug OR a small fiberglass stand-off and some other kind of launch lug. I'm not sure what your kit will contain. Eric intends this kit to have a precision cut stand-off and a lug, but when he shipped out the first run of these kits a couple months ago he hadn't yet received his lug stock so he threw in an ACME aluminum lug instead.



The little fiberglass standoff also happened to still make it into my kit.



I took a look at both possibilities, and I actually much prefer the look that Eric had planned. The precision cut stand-off echoes the sweep of the fins and I think looks better. The ACME lug seems too big and chunky for the sleek lines of this rocket. And I had some spare 1/4" launch lugs in the parts box so I was planning to just go with Eric's original design, but....

TIP: Before you mount the launch lug stand-off be sure to check if the location will hold the launch rod parallel to the long axis of the airframe. Based on the curved cut of the stand-off, I found that it needed to be located very near the aft end of the rocket. Basically in-line with the rear of the fins as I have in the pic above. Any further forward on the curve of the boat tail and the stand-off would actually cause the launch rod to intersect the airframe.

Okay, no problem, it looks good back there right? I think so, but that location is quite a ways back from the CG. In order to be stable this rocket needs to have a CG forward of the nose cone-boat tail joint, and with single-point launch lugs I like to locate them as close as possible to the CG in order to minimize the chance of binding on the launch rod. So for that reason only I decided to go with the ACME lug which I could locate just behind the NC-BT joint. Could you have the lug far aft on the rocket and be fine? Probably, but that is the decision I made and why, function over beauty.

Nearing completion...before I went to glue in the nose weight and forward shock cord anchor I wanted to adjust the fit of the nose cone and coupler.

TIP: Think very carefully about this slip fit because once you break the smooth surface finish of these plastic parts by sanding they will have a tendency to grab hard.

My nose cone fit very tightly to the coupler. I couldn't put it all the way on without a good deal of force so it definitely needed to be opened up. I started by sanding the inside of the nose cone. Again, pay attention when sanding on this soft plastic because you can remove a lot of material quickly. But after several passes the fit was still too tight and I didn't want to remove any more material from the NC wall because I am paranoid about shock cord zippering. But the wall of the coupler was actually much thicker than the NC, so I continued to remove material by sanding the outside of the coupler. After a few passes there I checked the fit and to my great surprise it was now much harder to get the parts on and off than before I even started sanding. That's when I realized that the smooth finish was now gone from both surfaces and the degree of friction between them had increased dramatically. Hmmmm. Well, nothing to do now but keep sanding until it opened up enough to overcome the new friction.

TIP: If you end up sanding on this joint, finish with a very fine grit and make all of your finishing strokes in-line with the direction of travel. In other words, don't sand around the circumference of the joint, finish with strokes in the direction that the parts will separate. Even just the tiny grooves from sanding can impede separation.

So eventually I removed enough material that the fit was actually loose. If I held the NC the fin can would just fall away even without a motor mounted. It was then that I learned just how "grabby" this platic-on-plastic interface could be. Even with this too-loose fit I discovered that if the NC was canted over just slightly it would be enough to seize, and no amount of shaking or puffing air into the motor retainer could get them to separate. I could envision a scenario where the ejection charge came after apogee, the rocket tipped over at apogee and that was enough to kink the NC fit, the charge would not actually separate and the rocket would come in ballizztic.

Hmmm, what to do? So I tried putting a small amount of Super Lube around the coupler. Perfect! Now the fin can fell right off and didn't catch even when kinked. Wait a minute, now there is nothing keeping this rocket together and I was afraid that with those big draggy fins I'd actually have early drag separation after motor burnout. Hmmm. So ultimately I decided to add back a bit of friction by putting a few strips of tape in-line with travel as seen here. This seems to be a happy medium and I think will get me to the church on time. I'll let you know how it goes after she flies The point here is think carefully about what you're doing with this slip joint. The plastic interface will act differently than you are used to.

Nose weight....you're going to need some to make this rocket stable. Just how much depends on what size motors you plan to use, how much epoxy you goop around, and any other modifications or substitutions you make. I always use the same approach when calculating how much nose weight to add:

1) Find the CP and mark it on the rocket, in this case 15.697" from the tip of the nose according to the RockSim file.

2) Measure and mark a minimum of one caliber forward of the CP, this is the target CG. In this case the max diameter of this rocket is 2.375" so I just rounded conservatively and made a mark at 13" from the tip of the nose. This was about 1/2" forward of the nose cone-boat tail joint.

3) Prep the rocket with everything for flight, all recovery gear etc, along with the biggest planned motor. You don't have to actually assemble the motor, just put the hardware in the rocket and tape the reload kit to the outside of the rocket over the motor mount area. Or find out the weight of the reload, tape a small cup to the mid-point of the motor area and add that weight in BBs or something similar to the cup. This doesn't need to be razor accurate, just err on the side of being conservative. Also tape a small cup or container near the tip of the nose cone.

4) Find something for a balance point (I simply used a piece of aluminum angle placed on the countertop) and put the rocket on this at your target CG location, then add BBs or whatever to the cup on the nose cone until it balances. Then just glue that ammount of weight into the nose cone (be sure to also add whatever the weight is of the cup/container you used) and you're done, safe and stable.

After following these steps I determined that I was going to need 3oz of nose weight. If you look at the parts pic in my first post here you will see something next to the motor retainer that looks like an aluminum spindle of some kind. As it turns out that was a kickstand button for race bikes that Eric had made for a different order, and apparently with some extra stock leftover he added that to the kit for use as nose weight and a shock cord anchor. Your kit may or may not come with this same little widget. But the kickstand button weighed less than 1oz, so I was still going to need to add more weight anyway, and to be honest the part is just too cool to bury in glue. I don't know what I'll do with it, but it's still sitting on my shelf. Instead I took a more traditional approach. I picked out a forged stainless steel eye bolt to be the shock cord anchor, weighed that, and then weighed out an additional quantity of BBs until I had 3oz total. Now this purposefully did not take into account the weight of epoxy that would also be added, and that again would just add to my margin of stability and safety.



TIP: Note that I put a nut on the eye bolt. This will help to anchor the eye bolt once it is submerged in the epoxy and help to prevent pulling out. You can also see in this pic the Loctite Plastic Epoxy which I used throughout this build.

Alright, the last thing to do before paint was to glue in the forward shock cord anchor and nose weight. Normally with plastic nose cones such as LOC Precision NCs I like to glue any nose weight in with Gorilla Glue. In my experience it sticks very well to the plastic and I have not found it necessary to drill in retaining pins as is common practice with other types of epoxy. But I had done everything on this build with Loctite Plastic Epoxy and so I continued with that here. And it seemed to be bonding very well with this plastic so I felt comfortable again not adding retaining pins. I did however scuff up the inside of the nose cone tip really well. I taped a ball of coarse grit sandpaper onto the end of a bamboo skewer, and I also chucked up another skewer with a drill bit taped to the end and ran that around inside.



TIP: Again, do yourself a favor and tie the shock cord onto the anchor before you glue it in. You can see here that I also added a swivel for the parachute, not part of the kit. I placed it three feet down from the nose cone end of the cord (I went with ten feet of shock cord total) but the first foot of that will be taken up running the length of the nose cone.



TIP: I taped another bamboo skewer to the shock cord and anchor in order to be able to hold it in position until the epoxy hardened up (not long with this 5min stuff). Use blue tape or something that doesn't have aggressive tack so that it is easy to break away after the glue sets.



It's also not a bad idea to set the nose cone in a container of cold water while you're doing this. Like any other epoxy, this stuff gets really hot when it cures and I don't know what temp this plastic will start to deform at.



So my exact steps for this process were:

1) Dump the BBs that I had previously measured into the nose cone. Then I held the NC up in front of a light and made a mark on the outside at their top level. Remember this plastic is translucent so you can easily see where the BBs start and stop. This mark would give me some idea how much epoxy to put in.

2) Then I dumped the BBs out and filled the NC with epoxy up to my mark. This is a normal 1:1 two-part epoxy, the kind that dispenses both parts when you press the plunger. Usually you would squirt it out onto something disposable, mix it thoroughly, and then apply. But for this step I needed to get a large amount of epoxy twelve inches down into the NC and I didn't want to try and drip the honey-like premixed epoxy down in there. That would be slow and messy and you don't have a lot of time with this stuff. So instead I simply put the epoxy syringe into the NC as far as it would go and squirted it in (unmixed).

3) Once I had epoxy up to my fill level I stuck a bamboo skewer in and mixed it in place. This was much faster and less messy. Then I dumped the BBs back in, and mixed them thoroughly into the epoxy with the skewer.

4) Then I took my shock cord/anchor lollipop and pushed it into the mix, so that the epoxy encapsulated the nut and bolt and came up over the shoulder of the eye. I twirled it a few times to make sure I hadn't trapped any air voids and then held it in position until it set up.

That's it, she's built. All that remains is to dress her up pretty and let 'er rip. This is where I'm at today.



I lightly sanded the entire surface, then hit it with primer and some gloss orange. But I made the same dumb mistake I regularly make with spray paint, I didn't really have enough time to do a careful job so I rushed this last step. I zapped on a couple heavy coats, aaaaaaaaand of course got a bunch of drips and runs. I don't think they're obvious in the pic here but it annoys me enough that I'm going to have to sand it down and try again. I may also switch up the color(s) too, I don't know yet.

I'll post a flight report whenever I have one, thanks for following along with this build. I would definitely recommend this kit to anyone, it's a very cool rocket and it goes together fast. Mine weighs in at 16.75oz without the motor or chute. The kit comes with an 18" Top Flight Thin-Mil but I'll probably bump up to a 30" Thin-Mil that I have instead. There's plenty of room for it, and I'll probably add a 9" square of nomex too, so I'm thinking my pad weight will be 20-22oz depending on the motor. The 18" chute would bring it down around 30ft/s whereas the 30" would descend closer to the 15ft/s I like to be at unless it's really windy.

Eric- If I had any recommendations for Block 2 revisions I would suggest reducing the outside diameter of the centering ring a bit, enough so that it can drop further back into the boat tail, perhaps so that it butts against the forward edge of the fin tabs. That wouldn't make any difference as far as the use of 29-24 adapters goes but I think it would be far enough back that it would catch even the shortest 29mm motors, and then my wonky retroactive motor tube would be moot. You may also want to consider changing the curved cut on the launch lug standoff so that it can be mounted closer to the CG, I don't know if this is something that other folks have any thoughts on or not. Thanks for designing and producing this most excellent kit!

I like the "get it back orange" color (that is what we call it). Great build, very informative and I am sure I will be looking at it regularly as I build mine (order just placed). Thanks for entertaining my questions along the way.

Brother Beezwax You did a fine job! May I use your thread as the official build thread?
The Black Line is 750LB Kevlar by the way. More than enough for the standard build.
I look into the other recommendations though.
Again Dang Fine Job!!

FAIR Warning....!!!

Start with a small motor guys, I watched Eric " teleport " the proto into the Twilight zone on it's first flight.

This thing boogies with a quickness!

Eric, for the record...what was that motor you used for the trans-dimensional flux boost into the linear dimension?

Thanks guys!

Chris you made me laugh because "get it back" is exactly what I was thinking when I grabbed that can of paint. Bright orange is a good color for a baby stallion that just wants to run. Also why throttling the motors is important unless you have a good tracker or you like single-use rockets. Glad the thread was helpful to you, I think you'll definitely enjoy this kit when you get it.

Eric you're more than welcome to reference or link this thread, hopefully my tweaks and mods don't muddy the waters too much. Thanks for IDing that shock cord, I haven't seen kevlar with a waxy finish like that before so I thought it might be something else. But it certainly has zero stretch like kevlar and is bomber strong.