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  1. cerving

    Christmas tree bulbs for testing

    Yeah, that was in the days of flashbulbs too, before ematches came along. Best to move on and use a modern reliable method of lighting charges. The nice thing about the miniature Christmas tree bulbs is that they're about the same resistance as an ematch, so if the light bulb lights you can...
  2. cerving

    Christmas tree bulbs for testing

    No, LED lights will not work the same. They are basically a diode, a near-zero resistance load in the forward direction, with some kind of much higher resistance to keep them from frying when you put current through them. Get the incandescent miniature Christmas light bulbs... you can get a...
  3. cerving

    AeroTech Open Thread

    I have a bottle of Glue All Max that I got from my local Ace hardware store nearly two years ago, and other than having to clear the dried out stuff in the nozzle (which helps keep the moisture out, so it's a good thing) it's as good as Day One. Keeping the moisture out and at room temperature...
  4. cerving

    Thoughts on Fail Safe Mode

    The idea of the Fail-Safe mode is that if the altimeter detects that you're in free-fall AFTER you fire the drogue, it will fire your main chute to prevent your rocket from coming in ballistic or nearly so. It's designed for a standard dual-break dual-deploy rocket, which is about 90% of them...
  5. cerving

    Finally Joining the Microcontroller Cult After Decades of Resisting (no pun intended)

    True, but they're pretty weak... 60K or so if my memory serves me right. If you're feeding one into an N-FET you're going to want to put a little stronger resistor from gate to source... 10K is typical.
  6. cerving

    Finally Joining the Microcontroller Cult After Decades of Resisting (no pun intended)

    Forrest Mims and Don Lancaster were my heroes back in the day. They did some awesome projects... the original TV Typewriter was one of the coolest projects ever devised. No microcontrollers back in that day... all logic gates, shift registers, and serious creativity.
  7. cerving

    Forget reusability — Concentrate on colonizing Luna

    It's only their third test flight, they don't do all-up tests. Testing incrementally is the best way to get to the ultimate objective... otherwise there's just way too many things to deal with. They will land on the Moon before Artemis... guaranteed.
  8. cerving

    When is the Starship orbital launch?

    I think if they had painted the whole thing with BBQ paint it would have been fine.
  9. cerving

    When is the Starship orbital launch?

    LOS at 65 km and 25K kph... I'd be surprised if it didn't burn up on re-entry.
  10. cerving

    When is the Starship orbital launch?

    Bring your laptop... hit a few keys once in awhile so it makes you look like you're doing something important.
  11. cerving

    Jolly Logic Chute Release

    It's a black box, about 6" x 6" x 1", with full coloring printing. One thing that John Beans does better than anybody else in the hobby rocketry avionics biz is packaging... his stuff always looks great on the shelf.
  12. cerving

    Cable internet question

    Vendor-provided routers often have a minimum of security features, and there have been a lot of hacks over the years for them. I recommend getting a good whole-house router system, such as an Orbi. Yes, they are not cheap. And no, your router will not get hacked. Any decent router...
  13. cerving

    Beeping Altimeters

    So I think I've settled on only having the new altimeter beep out battery voltage, and deployment channel error codes if they're not good. That significantly shortens the power-on to flight-ready time... it was over 90 seconds beeping out the last altitude and last maximum velocity, along with...
  14. cerving

    Blue Raven blew BP charges instantly when switched on

    A dead-short across the outputs is a failure mode that the altimeter designer should anticipate. Kudos to Adrian for mitigating this issue with his Blue Raven.
  15. cerving

    Eggtimer quantum question.

    Try Hobby King, Tower Hobbies, and Motion R/C. They specialize in different sizes and capacities of Lipo's. Get one with sizes and capacities that fit your build, and don't forget to get the matching connector pigtails too. Some of them come with connectors other than the red JST-RCY...
  16. cerving

    Need help flashing Eggfinder LCD firmware

    I wish the cabling that was supplied with the dongle had the same colors as the cable, but that's not how they're shipped... they come with varying colors. That's why the document says to map the colors to the function so you know which one is now "green", etc. Going by FUNCTION this is...
  17. cerving

    Need help flashing Eggfinder LCD firmware

    Keys to success updating the Atmel processors (Classic, TRS, LCD, EVM): If you have the USB-Serial cable, don’t use the Prolific driver that comes with Windows, it does NOT work properly. Also, the latest Prolific driver from their web site won’t work with the cable either. Instead, download...
  18. cerving

    Need help flashing Eggfinder LCD firmware

    Go to our web site and under the Support tab there's a document for the USB-Serial dongle. It uses a different driver than the cable (which is why IT works with Windows 11 and the cable DOES NOT). Read all of the hints... especially the function-to-color mapping (most of our docs were...
  19. cerving

    Can you actually use sugar/pottasium nitrate in a pvc tube or will it explode?

    yeah, there's a reason why Zn-S is not approved by Tripoli...
  20. cerving

    Blue Raven blew BP charges instantly when switched on

    Probably a front closure blowby that caught the AV bay on fire... yeah, I can see that happening at SAC. Not sure how a manufacturer-supplied LiPo would mitigate that vs. one that the team bought themselves...
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