What did you do rocket wise today?

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Finished up building the motors for Airfest. Three research motors using Don Alexanders slow white formula. 75/2500 for Sharon's Super Jart, and two 75/6000's for my 4" Punisher and Sharon's DX-3. Some of these are leftovers from the launches we went to in Colorado back in June.
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I also worked on the switches for my 6" Darkstar. Drilled out the holes that the Schurter switches were mounted in and installed a rotary key switch that I thought might be more robust and reliable. WRONG! Hooked them up and cycled them and one was malfunctioning. Opened the avbay and found that the back end had fallen off:
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Back to the drawing board for this project. I just mixed up a batch of 30 min. epoxy and filled the holes in. Dug into my stash and found two Featherweight magnetic switches, which I think are the best solution. Updates tomorrow, one week left before we leave for the Rocket pasture....
 
Well, that escalated quickly...

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Ladies and germs, I present 'Brocket', named after one of Oz's greatest motor racing drivers.

Testing later this week in his undies, 'cause I need to do testing before the burn bans come in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Brock
Now, I have farm work to do...
 
Fiddled with some never-opened epoxies. The rocketpoxy was almost unstirrable, proline behaved exactly as expected.
 

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Fiddled with some never-opened epoxies. The rocketpoxy was almost unstirrable, proline behaved exactly as expected.

I keep my big tubs of Rocketpoxy in the refrigerator upside down. Doesn't settle as much. I have a couple of small ketchup squeeze bottles out on the work area, upside down with a cap on them.
 
i tried masking the wraps on the 1b and my results were sloppy as heck. ended up doing it by hand.

IMO, it's not worth the trouble to try to spray black on Saturns while protecting the white. I've found what works well is using liquid mask on protruding detail bits like the ullage motors and hydrogen line covers, and applying masking tape carefully around the edges of where the black stripes go - just a minimum amount of tape to help you stay within the lines. Then paint the black by hand using 2-3 coats of enamel paint. That worked well for me on my last Saturn V and it's what I'm doing in my "Mighty Saturns" mega build thread.
 
If I start throwing money now, how high would I need to throw it, and how long would it take to arrive in Australia so I can have one of these?

My 15 yo son just scored a Jetliner so he can kitbash it into a Brocket. Everyone loves a Gooney!

This one, if kitted, will be a plan pack with OR file, pick list, ~ 10 pages of instructions and a BT wrap to print out.

I figured a lot of people would already have a Jetliner or something from the Bertha family they could use as a basis.

Timeframe? A few weeks. ;)
 
Did some design work on a Venn Diagram based rocket. BT-80 LPR tubing and it'll fly on MPR 24mm and 29mm motors. Sometime soon I'll get a build thread going. Cutting the interlocking rings will be ... exciting.

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For what it's worth, I discovered that I didn't have any BT80 on hand for the interlocking rings on my Sagittarius A build. Not wanting to wait for an order to arrive (and not wanting to pay more for shipping than for the actual BT) I ran into my local Micheal's craft store and picked up a 4" x 10" cardboard shipping tube for $3.50 and cut the rings from it. They certainly added more weight to the build but I wasn't going for any altitude records. The other plus was the thickness of the tube over a BT80. It was easier to make the cuts to interlock the tubes and the final assembly was very sturdy with zero flexing. Just throwing it out there for consideration.
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For what it's worth, I discovered that I didn't have any BT80 on hand for the interlocking rings on my Sagittarius A build. Not wanting to wait for an order to arrive (and not wanting to pay more for shipping than for the actual BT) I ran into my local Micheal's craft store and picked up a 4" x 10" cardboard shipping tube for $3.50 and cut the rings from it. They certainly added more weight to the build but I wasn't going for any altitude records. The other plus was the thickness of the tube over a BT80. It was easier to make the cuts to interlock the tubes and the final assembly was very sturdy with zero flexing. Just throwing it out there for consideration.
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Ah, I should have been more specific. The central tube is BT-80. The ring fins are going to be made from a piece of 6" mailing tube scrounged from a Rockler store dumpster (the salesguy pulled it out and gave it to me after hearing I was working on rockets). I've already thrown a thin carbon wrap over the tube, so it'll be bulletproof. As you say, no altitude records on this one! The whole point of the design is to have something that stays fairly low under high F and low G motors.
 
Not rocket related, although that white spec in the upper left is rocket stuff, but I added a valve and leak tested my new 10 Gallon Mash Tun.
Going to make some good beer!!


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Yesterday I ordered an Eggtimer Apogee and the accessories. I had it sent to Mctronics to build. I'm going to use it on my high drag rockets. Today I gave my current project a second sanding and gave it an alcohol wipe. Second coat of primer tonight. I also started on the rocket I hope to make whistle.
 
Started assemble of a new Rocketarium Mega Rebel. This one will get color, and maybe a build thread (or at least a couple of pictures).
 
Made a set of 29mm carbon fiber anchor points. Also started making a 29mm 5.5:1 VK mold.
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Started looking at why my telemetry links were not working as intended.

I was getting no picture on the TV from my video feed. Quick look with a scope confirmed it was PAL and not NTSC like the TV was reporting. Reset the TV and now it us picking it up as PAL and displaying it correctly. Odd behaviour by the TV, the last unit in the chain.

Next up is to fix the data link. Tomorrow.
 
I ran into my local Micheal's craft store and picked up a 4" x 10" cardboard shipping tube for $3.50 and cut the rings from it.
The ring fins are going to be made from a piece of 6" mailing tube scrounged from a Rockler store dumpster
For looks and a little more altitude, yous guys could round over the leading edges and taper the trailing edges of those thick rings. Soak in a little thin CA to make the cardboard sandable and have at it. Or not.


Started looking at why my telemetry links were not working as intended.

I was getting no picture on the TV from my video feed. Quick look with a scope confirmed it was PAL and not NTSC like the TV was reporting. Reset the TV and now it us picking it up as PAL and displaying it correctly. Odd behaviour by the TV, the last unit in the chain.
Jeez, man, if that were any simpler you'd just have had to plug it in.
 
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