Short version: L2 cert flight upcoming with a cardboard rocket.
I guarantee there are plenty of flyers out there who'd like to move up in the HPR world, but the cost of building a fiberglass rocket may be staggering to some of them. But it doesn't have to be that way...
An old flyer from the 90's is being resurrected here, made in standard LOC tube. I'm documenting it, partly to keep my ADHD self from falling too far behind on it. I'm also documenting it for those who are concerned that Level 2 flights require the toughest and most expensive products to be successful. There's not going to be anything cutting edge here, quite the opposite. Just a simple, 3FNC. It will be about as inexpensive as I can make it, and it won't be a fast and furious flight. But as a 3", 5-pound rocket on a small J-motor, it won't be especially low and slow, either. At least not for an east coast flight.
First, a little history on the original:
A 3"/38mm cardboard and plywood rocket, it was the first one I had "designed" myself and was my first scratch built. Made from a single length of LOC tubing. It was built quickly and with parts I had on hand simply to have something new for the next launch. I was bored with what I had. On hand items were one full length of 3" tube, a length of 38mm tube, a piece of 1/4" birch ply for fins and 3/8" hardware ply for centering rings. Oh, and one can of paint. White. Nosecone, recovery, etc was borrowed from another rocket.
Named* "Floyd", it turned out to be a predictable and consistent flyer. Easily handling the 38mm motors for which I had cases (Aerotech only), I had to get the 720Ns case for the "new" J350 to push it further. After a couple of those flights, Floyd became my first rocket with dual deployment, using a Black Sky AltAcc. From inception and throughout it's rocket life, Floyd was a learning tool for me to try new ideas on. It evolved, and eventually ended up with a 54mm MMT with an odd shock cord attachment, glassed airframe, G10 fins, and a mach flyer on J800T according to wRasp. That J800T flight was it's last, as I forgot to arm the altimeter. There was no electronic data to retrieve. However, there was quite a bit of mechanical data in the trash bag.
I only have two pictures of Floyd. One is the short first version in frumpy white that I didn't like in the least. It almost didn't get taken out in public. This look only for lasted a couple of flights, when it had proven itself worth keeping.
The other is this fuzzy picture in flight, which a friend found in SOAR's website, and is the longer version of 38mm Floyd in black.
After rebooting my flight status last year, it's time to get L2 certified again. Having gone through several bouts of indecision on which project/rocket to use, I came to the conclusion it would only be proper to rebuild Floyd. That had been my intention for the last 20 years anyway, so let it be written!
OK, so I've actually already started the build at this point and some of this has been posted elsewhere, but we'll see about catching up and continuing here on the process.
I started with vintage VCP printouts from the originals, which were used for measurements, along with info from the 1st picture above.
This was transferred into Open Rocket. After recreating the 2 originals shown, the longer version was modified a little and adapted as the new 2021 resurrection.
There are two main deviations from the original- I'm using a 54mm motor mount because the suppliers I was buying other parts from didn't have a full-length 38mm tube. And I'm using G10 fins because the plywood I had wasn't straight enough, and there really wasn't time to keep messing around with it. (I won't buy plywood for fins without laying eyes on it first, and there's no place around here that stocks it.)
So here's the preliminary OR image ready for construction:
This is about 5" shorter the original, and that's because one of the body tubes was received with a shipper's ding right in the middle. Not a big deal, I only needed about 18", so I didn't bother getting another.
After estimating weights and lengths, etc, this looked about right, so it was time to make some parts...
*At the time, I had recently attended LDRS (XV?) in Orangeburg. I noticed the number of menacing rocket names, like "Fear This", "The Flying Pyramid of Death", and such. After a couple of days hearing that, I tired of it. So this rocket was given a name as if a member of the family, and I chose Floyd after "Floyd the Barber" because he was the opposite of a menacing, evil threat to humanity.
I guarantee there are plenty of flyers out there who'd like to move up in the HPR world, but the cost of building a fiberglass rocket may be staggering to some of them. But it doesn't have to be that way...
An old flyer from the 90's is being resurrected here, made in standard LOC tube. I'm documenting it, partly to keep my ADHD self from falling too far behind on it. I'm also documenting it for those who are concerned that Level 2 flights require the toughest and most expensive products to be successful. There's not going to be anything cutting edge here, quite the opposite. Just a simple, 3FNC. It will be about as inexpensive as I can make it, and it won't be a fast and furious flight. But as a 3", 5-pound rocket on a small J-motor, it won't be especially low and slow, either. At least not for an east coast flight.
First, a little history on the original:
A 3"/38mm cardboard and plywood rocket, it was the first one I had "designed" myself and was my first scratch built. Made from a single length of LOC tubing. It was built quickly and with parts I had on hand simply to have something new for the next launch. I was bored with what I had. On hand items were one full length of 3" tube, a length of 38mm tube, a piece of 1/4" birch ply for fins and 3/8" hardware ply for centering rings. Oh, and one can of paint. White. Nosecone, recovery, etc was borrowed from another rocket.
Named* "Floyd", it turned out to be a predictable and consistent flyer. Easily handling the 38mm motors for which I had cases (Aerotech only), I had to get the 720Ns case for the "new" J350 to push it further. After a couple of those flights, Floyd became my first rocket with dual deployment, using a Black Sky AltAcc. From inception and throughout it's rocket life, Floyd was a learning tool for me to try new ideas on. It evolved, and eventually ended up with a 54mm MMT with an odd shock cord attachment, glassed airframe, G10 fins, and a mach flyer on J800T according to wRasp. That J800T flight was it's last, as I forgot to arm the altimeter. There was no electronic data to retrieve. However, there was quite a bit of mechanical data in the trash bag.
I only have two pictures of Floyd. One is the short first version in frumpy white that I didn't like in the least. It almost didn't get taken out in public. This look only for lasted a couple of flights, when it had proven itself worth keeping.
The other is this fuzzy picture in flight, which a friend found in SOAR's website, and is the longer version of 38mm Floyd in black.
After rebooting my flight status last year, it's time to get L2 certified again. Having gone through several bouts of indecision on which project/rocket to use, I came to the conclusion it would only be proper to rebuild Floyd. That had been my intention for the last 20 years anyway, so let it be written!
OK, so I've actually already started the build at this point and some of this has been posted elsewhere, but we'll see about catching up and continuing here on the process.
I started with vintage VCP printouts from the originals, which were used for measurements, along with info from the 1st picture above.
This was transferred into Open Rocket. After recreating the 2 originals shown, the longer version was modified a little and adapted as the new 2021 resurrection.
There are two main deviations from the original- I'm using a 54mm motor mount because the suppliers I was buying other parts from didn't have a full-length 38mm tube. And I'm using G10 fins because the plywood I had wasn't straight enough, and there really wasn't time to keep messing around with it. (I won't buy plywood for fins without laying eyes on it first, and there's no place around here that stocks it.)
So here's the preliminary OR image ready for construction:
This is about 5" shorter the original, and that's because one of the body tubes was received with a shipper's ding right in the middle. Not a big deal, I only needed about 18", so I didn't bother getting another.
After estimating weights and lengths, etc, this looked about right, so it was time to make some parts...
*At the time, I had recently attended LDRS (XV?) in Orangeburg. I noticed the number of menacing rocket names, like "Fear This", "The Flying Pyramid of Death", and such. After a couple of days hearing that, I tired of it. So this rocket was given a name as if a member of the family, and I chose Floyd after "Floyd the Barber" because he was the opposite of a menacing, evil threat to humanity.
.
Now it's time to watch the P's and Q's a bit with a cardboard rocket. Those sims are a little faster and higher than a gut-check approves for a cert flight. Most of those are over 600mph, pretty much 0.8 mach and up. Out of all those, only 3 are below 600mph, and two of those slow flights are well over 5000'.
