Found the ELA (Equatorial Launch Australia) countdown page for the 1st NASA launch in Australia's Northern Territory, which is also Australia's first ever commercial space launch! Exciting times!
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I'm a little surprised it's not off the east coast of Cape York Peninsula, but I see there's an airport on Groote Eylandt
*, so I guess it makes sense.
* You guys are making me learn a whole bunch more Australian geography that I ever thought I would.
Back in Goodyear for a couple of weeks, doing repairs on several rockets we flew up North last month. I started building a new fincan for "Slick Willy" after a 76/6000 SS-2 motor blew the nozzle on ignition. There was enough thrust to send it up a couple hundred feet, but not high enough to engage the altimeters, so no deployment of the recovery system... "Slick Willy" will never look the same after this repair.
Ouch.
I would like to try a simple BT-70 based design with 24mm mount to launch with D12 motors. I have an Executioner and it flies reasonably well on a D12 but a little bit low, and I have BT-60 based rockets that fly on the too high side with D12. I think BT-70 would be the sweet spot.
(Likewise I think BT-55 is the sweet spot for 18mm B and C engines, or the very simplest and lightest BT-60 model.)
So now on my list is to clone a few designs to BT-55 and BT-70.
I think it's funny there seem to be so few BT-70 and BT-55 kits/builds. Even if one doesn't find them optimal for anything, they just seem to be under-utilized options.
As for BT-60 D engine rockets, you
could just add nose weight (or even nose and tail weight, if overstability is a concern) or drag elements.
Launched these two custom designs
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The first one has an experimental canard stabilization system I thought up and this is the first test...flew pretty good.
The second one is a trickster and does launch the way you see it, but it was so long since I've launched it that I got the wrong delay...no biggie. fun fun.
Please explain. Both of them. How do the canards aid stabilization, and how the heck is Der Upsidedown Maxwell stable at all?
??? (glances over at the location under your icon) Oh. Canada.
I can mentally prepare to sand 12 fins by hand. I can even enjoy it to some extent, especially if it's balsa.
What is more difficult to deal with is realizing I used a wood filler that hardens harder than balsa, having to sand THAT, and then having to start over with a balsa filler, thereby sanding the 12 fins twice.
.
Question: why apply filler before the fist sanding? Or was this the second and third? One can get bare balsa pretty darn good by going from 220 grit (only if necessary necessary) to 320 to 400. Then apply filler and sand again. Actually, I've had very good results sometimes going right from bare balsa to Rust 2X after the 400 grit, but that's not reliable.
Also took another turn as LCO. If you haven't tried it, you're missing out. It's kinda like launching your rockets except you don't have to prep or recover them.
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And you do your part to help keep things going.
What did
I do rocketwise? Over the weekend I fell way behind on this thread, and today I caught up.