Upscale Estes PSII Argent

[Scott231]

A few years ago I built an upscale of the Argent out of fiberglassed carboard tubes, a 3-D Printed transition, re-used nosecone and 38mm power. That rocket was lost at the Bong last summer (LDRS) when a J-135 smoldered for nearly 3 minutes before a very poor thrust got the rocket up about 150 feet and then flew full power at 45* and descended into the swamp, never to be seen again.

So with some products from Tim, I am no rebuilding the rocket with full filament wond fiberglass tubing, the second transition that was printed for me, nad 54mm power. Unlike the first build where the upper 3 ft was simply held squarely to the transition by means of 1/4" all thread that wasn't long enough, I had plans to epoxy the upper 2.1" tube into the void of the transtion. But how to get it square? to the rest of the lower 3" sustainer tube? AFter several ideas were bounced around, I concluded to do the following:

• test fit together the 3" lower tube, 3-2.1" transition, and the 2.1" upper tube
• hold the upper piece together with a 3.5-foot piece of all-thread that starts at the 3" coupler from the botton of the transition, though the transition to a 2.1" coupler piece with a bulhead at the bottom - mounted at thetop of the piece of all-thread.
• It was obvious to me that the upper 2.1" piece was not parallel to the lower 3" sustainer
• Since i needed the rocket to be vertical (as I was going to pour some West expoxy in to "cement the upper tube to the transtion, I decided the thing to do was to use some aluminum angle I had. Unfortunateey my pieces were not long enough. So off to the hardware store I went and found 2 eight-foot long piece of aluminum angle...at $50 a piece!
• Eventually I got all the pieces together with the aluminum angle reaching a good 8 inches above the rocket and filled the transition void with a few counces of epoxy.

Seeing how the aluminum angle is too tall, it will have to be returned to the store