Andrew_ASC
UTC SEDS 2017 3rd/ SEDS 2018 1st
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2017
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**Then there's the whole topic of college competitions. In short, they're great opportunities, I love them, they nudged me into high-power. They also run the risk of pushing people into rushed certification.
Of course these students may never want to make rocketry a hobby/sport, they're looking for a career and an opportunity to distinguish themselves from the crowd.
The project deadlines plus lack of experience plus coursework plus pressure to push the performance because somebody on exec level is paying for results. We had assigned mentors leave due to pace. Started with airfoils, MD multistage, custom launch pad, pestering about maximum allowable altitude under approved waivers and HAM rated electronics. Prof got a cert the day before our project test flight. I still don't know how we got third at SEDS. They were all you guys never even did this before. I filled up a flash drive full of scratch rockets and rocket info literally. We drove to Utah, Virginia, and Florida. I got three patentable items out of my work that semester. Granted I'm too poor to patent stuff now. My team had to start the club too. We started it all from scratch. Only airspace was familiar to me at first as a student pilot from other hobbies. There was so much to learn on TRF, Google, and at the launch sites talking to people and by trying stuff.
Worked in a car factory on an internship 11 hour shifts on summer and loved it to help pay after a prototype didn't do as well as planned. We did that whole design, build, and test then repeat process to create new stuff for HPR which was so much fun. We went for a world record then backed off and halving performance on second rocket design flight to reduce costs. We sorta felt shark tank dunked into HPR. Many on team didn't even have an LPR launch under belt. Best advice on TRF was Raven 3 and TeleGPS seemed popular. I'm no Ivy League snot either. If your gonna be dumb you gotta work harder then try smarter. Many people wouldn't have done what we did. University is still in shock we did it. Wish we knew more about HEI closures. That and experience is what got us. I took a bunch of flak for just going for it all out. We weren't quitting and we had signed death waivers anyhow. Many sleepless nights. Thirty five hours in a car once. Stop to piss, ****, eat, swap seats, or sleep. Senior projects and that you must pass classes sequentially. One hell of a motivator. You don't know either! Fine. Ummm we'll try something. College comps were more risks than CeRT flights. Performance of rocket pretty hot. Low time experience on flight crews/designers. 20 of 88 flew. Don't hate if you've never tried team comps. Different mindset. I was reading IREC reports of stuff hitting trees horizontally then trying crack at design SEDS multistage supersonic rockets. But I'll take a lot of flak likely. That you're an engineer student you should figure it out BS line. And meanwhile inside that dear god feeling. David said we were over our heads. And looking back on it we were.
Carbon fiber and fiberglass are plenty. Fiberglass is excellent when budget vaporizes on first bad test flight. Yeah the comps drove me to take an interest in HPR.