I while back I was trying to decide how to store my rockets. For the moment my focus is LPR, and my system is designed accordingly. After not all that much thinking, I came up on a system that I kind of like. Thought I'd share.
While in an Ace Hardware, I discovered this guy:
That is a 5/8" PVC coupler, $0.39. Never saw one in Home Depot but they have a nice bin full at Ace. I subsequently noticed that the coupler fits quite nicely (and not too surprisingly) on a 5/8" hardwood dowel. Or, maybe the dowel needs a wrap of tape for a snug fit.
A 5/8" dowel is, of course, just about the right size (with a wrap or three of tape) for an 18mm engine mount. And so, I started to epoxy these couplers to various things. I got a little round plaque from Michael's for a buck, stuck some rubber feet on the bottom and glued my coupler on top. For $1.50, that's my "nice" stand, which I can use for beauty shots:
To take to launches, I glued a bunch onto a nice heavy piece of melamine shelving.
This guy will hold 6 rockets pretty securely on a table at a launch.
For an 18mm model, I don't need much more than a ~4" piece of dowel, with enough tape wrap to make a good fit in the engine mount. For some reason I'm enamored with using foil tape.
Stick one end in the rocket, and the other in a stand. I also put a notch in the dowel to accommodate an engine hook.
For a 24mm model, throw a spent engine on the end and we're good.
For my Astron Elliptic II, a 13mm model with an engine block in the back *and* front, I needed a custom size. So I found a dowel size that fit and glued it to a short stub of 5/8" dowel:
It works nicely:
So the point of the whole thing is, my various stands are motor-mount agnostic. For each rocket, I take about 3 minutes and cut and/or assemble (as necessary) a dowel for it, and keep that with the rocket. Then I can stick it into whichever stand is appropriate at the time. 13mm, 18mm, 24mm, custom, whatever.
My eventual plan, which has not yet come to fruition, was to glue a zillion of these guys to a 6" shelf hung from my pegboard. I stopped short of doing that because I couldn't decide if I wanted the locations to be pre-determined. So for now I have three rockets on my *previous* launch board and I just clamped that launch board to the shelf. Final arrangement is TBD.
So that's basically it. Nothing fancy, nothing special, but dirt cheap and easy and flexible. For rockets that can stand on their own, you don't necessarily need anything like this, but because I don't have much depth, the stands hold the rockets very securely and I don't have to worry about them getting knocked off a shallow shelf. I can store some on the pegboard horizontally, but once I work out the details properly I'll be able to store them more densely on the stands because I can get almost 2-deep, even on a shallow shelf. Eventually I'll almost certainly end up using a combination of both.
This system is not really suitable for larger and/or heavier rockets, but that's not an issue for me right now.
While in an Ace Hardware, I discovered this guy:
That is a 5/8" PVC coupler, $0.39. Never saw one in Home Depot but they have a nice bin full at Ace. I subsequently noticed that the coupler fits quite nicely (and not too surprisingly) on a 5/8" hardwood dowel. Or, maybe the dowel needs a wrap of tape for a snug fit.
A 5/8" dowel is, of course, just about the right size (with a wrap or three of tape) for an 18mm engine mount. And so, I started to epoxy these couplers to various things. I got a little round plaque from Michael's for a buck, stuck some rubber feet on the bottom and glued my coupler on top. For $1.50, that's my "nice" stand, which I can use for beauty shots:
To take to launches, I glued a bunch onto a nice heavy piece of melamine shelving.
This guy will hold 6 rockets pretty securely on a table at a launch.
For an 18mm model, I don't need much more than a ~4" piece of dowel, with enough tape wrap to make a good fit in the engine mount. For some reason I'm enamored with using foil tape.
Stick one end in the rocket, and the other in a stand. I also put a notch in the dowel to accommodate an engine hook.
For a 24mm model, throw a spent engine on the end and we're good.
For my Astron Elliptic II, a 13mm model with an engine block in the back *and* front, I needed a custom size. So I found a dowel size that fit and glued it to a short stub of 5/8" dowel:
It works nicely:
So the point of the whole thing is, my various stands are motor-mount agnostic. For each rocket, I take about 3 minutes and cut and/or assemble (as necessary) a dowel for it, and keep that with the rocket. Then I can stick it into whichever stand is appropriate at the time. 13mm, 18mm, 24mm, custom, whatever.
My eventual plan, which has not yet come to fruition, was to glue a zillion of these guys to a 6" shelf hung from my pegboard. I stopped short of doing that because I couldn't decide if I wanted the locations to be pre-determined. So for now I have three rockets on my *previous* launch board and I just clamped that launch board to the shelf. Final arrangement is TBD.
So that's basically it. Nothing fancy, nothing special, but dirt cheap and easy and flexible. For rockets that can stand on their own, you don't necessarily need anything like this, but because I don't have much depth, the stands hold the rockets very securely and I don't have to worry about them getting knocked off a shallow shelf. I can store some on the pegboard horizontally, but once I work out the details properly I'll be able to store them more densely on the stands because I can get almost 2-deep, even on a shallow shelf. Eventually I'll almost certainly end up using a combination of both.
This system is not really suitable for larger and/or heavier rockets, but that's not an issue for me right now.
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