timro
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2013
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Last weekend I received my L1 certification out at Snow Ranch with Lunar. Although I didn't post a build thread on the rocket for discussion along the way, it would be very fair to say that my build and overall approach to the flight was very positively impacted by the discussions I found here on TRF.
As a lurker for months, I felt a little obligated to create an account, thank you all for the indirect help, and share a little about the project :blush:
I built a LOC Athena-3 (PK-37) because I really liked the looks of it and it seemed to have a very healthy stability margin. I weighed the parts and did some minor tweaks to a rocksim file that I found and simulated with a few different motors in OpenRocket:
View attachment PK-37 LOC Athena3.ork
Most of the build was per the instructions. I attached 1010 rail buttons using wood screws to the fore and aft CRs. Motor retention is with a Madcow 29mm plate retainer which was very easy to install and use. I used titebond II for wood to cardboard adhesion and epoxy in a few other places like eyebolt nuts and shock cord mount. I did use the nylon elastic shock cord :y: and the "epoxy to the airframe" shock cord loop mount so I will have to keep an eye on that for wear and tear as time goes on. I am using a ~60" nomex shock cord protector on the lower part of the shock cord and a 3x3" nomex sheet to wrap the rest of the recovery system up. Having to do it all over again, I'd probably opt for an eyebolt on the top CR and tubular nylon shock cord. I'll definitely build my next kit that way. I opted to install three plastic rivets to hold the nose cone to the payload bay. They fit tight, but there's no way that nosecone is coming off at deployment or any other time.
Previous rockets I had built had moderately acceptable paint finishes, but I found some tips here that really worked. For the LOC nose cone, I cleaned with soapy water and then roughed up with 80 grit sandpaper. Then I hit it with two coats of rustoleum 2x gray primer and sanded almost all of the fuzz down. Then I primed it all with two more coats of primer and dry sanded to smooth with 320 grit. One last coat of primer and sanding, followed by two moderate coats of color, keeping with rustoleum 2x. Fins were masked with blue tape and painted with testors black enamel.
Decals supplied with kit applied and it was ready to fly. Of course the weather (or rather fog) didn't cooperate in December so I had to wait until January to get it out on the pad:
The rest, as they say is history, except I goofed and pressed the power button instead of the record button on the Flip video camera! Luckily my friend (he also got his L1 last Saturday) had a bead on it with his iPhone. It did so well, I had to fly it again on the same motor (at least the Flip recorded that one). For the first flight, I used a 45" chute which brought it down very slowly to avoid any chances for fin damage. The later flight I used the stock 36" which was just fine for the soft ground of a CA cattle ranch in January.
[video=youtube_share;lacBl_NZh_A]https://youtu.be/lacBl_NZh_A[/video]
So thanks again! Methinks the next time I'd better fire up a build thread. Next up in the rocket build pile are a PML 1/4 scale Patriot, Madcow DX3 and Madcow Striker. I'm planning to build the Striker as my first dual deploy kit. Order still to be determined, but no builds are happening until I get moved and have a decent garage workspace for the next one
As a lurker for months, I felt a little obligated to create an account, thank you all for the indirect help, and share a little about the project :blush:
I built a LOC Athena-3 (PK-37) because I really liked the looks of it and it seemed to have a very healthy stability margin. I weighed the parts and did some minor tweaks to a rocksim file that I found and simulated with a few different motors in OpenRocket:
View attachment PK-37 LOC Athena3.ork
Most of the build was per the instructions. I attached 1010 rail buttons using wood screws to the fore and aft CRs. Motor retention is with a Madcow 29mm plate retainer which was very easy to install and use. I used titebond II for wood to cardboard adhesion and epoxy in a few other places like eyebolt nuts and shock cord mount. I did use the nylon elastic shock cord :y: and the "epoxy to the airframe" shock cord loop mount so I will have to keep an eye on that for wear and tear as time goes on. I am using a ~60" nomex shock cord protector on the lower part of the shock cord and a 3x3" nomex sheet to wrap the rest of the recovery system up. Having to do it all over again, I'd probably opt for an eyebolt on the top CR and tubular nylon shock cord. I'll definitely build my next kit that way. I opted to install three plastic rivets to hold the nose cone to the payload bay. They fit tight, but there's no way that nosecone is coming off at deployment or any other time.
Previous rockets I had built had moderately acceptable paint finishes, but I found some tips here that really worked. For the LOC nose cone, I cleaned with soapy water and then roughed up with 80 grit sandpaper. Then I hit it with two coats of rustoleum 2x gray primer and sanded almost all of the fuzz down. Then I primed it all with two more coats of primer and dry sanded to smooth with 320 grit. One last coat of primer and sanding, followed by two moderate coats of color, keeping with rustoleum 2x. Fins were masked with blue tape and painted with testors black enamel.
Decals supplied with kit applied and it was ready to fly. Of course the weather (or rather fog) didn't cooperate in December so I had to wait until January to get it out on the pad:
The rest, as they say is history, except I goofed and pressed the power button instead of the record button on the Flip video camera! Luckily my friend (he also got his L1 last Saturday) had a bead on it with his iPhone. It did so well, I had to fly it again on the same motor (at least the Flip recorded that one). For the first flight, I used a 45" chute which brought it down very slowly to avoid any chances for fin damage. The later flight I used the stock 36" which was just fine for the soft ground of a CA cattle ranch in January.
[video=youtube_share;lacBl_NZh_A]https://youtu.be/lacBl_NZh_A[/video]
So thanks again! Methinks the next time I'd better fire up a build thread. Next up in the rocket build pile are a PML 1/4 scale Patriot, Madcow DX3 and Madcow Striker. I'm planning to build the Striker as my first dual deploy kit. Order still to be determined, but no builds are happening until I get moved and have a decent garage workspace for the next one
