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John Taylor said:
Got the info from the guy at Estes who designed it. I was presuming it was with an Estes E motor installed. When I get home I will check the CG on the rocket completely loaded and retext. It will be after 11:00 pm cent. time as I work late.
Thanks for the help. I need to start reading my messages before I send them.
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Name is John Boren with Estes. Curious thing, he said he doesn't use or trust any of the simulation programs, he just test flies them to test stability.
 
John Taylor said:
Name is John Boren with Estes. Curious thing, he said he doesn't use or trust any of the simulation programs, he just test flies them to test stability.
Click to expand...
Well, when you're John Boren you can pretty much do what you want an no one's gonna argue. ;)

That said, I do recall John saying in the past that Estes had a particular (and pretty conservative) stability margin target; that suggests that sim programs are involved in some way. For some extremely complex designs (of which John has created plenty) the sims probably aren't reliable in any case,
 
Tomorrow's the last leg of my drive home from BALLs. Yesterday I stopped in Fort Collins, then north to Quebec01, a former missile base. You get to go down 50ft underground and see where these poor b*stards had to live and work, said work having the potential for a catastrophic effect on the human race. Not a happy thought. I can't imagine knowing that if I have to flip that switch and push that button, millions---possibly billions---of people will die.

Best -- Terry
 
Day 3 of messing with my brothers CriCut Maker cutting fin guides from 1.5mm chipboard and fins from 1/16th balsa. Its been a learning experience, with a bit of practice its easy enough to cut the items out after designing them using the Design Space web based tools. The main reason for this project is to make cutting parts for my kids LPR rockets easier on me. So far it takes about 20 minutes to cut 24 elliptical fins approximately 1.25" root with a span of 1.5", I also found that pre-papering with self adhesive label paper seems to help with soft balsa tearing out really badly, and it takes a step out of the construction process later (do all 24 fins at once instead of one at a time).
 
rharshberger said:
Day 3 of messing with my brothers CriCut Maker cutting fin guides from 1.5mm chipboard and fins from 1/16th balsa. Its been a learning experience, with a bit of practice its easy enough to cut the items out after designing them using the Design Space web based tools. The main reason for this project is to make cutting parts for my kids LPR rockets easier on me. So far it takes about 20 minutes to cut 24 elliptical fins approximately 1.25" root with a span of 1.5", I also found that pre-papering with self adhesive label paper seems to help with soft balsa tearing out really badly, and it takes a step out of the construction process later (do all 24 fins at once instead of one at a time).
Click to expand...

How is the chipboard working for you. Are you trying the Cricut chipboard, or a more generic? I tried a 'generic' on my Ender 5 w/drag knife, but it would only do a light first pass before gouging in and tearing out.
 
Charles_McG said:
How is the chipboard working for you. Are you trying the Cricut chipboard, or a more generic? I tried a 'generic' on my Ender 5 w/drag knife, but it would only do a light first pass before gouging in and tearing out.
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I've had the same problem with generic chipboard. What I've done for fin guides is 2 layers of 24pt cardstock laminated together after cutting. Works well. I also design them in CAD because it's a bit more precise.
 
Charles_McG said:
How is the chipboard working for you. Are you trying the Cricut chipboard, or a more generic? I tried a 'generic' on my Ender 5 w/drag knife, but it would only do a light first pass before gouging in and tearing out.
Click to expand...

Charles, the chipboard I was using the most was 1.5mm which is equivalent to CriCut Damask Chipboard, or at least that's the setting I used to cut it. Probably the most important part of the process was keeping the chipboard secured to the mat because the last couple of passes there is so much drag resistance it actually will pop the whole board loose from the mat, so I just used blue masking tape all the way around the edges of the chipboard. I also used smaller sections of chipboard so that the star rollers would not engage any area being cut (the can be slid around on their bar as needed). My chipboard was source from one of the local Craft Warehouse location and it was in the scrapbook aisle. It was still necessary on some parts to use a hobby knife to cut the final sections. The picture below shows some of the parts cut. The Wizard, and Cherokee D fin were cut from slightly denser 1/16" balsa than the two elliptical fins and cut pretty nicely. The papered elliptical fin is also the 1/16th material but was kind of "squishy" balsa so it would tear out, pre papering the the material before cutting prevented most tear out except a small amount along the root edge and that could have been eliminated by separating the adjacent cut for another fins root edge. The fin guides are show from each side of the cut, the top one is the how you would see it in the machine, the bottom one is mat side up (side stuck to the mat). One thing I would change is the cut outs at the base of the fin to allow clearance for glue from a square to a angled cut due to that was where most of the failure to fully cut through was.
Edit: the bottom elliptical fin is 3/32" balsa and was also a bit on the squishy side. The 6" wide balsa I was using seem to be made up of thinner strips glued together along a common edge.

CriCut Maker cut parts.jpg
 
Packed recovery devices last night and prepped my fleet for launch this weekend. Weather predictions keep fluctuating, but if the weather permits, I'll be flying tests with my scratch built payload bay for the first time.
 
Got my copy of the Sept/Oct issue of Sport Rocketry magazine yesterday. There is a picture of the Langfords and Bill Stine at the Estes booth at TARC 2019, with various models on the table. A PSII Prowler, Ascender, Majestic, Boosted Bertha, LJ II, Sat V...….
And this gem:
atlas.png

Is a Mercury Atlas re-issue coming soon? One can only hope!
Laters.
 
Tested my Firefly altimeter this morning with a modified Estes Viking. Best apogee was 1,249ft on a B6-6.
IMG_20190928_103745.jpg
 

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