What did you do rocket wise today?

Ted Curtis said:

My brother saw it, told me I should have used the bronze on the whole rocket, He's right.

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Or mostly right. I recommend the dark blue or black on the strakes. Just my opinion, but I think black (or dark) trim on the bronze would would rock.

Andrew_ASC said:

Gotta get my rockets outta storage and move to Jonesboro AR soon.

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Move? Does that mean you landed a job?

I'll just let this clamp while I'm at work

Finally finished my and my sweetheart's Mega Der Red Maxes. Guess which one is hers! These were made with Estes' recent offering of MDRM nose cones and slotted tubes. ERockets provided the centering rings (ply) and fin sets. Weight without engine and laundry is only just shy of 23 ounces (Estes' kit weight is about 31 ounces w/o engine!). Decals from Mark at Stickershock.

jqavins said:

Move? Does that mean you landed a job?

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Yeah mechanical engineer design entry level at Hytrol.

Well, I don't know if that's what you wanted, but congratulations all the same. It's high time, and I"m sure they're getting more than their money's worth.

Drank coffee from my new mug.

Flyfalcons said:

Drank coffee from my new mug.

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I got one of those after the cape tour during NARCon too!

This is going to be simultaneously tedious and satisfying...

Looking at data from my first Eggtimer Proton flight.

jlabrasca said:

This is going to be simultaneously tedious and satisfying...

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That looks interesting!

@Charles_McG The VAccel data looks pretty good: Booster motor burnout at ~1.8 s, coast to ~3 s, and then sustainer motor lit at ~3 s for a short 1 s burn. The FAlt appears to have a few hiccups (surely the rocket wasn't falling at any points between 2 and 5 s), but maxes out nicely around 1800 ft. The FVeloc, on the other hand, is all over the place. What do you make of it?

I'm curious because I'm planning a two stage flight using an Eggtimer Proton this weekend.

BDB said:

@Charles_McG The VAccel data looks pretty good: Booster motor burnout at ~1.8 s, coast to ~3 s, and then sustainer motor lit at ~3 s for a short 1 s burn. The FAlt appears to have a few hiccups (surely the rocket wasn't falling at any points between 2 and 5 s), but maxes out nicely around 1800 ft. The FVeloc, on the other hand, is all over the place. What do you make of it?

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I'm waiting to hear from @cerving about some of the data calculated from the accelerometer.
I thought the accelerometer captured the motor profiles beautifully - though to be precise, you'd have to back out the drag.

I have found the Quantum to be sensitive to events, and the Proton looks the same. It looks like I'm not adequately shielding the avbay from pressure changes at the bottom of the rocket.

If you blow up my graphs, I overlaid various events with markers at the altitude. VMax (booster burnout) is at 1.48s. The discontinuities in FilterAltitude (FAlt) are mostly at Channel2 (2.36s, separation charge, programmed for 2.0s), Channel1 (2.76s, sustainer ignition, programmed for 2.4s) and the sustainer motor burnout. This was a G78 BlueStreak to E22 SmokeySam. The little E22 was nicely visible, but barely made it above the drag at ignition. Doesn't bode well for my planned G115 to F10 flight

The free fall acceleration looks reasonable -34fpss.

The OR sim acceleration looks just like this graph - very fun. OR predicted about 1900'. I got about 1740'. OR predicted staging at about 500', the flight data says about 800'. So the booster overperformed and the sustainer underperformed.

My main concern is the VelocityfromAccelerometer (VAccel). It just plain looks low to me - and it makes the AltitudefromAccelerometer (AltAccel) bend over and head down well before the baro data - in the part of the flight I'd trust the baro the most. I played with the data in Excel and tweaking the VAccel fixes the AltAccel. I haven't double-checked to see if I had the Baro/Accel crosscheck on, but if this is typical, it would need to be a wide window.

I had some trouble on the pad with the Proton, but figured out with about 4 tries. I would do the horizontal calibration, put the the rocket upright and then refresh the iPhone browser to see the vertical reading. And it would recalibrate and send the reading to 0. (Should be 1.) My workaround was to go to setting and back. That would show me the current value without accidently triggering an improper calibration.

I painted the rocket I'm going to fly at NXRS for my Level 3 certification flight. It's a scratch built, 4" blue tube rocket.

"Princess Fluffy Pants"

chuck5395 said:

I painted the rocket I'm going to fly at NXRS for my Level 3 certification flight. It's a scratch built, 4" blue tube rocket.

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Very nice, I could see a couple of gold sequins glittering on there.

Ordered my first L2 motor a J250W.

I got my Tripoli shirt!!!!!

Gerald said:

Today I was reworking my 1/200 scale Estes Saturn V. The idiots at Estes say it flies on a "C" engine of theirs, NOPE. It goes up about 80 feet ! I am modifying it to accept Estes "D" engines. I suggest everyone that has this rocket do this if you want any kind of decent flight. The model is sold already overweight for the recommended engine, and the flight is abysmal. I have attached several photo's of how easy it is to do, and I am going to add a couple of squares of clay to the front section to offset the weight of the bigger engine. View attachment 383956 View attachment 383957 View attachment 383958 View attachment 383959 View attachment 383960 View attachment 383961 View attachment 383962 View attachment 383963

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Thanks for working this out. Was wondering about this on a C motor. Why?

NSL 2019 family photo. Hard to get these to sit still together long enough for a photo.
https://bit.ly/teamshotokurockets

Andrew_ASC said:

Yeah mechanical engineer design entry level at Hytrol.

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Great! Congratulations![emoji323]

Andrew_ASC said:

View attachment 384911 I got my Tripoli shirt!!!!!

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Woot!

Worked on the Madcow Avalance today, drew some lines and drilled some holes. Installed LumaDyne inserts with rocketpoxy colored white to match.

Good news: half of my PVC nosecone coupler is sanded down and fits in the shoulder cap. I'll do the female half tomorrow night

Bad news: my balcony is now covered in white powder, and it ain't winter.

Printed the first of 2 new brackets for my 29mm launch tower. I had to sacrifice my old one for parts in the field at Delamar last year and I’m just now getting around to making a new one. Twenty two hours & about 0.4kg to print this one.

jeffjblack said:

Hard to get these to sit still together long enough for a photo.

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Just like most family photos.

Put the painted components of my Madcow Nike Apache together for the first time and realized it's pretty cool. So now I need to see if I can get it ready for the launch this weekend. The avbay in the sustainer is mandatory, the avbay in the interstage coupler is not. So I'll be starting with the sustainer avbay.

Received the replacement nose cone and parachute for Der Mega Red Max that got sacrificed to the NY Powerline gods... Sanded and primered yesterday, will paint today- also will finish painting the LOC Precision EZE, now named for my sweetie Louine...

Finished gluing the fins on MAHCOD, my newest scratch build. Designed to fly on anything from an 18mm (with adapter) B motor through a 24mm F motor.

More rocket joinery

MMT for BT60 Black Hole. I can start attaching the fins tomorrow using my clever new fin jig from SMT Designs.
Also made some progress on the Eggfinder LCD receiver