What did you do rocket wise today?

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More finalizing and decal work, most of the rockets from my recent time off will be ready to fly this weekend. All are color coated but two are still missing their decals (forgot to print them, and some forgot to reverse image one fin, oops).
 
Cleaned the parts on my Go Devil 38 kit, and realized that the included fin guides are way off. They aren't even close to correct, so I am printing a set of guides now. I'll drop Madcow an email, but this being a RW kit I don't know how much direct control they have over production.
 
Read through the forums. Got told I'm being laid off in 10 weeks (company rearrangement) so I'm not spending $. Have to get caught up with 3 months worth of more important things from while I was away before I hit the build/paint pile.
 
Got up at O'Dark-thirty on Thursday morning and hit the road for ECRM44 in Maryland! Stayed Thursday night at my GF's sisters house in NC, and drove in to Frederick, MD, yesterday. Hoping the weather holds out for today and tomorrow. Going to be fun either way.
 
Also finished my Pemberton Bucky Jones

Only the central tube is active....
I had a friend 3D print the vanes instead of the balsa ones that would have just snapped off

BuckyFull.jpg BuckyRear.jpg BuckyVane.jpg
 
Got up at O'Dark-thirty on Thursday morning and hit the road for ECRM44 in Maryland! Stayed Thursday night at my GF's sisters house in NC, and drove in to Frederick, MD, yesterday. Hoping the weather holds out for today and tomorrow. Going to be fun either way.

While in Frederick I will recommend the Cream of Crab soup and Fillet Oscar at Dutch's Daughter if you don't already have dinner plans...spendy, but worth it.
 
While in Frederick I will recommend the Cream of Crab soup and Fillet Oscar at Dutch's Daughter if you don't already have dinner plans...spendy, but worth it.

Thanks, I'll look into it. I was asking a few people for dinner recommendations at the launch and nobody could remember the names of anything. Lol! I just hope it doesn't require getting too dressy. We didn't pack any dress clothes, just casual.
 
Thanks, I'll look into it. I was asking a few people for dinner recommendations at the launch and nobody could remember the names of anything. Lol! I just hope it doesn't require getting too dressy. We didn't pack any dress clothes, just casual.

I usually go jeans and a polo, sometimes even a Tshirt. Just ask to sit "In the Dungeon"...it is a more casual bar area downstairs, but still has the full menu. My wife is from nearby Jefferson, MD, so we always go out to Dutch's Daughter when visiting family.
 
Discovered that my FG Mini-Frenzy can deal some abuse mainly to my Jolly Logic Alt3, the pictures below show the damage I discovered after opening the case. The Alt3 was padded with a nomex chute protector in the nose cone bay of the rocket, and it still got damaged. The flight was more sideways than up (764' alt and 2000' sideways, but recovery was perfect), I think the piston (rocket was modded for a piston)slammed into the bottom of the NC and the sudden acceleration slammed the Alt3 still in its protector into the tip resulting in damage. This was the first, only, and maybe last flight for this altimeter, no other parts suffered damage on this flight. The motor was a G40W that chuffed a bit on the rail and caused the 6' rail to end up being more like a 3' rail and it really needed all 6'. The second flight was on a G79W and was perfect other than the piston again was a bit too energetic and opened one of the stock eyes on the av-bay, I will be ordering some new forged ones and ditching the piston here after.

The battery, LCD, and the circuit board all received some kind of damage. The battery is both crushed on the end with the wires and the black lead separated from the plug. The LCD and Case were both broken, and the one chip in the picture broke free of the board (I might be able to solder it back on...maybe).

RHarshbergerJLAlt3pic1.jpg

And yes I have emailed John at Jolly Logic.

Oh yes, I also received a JL Chute Release for Fathers Day today, too bad I got it AFTER coming home from the launch...
 
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pistons generally require less bp for deployment. me I went and posted a new vid to my channel :)
Rex
 
pistons generally require less bp for deployment. me I went and posted a new vid to my channel :)
Rex

I used much less than I thought would be needed and it still turned out to be too much even after reducing it again on the second flight, ground testing did not demonstrate the that it was way too excessive as the piston lip was barely damaged and the shock cord was fully extended. I was really surprised by the damage to the Alt3, if it had been in with the laundry it would have been pulverized. I anybody has a picture of how the chip is supposed to be oriented to the board could I get it, just in case I can re-solder the chip to the board. If that works I would only need a new LCD as the case is still usable and I have an extra battery.
 
Just got home from a great weekend launch at Tri-Cities Rocketeers. Lots of great flights this weekend and I scored my personal best when I sent my Mini Frenzy up on an H210R to 3,900'. It recovered about 100 yards from the LCO table. Great weekend.
 
Got cranky at the lack of iPhone flight log apps for rocketry, so I decided to build my own.

Stumbled on Airtable, a cloud based database app with a free tier. It has Desktop and iOS clients and when I looked at the demo, would you believe it, one of the use cases was planning a rocket launch to Saturn!!

60mins later, I had almost the ALMOST PERFECT iphone enabled flight log app.

I have created a library of each of my rockets with all the relevant details you need to fill out launch cards (DIAM/CG/CP/LOW etc), includes what colour it is painted, a photo etc and I can even attach the ORK files. I can extend these records to include stuff like a motor/altitude and altitude/recovery drift table to make it easier to choose motors on the day.

When I create a launch log entry, I can choose the following from a drop down of entries in a catalogue:
a) Which of my rockets flew
b) Launch site location
c) motor used
d) recovery device used
e) altimeter fitted Y/N

I can then record altitude, windspeed, select SUCCESS or FAILURE for launch, recovery deployment and landing, add photos and any notes for the flight.

The free edition of Airtable only has 2Gb of storage, so I won't be storing videos in there..

There are a few features in Airtable that would make this a PERFECT flight log book, both of which are apparently being looked at:
1) Once they add custom report printing, I should be able to create printable flight cards to save me filling out the card ones manually. The benefit is I will be able to select the rocket from the list and have all the relevant details automatically filled out, which would be cool!
2) Once they have "Get GPS coordinates" from the iOS app, I can use it to record launch and recovery locations, which will be cool.

3) One I haven't looked into yet: It would be good to find a way to automatically transfer the Altimeter3 data file to the launch log entry from iOS. Currently, I have to email it to myself and attach from a computer when I get home, which is plenty OK by me.

All up, I am pretty happy with what a few hours work has yielded!
 
Well, this was really done yesterday. I built two of these rocket racks to use this week at URRF4:

35241929062_f0884b7442_b.jpg


I used scraps of lumber my father had at his shop, much of which was un-planed 2" x 3" hardwood that had come out of my grandfather's house years ago, as well as some 2x4 in the one not shown. The cross piece is bored with pockets for dowels; this unit has two 1-1/4" dowels for 38mm mounts (I'd have used 1-3/8" if HD stocked that size dowel), and six 1-1/8" dowels for 29mm mounts. The latter has a quite close fit, so there's little slop to allow the rocket to lean. The other unit is slightly narrower, and has three 1-1/8" and two 7/8" dowels.

The "legs" are pinned on. I used 1/2" lag bolts with a long shank (my dad's idea), threaded into the legs with the hex head cut off after the fact. The cross board has 1/2" bores for them to slide into. The whole thing breaks down into parts for transport and slips together easily.
 
I usually go jeans and a polo, sometimes even a Tshirt. Just ask to sit "In the Dungeon"...it is a more casual bar area downstairs, but still has the full menu. My wife is from nearby Jefferson, MD, so we always go out to Dutch's Daughter when visiting family.
We ended up going to a great Bavarian restaurant in Hagerstown instead, but thanks for the suggestion. Just got back in to Mobile about an hour ago.
 
Vacuumed out the van from our trip to ECRM and processed a bunch of RAW photos! (And SWMBO doesn't know it, but I stopped at HL and bought a 3FNC at 40% OFF :wink:)
 
Quick and Dirty scratch build with my son during the school holidays.

ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1498017402.537323.jpgImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1498017415.325846.jpgImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1498017424.031025.jpg
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1498017437.849047.jpg

His idea for finishing it was just to clear coat the wood/cardboard and call it:

RAKET: by IKEA...

He settled on calling it "Artemis I" and decided on blue NC/FINCAN (I'm not masking it...) and black BT middle.

I'm thinking about getting an old school Letraset so he can put its name down the BT...
 
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