What did you do rocket wise today?

[boatgeek]

Yeah, I think the thrust vectoring effect was either because the Pro24 6G motor case had a burn through low down, OR, as I suspect is more likely, because the sparky exhaust might have been too aggressive for the tail cone retainer and maybe it burned through on one side. The tail cone retainer was thick fibreglass with a thick layer of JB Weld laid up on the inside surface to ablate without burn through. It has flown plenty of times, and I've cleaned and refreshed the inner JB Weld surface several times, but its never flown with a sparky motor. See the pictures below.

The motor issue aside, I'm left wondering why the EasyMini didn't fire any deployment charges. I'll have to look into the functionality some more, but even though the rocket clearly didn't achieve the peak altitude expected, it still should have detected a launch and it should still have sensed that an apogee had been reached and descent had begun, so why didn't it decide to fire either or both of the drogue and main charges?



View attachment 635193 View attachment 635195
View attachment 635196 View attachment 635197

Do you have a photo of the casing post-burn? I'm not seeing evidence of a burnthrough on the photos you've shown so far. Unless that's a burnthough and not a rail button on the yellow rocket.

 

[John Kemker]

QRS = Queensland Rocketry Society.

You blokes missed out on a perfect acronym!

QRO = Queensland Rocketry Organization

QRO is the Q-code for "MORE POWER!"

 

[user 45779]

My buddy gave me some thin masonite type material to try with my laser cutter to make some stands for our rockets.
Started with some for our minis

 

[berlinetta]

I put 3 coats of clearcoat on my 5.5" LOC Bullet. Currently letting it cure for 24 hours as I need to add least one or two more coats to hopefully get rid of the remaining pits in the carbon fiber and to sand down the runs in the clearcoat.

 

[KenECoyote]

Tried a camo pattern on my Loc 7.5 V2 with Rustoleum 5-in-1 spray cans using the fine nozzle setting, but it was still splotchy (was also a light breeze which made things worse).

 

[RobertH3]

Finished up the scratch 3x18mm Fat Boy. Stickershock23 vinyl, perfect as usual.
I tried the metallic red and found I didn't care for it.
So I went to Rusto Strawberry Fields and Wildflower Blue.
The blue is a little darker than the sky blue on the original but I think I like it.
He'll fly Saturday at Muncie if the weather is good.

 

[Wally Ferrer]

Another one ready for the paint pile…

 

[MarsLander]

Not bad for three days! First time papering fins (Bertha and the 220 Swift). Will see after paint, but look good (@K'Tesh technique with Avery trueblock paper). The other two were just CWF.
I have abandoned filling spirals, except for "special" rockets...just can't seem to get the hang of it with out lumps and bumps, or ripping up the glassine.

 

[bjphoenix]

I put the last fillets on the Estes Bullpup build so now it is ready for primer.

 

[BEC]

Assembled and tested an Eggtimer Telemetry Module. Will be trying it out over the weekend, downlinking data from an Eggtimer ION altimeter.

 

[BrendanH69]

Vectored thrust can also be the result of a damaged or partially blocked nozzle. My imagination says those might be more likely to occur with sparky motors than with "clean" ones, but I really don't know.

I know that some deployment devices don't arm the charges until a minimum altitude has been reached. I have no idea about the Easy Mini in particular.

Fair point on the possibility of nozzle blockage. The sparky motors do create a fair bit of residue to clean up.

 

[BrendanH69]

Do you have a photo of the casing post-burn? I'm not seeing evidence of a burnthrough on the photos you've shown so far. Unless that's a burnthough and not a rail button on the yellow rocket.

Sadly no. Couldn't locate the Lawn Dart / wreckage after nearly 2 hours of searching. Tracker was in the nose cone and is probably well underground, or under water.

 

[mjremijan]

Venus Probe repair: Today, worked on spraying the final clear coat. This should have been the last thing to do, and the repairs would have been complete. However, the wind was against me. The rocket got blown over and cracked off one of the landing legs So, more repairs to do.

 

[jqavins]

Venus Probe repair: Today, worked on spraying the final clear coat. This should have been the last thing to do, and the repairs would have been complete. However, the wind was against me. The rocket got blown over and cracked off one of the landing legs So, more repairs to do.

View attachment 635337

View attachment 635338

When it can't stand being knocked over, that may not bode well for landings.

 

[Cape Byron]

Back to the waiting game…

Courier parcel from Newcastle spent 24 hours in a depot 40 minutes away, then another 24 hours in a depot 20 minutes away.

The USPS Express parcel from Arizona left LA, flew to Sydney and cleared Customs in the same time frame.

BTW, the courier’s slogan is “When it’s urgent”.

Glad the parcel isn’t, like, urgent or anything.

 

[boatgeek]

Back to the waiting game…

Courier parcel from Newcastle spent 24 hours in a depot 40 minutes away, then another 24 hours in a depot 20 minutes away.

The USPS Express parcel from Arizona left LA, flew to Sydney and cleared Customs in the same time frame.

BTW, the courier’s slogan is “When it’s urgent”.

Glad the parcel isn’t, like, urgent or anything.

This is just my loopholery tendencies rising up, but technically speaking the courier's slogan doesn't say what they do with the package when it's urgent. Maybe the unspoken complete sentence is "When it's urgent, we sit on our duffs." Or perhaps "We'll only move it when it's urgent. Until then, hope you like waiting."

 

[MarsLander]

Back to the waiting game…

Sat here all day waiting for a motor delivery (signature required). Fedex shows up and parks in the street. No driver emerges. 3 minutes later, drove away. I tried to catch him in the car, but he gone.

End of the day, update says..."Tried to deliver, nobody home." I WAS SITTING HERE ALL DAY!

Not Happy. I even thought, I should walk out to the delivery van...in retrospect I should have.....

Grrrrrrr.

 

[Cape Byron]

End of the day, update says..."Tried to deliver, nobody home." I WAS SITTING HERE ALL DAY!

There's a name for people like that which is not suitable for use in this family forum.

 

[rocket_troy]

Back to the waiting game…

Courier parcel from Newcastle spent 24 hours in a depot 40 minutes away, then another 24 hours in a depot 20 minutes away.

The USPS Express parcel from Arizona left LA, flew to Sydney and cleared Customs in the same time frame.

BTW, the courier’s slogan is “When it’s urgent”.

Glad the parcel isn’t, like, urgent or anything.

I can soooo relate. Just purchased a high flow NOS Pro-Big Shot solenoid valve from the US via Ebay using their international shipping Pitney Bowes service (no option alas). About 3-4 days to make it from Bowling Green Kentucky to an international flight. Another 3 or so weeks to make it from there to me. Painful.

TP

 

[goose_in_co]

finished cutting the farings on the Expedition.
Also found out that the bottom of a SOLO cup fits the large body tube perfectly, gives me some ideas.

 

[teepot]

Today I looked for a lost rocket. Flew it on Wednesday. It was overcast and I lost sight of it going up. Should have made 2000'. Didn't see or hear an event. We looked for it that day for an hour. I saw the way it was going when I lost sight of it. I figured it came back ballistic. So if it came straight down we should have found it. That part of the desert is pretty sparse of vegetation and what's out there is only a couple of feet high. I looked today for almost two hours. I'll look some more tomorrow morning. The rocket I could rebuild but it has my JLCR in it. It was set for 400'. Neither my wife or I saw a chute. Our 3 day Springfest starts tomorrow and I would like to have my JLCR. A week ago the weather forecast looked real good. Mid 60's winds less than 10mph. Every day I looked at the weather it was worse. Currently the forecast for Friday is a high of 52 15mph+ wind and a 70% chance of rain. That will turn the lake bed to goo. Saturday is almost the same except the wind could be less than 10mph and a 21% chance of rain. No rain on Sunday but the wind picks up. We have had great weather for Springfest and Octoberfest for the last four years. Looks like our luck ran out. I had what I thought was a great idea. I rented a 20' U-Haul. I'm going to use it as a camper. Besides one of my rockets won't fit in the Explorer. But I had that idea when the forecast was good. Now I'm worried I might get stuck. I didn't tell the U-Haul guys what I was going to do with their truck. I have a doctors appointment Friday at 1:00 and was going to leave after it. Now I'm planning to get out there around 6pm. I picked up $450 of motors from BMS today and now it looks like I'm not going to use half of them. It's ok it's not like they are going to spoil. Oh, one more thing. When we went to Vegas to get the truck it was snowing in the pass. The top of the pass is 5500'. Maybe the weatherman is wrong. He's been wrong many times before.

 

[mjremijan]

When it can't stand being knocked over, that may not bode well for landings.

Ya, well the alien landing capsule isn't supposed to fall that way. Assuming it's falling from the air on a parachute, the landing will be fine

 

[mjremijan]

Venus Probe repair: Repaired the landing capsule landing leg. Unfortunately, after supergluing it, I realized I glued it on upside down! Ugh! So now I got to figure out how to get it off without breaking it and glue it back on correctly.

 

[jqavins]

Do you have any CA debonder?

What I would try, though I might be a fool, is sanding away paint at the edges of the mechanism base all the way around, then see if any debonder will wick in.

 

[mjremijan]

Do you have any CA debonder?
View attachment 635534
What I would try, though I might be a fool, is sanding away paint at the edges of the mechanism base all the way around, then see if any debonder will wick in.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[AcadiaRockets]

How I wet sanded a 9 foot rocket.

 

[Antares JS]

While I had the dremel out for beveling the fins on my two-stage (the build thread is in the staging/clusters/airstarts forum), I ground the old epoxy off this popped-off fin and reinstalled it with a little five-minute epoxy to tack it in place. I will redo the fillet tomorrow or Sunday.

(The rocket is a PML Bumblebee with a much cooler name.)

 

[sriegel]

Detail work on my steampunk, upscaled Triffid

 

[kuririn]

Detail work on my steampunk, upscaled TriffidView attachment 635639View attachment 635640View attachment 635641

Beautiful detailed work.
Just don't expose it to sea water*




* (And if you get that then you are OLD)

 

[sriegel]

Beautiful detailed work.
Just don't expose it to sea water*




* (And if you get that then you are OLD)

It's good for at least 10,000 leagues but might be problemmatic after that...