What I did today -instead- of Rocketry.

SilicdyneTRF
Wildman Rocketry
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Joekeyo said:
A gravel yard is no silver bullet. My yard is gravel underlain with black plastic. Weeds appear that need to pulled or sprayed. If there are trees around leaves need to be raked. If you choose not to do this your gravel yard will look pretty bad. Based on my experience, the gravel yard requires less maintenance but it is not a free pass.
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Yeah, I kinda figured. Maybe a condo would be a better alternative... :dontknow:
 
Was in the middle of a move to a new home. Picking up some miscellaneous items from my daughter's house and all of a sudden car started lurching and surging. Had to have it towed. Wasted a day so far at my daughter's house out in the country. Kinda nice really. Anyway dealership is giving me a loaner (van) today. They think the transmission went south. Never had one problem with my car in nearly 5 years. Nice thing is Chrysler 300S AWD has 5 year, 100K warranty. Although I bought it as a dealer car with miles, original purchase date was in May 2015, so am under warranty @ the 59 month mark (only has 54K miles).
 
Are you fellas seriously buying 1 pound boxes of FAI Tan for rocket shock cords?

I have 12 boxes of the stuff in various widths from back in my AMA and FAI Free Flight days. Stored it in the hall closet, dark and air conditioned for at least 20 years. Not sure I’d want to use it in a balsa stick and tissue fuselage these days but as shock cord, it should work fine.

It would probably work fine in a modern carbon fiber fuselage Wake (F1B) or Coupe (F1G) bird as a test motor.
 
Started fitting a Mopar towbar to the Jeep. The car looks a bit rough now with the bumper, wheel arch trims and taillights hanging off. Have managed to not break anything yet, including the silly plastic clips they use to hold things in place.

Also set up a laptop for my wife to work from home. She works for three educational establishments and, of course, they all use different software for online teaching :(.
 
mbeels said:
That looks great! Where did you get the plans? I've got an urge to build more rubber powered airplanes, and a box of FAI TAN II to go with it.
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Thanks Beels! This is the first one I've done in over a year. There is something very relaxing about building these things, I think.

Plans came from the Hip Pocket Aeronautics plan gallery. I attached the PDF below too, in case you are interested in the Heath.

https://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_plans/index.php

Tons of plans for anything from little balsa gliders to complex RC scale jobs. You need to be a HPA forum member to access the plan site, but it's free to join up and it's a good group of guys. I'm pretty sure I've seen Scigs over there too!

This is another great source for airplane plans:

https://outerzone.co.uk/

Be sure to post pics when you get started!

Hmmm, maybe we need a "shock cord powered airplane" thread! :p
 

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Mugs914 said:
Thanks Beels! This is the first one I've done in over a year. There is something very relaxing about building these things, I think.

Plans came from the Hip Pocket Aeronautics plan gallery. I attached the PDF below too, in case you are interested in the Heath.

https://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_plans/index.php

Tons of plans for anything from little balsa gliders to complex RC scale jobs. You need to be a HPA forum member to access the plan site, but it's free to join up and it's a good group of guys. I'm pretty sure I've seen Scigs over there too!

This is another great source for airplane plans:

https://outerzone.co.uk/

Be sure to post pics when you get started!

Hmmm, maybe we need a "shock cord powered airplane" thread! :p
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Don’t forget to check Hummingbird Model Products.

Very fine scale models from the Golden Age.

Kits usually come with printed detail covering tissue.

Not sure of the current website address. Owner has moved back to the UK and I don’t know if he changed hi s domain name.

Try Facebook. He was very active in the balsa scale modeling groups.

Edit: Business name corrected. Can be found on Facebook and Google.
 
Mugs914 said:
Thanks Beels! This is the first one I've done in over a year. There is something very relaxing about building these things, I think.

Plans came from the Hip Pocket Aeronautics plan gallery. I attached the PDF below too, in case you are interested in the Heath.

https://www.hippocketaeronautics.com/hpa_plans/index.php

Tons of plans for anything from little balsa gliders to complex RC scale jobs. You need to be a HPA forum member to access the plan site, but it's free to join up and it's a good group of guys. I'm pretty sure I've seen Scigs over there too!

This is another great source for airplane plans:

https://outerzone.co.uk/

Be sure to post pics when you get started!

Hmmm, maybe we need a "shock cord powered airplane" thread! :p
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Thanks for the links! I'll check them out. The last one I built was a centerfold plan pulled out of a Flying Models magazine, the "Born Loser". Flies lovely lazy circles.

https://www.flying-models.com/centerfold/fm_centerfold_aug2010.php
 
o1d_dude said:
Don’t forget to check Hummingbird Model Products.

Very fine scale models from the Golden Age.

Kits usually come with printed detail covering tissue.

Not sure of the current website address. Owner has moved back to the UK and I don’t know if he changed hi s domain name.

Try Facebook. He was very active in the balsa scale modeling groups.

Edit: Business name corrected. Can be found on Facebook and Google.
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Thanks for the tip Dude, I'm not familiar with Hummingbird, but I'll sure look them up.

I'm amazed by the popularity of free flight in the UK. They have a whole different approach than we do here, it seems.
 
o1d_dude said:
Are you fellas seriously buying 1 pound boxes of FAI Tan for rocket shock cords?

I have 12 boxes of the stuff in various widths from back in my AMA and FAI Free Flight days. Stored it in the hall closet, dark and air conditioned for at least 20 years. Not sure I’d want to use it in a balsa stick and tissue fuselage these days but as shock cord, it should work fine.

It would probably work fine in a modern carbon fiber fuselage Wake (F1B) or Coupe (F1G) bird as a test motor.
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@o1d_dude I bought a 1/4# box of 3/16" wide FAI Tan which is 80' of rubber. I'm going halvsies with a friend of mine.
 
o1d_dude said:
Stored it in the hall closet, dark and air conditioned
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Have you tested these? I had a bag of rubber bands in a drawer (air conditioned house) for a prolonged period. They worked fine when new. Now about 1/2 of them break when I use them. The conclusion I've come to is that the material degrades after time even with minimum exposure to light and moisture. Easy enough to test.
 
Moved into a new house. Well boxes and furniture moved into the garage for disinfecting. Then disinfected whole house, no, that's wrong, bottom floor. All the extra room upstairs can wait. Anyway, tired of disinfecting. Will let sit and start unboxing and assembling tomorrow.
 
Greg Furtman said:
@o1d_dude I bought a 1/4# box of 3/16" wide FAI Tan which is 80' of rubber. I'm going halvsies with a friend of mine.
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Not recommended to use any type of elastic (Except lightweight model rockets, NEVER on high power, failure is extremely dangerous.) Rocket sections will spring back onto each other often causing severe damage anyway. Use braided nylon or kevlar only, with length at least 3-4 times the rocket length.
 
Mugs914 said:
Hummingbird website. Great looking stuff!

https://hummingbirdmodelproducts.com/
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https://www.wind-it-up.com -- they have been kitting and reissuing the Peck Polymers models.


The box I might get to when working-from-home stops kicking my ass.

20200409_073753.jpg

I got the Zero (just visible near the bottom of the pile) from an eBay seller about a year before the reissue came out. It was part of a lot with an almost-complete Gipsy Moth kit, and a couple of SIG kits.

I am trying to decide whether cutting the pieces out of the print wood would be an entertaining exercise in nostalgia, or if it would be as tiresome and unrewarding as it was when I was 11 years old.

I still have my 5:1 winder, but I have been reading up on electrifying peanut scale models.
 
Checked on my sugar snap peas after last night's hailstorm. Thank goodness it was only a little hail, mostly rain, and no tornado. A few were hurt but most are fine.

Also worked on an occasional column I plan to submit to the local paper: "Real Science". Provides factual and verifiable info; if I include an opinion, I say so. So far I've got "Microwave Myths", "Keeping Cool With Chemistry" "Radiation: It's EVERYWHERE! (But no worries...)", "It's Not Your Daddy's Pyrex".
 
prfesser said:
Checked on my sugar snap peas after last night's hailstorm. Thank goodness it was only a little hail, mostly rain, and no tornado. A few were hurt but most are fine.

Also worked on an occasional column I plan to submit to the local paper: "Real Science". Provides factual and verifiable info; if I include an opinion, I say so. So far I've got "Microwave Myths", "Keeping Cool With Chemistry" "Radiation: It's EVERYWHERE! (But no worries...)", "It's Not Your Daddy's Pyrex".
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Bad hail storm here last night. Came through about 8:30 last night and by 10AM today I still have piles of hail in my yard in the shaded areas.
 
Tried to remember how I kept my glasses from fogging up when my job required a face cover.
 
beeblebrox said:
Not recommended to use any type of elastic (Except lightweight model rockets, NEVER on high power, failure is extremely dangerous.) Rocket sections will spring back onto each other often causing severe damage anyway. Use braided nylon or kevlar only, with length at least 3-4 times the rocket length.
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@beeblebrox This stuff is for LPRs. I used braided nylon tubing on my HPRs.
 

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