Good Morning all,
Yesterday it finally happened. Cut open the bag and off we went.
The instructions want you to build the capsule first, but I decided to start with the bottom part of the rocket.
The fins were cut out and glued together quickly, although I have to say that I've seen better laser parts. A lot of energy was probably put into this. I haven't seen such black unclean edges in a long time. A bit of sandpaper helps here quickly.
When assembling the engine tube, I fortunately checked the length of the enclosed wire retainer beforehand, following an intuition, and lo and behold: the part is longer than the holders of air conditioning, whose engines I would like to fly. The original retainer was allowed to give way to the climate retainer:
Another change I made concerns the attachment of the shockcord itself. I don't really like this folding story from Estes, so I designed the shock cord attachment so that I can swap it out if something happens. A tube runs parallel to the motor tube through both frames and I can attach the shock cord to the bottom of the rocket and change it if necessary. So that nothing tears out, the tube has been given an aluminum sleeve on each of the frames.
Admittedly, the flange is quite narrow, but that should be enough, especially since the motor is still sticking out.
So much for the current status
Yesterday it finally happened. Cut open the bag and off we went.
The instructions want you to build the capsule first, but I decided to start with the bottom part of the rocket.
The fins were cut out and glued together quickly, although I have to say that I've seen better laser parts. A lot of energy was probably put into this. I haven't seen such black unclean edges in a long time. A bit of sandpaper helps here quickly.
When assembling the engine tube, I fortunately checked the length of the enclosed wire retainer beforehand, following an intuition, and lo and behold: the part is longer than the holders of air conditioning, whose engines I would like to fly. The original retainer was allowed to give way to the climate retainer:
Another change I made concerns the attachment of the shockcord itself. I don't really like this folding story from Estes, so I designed the shock cord attachment so that I can swap it out if something happens. A tube runs parallel to the motor tube through both frames and I can attach the shock cord to the bottom of the rocket and change it if necessary. So that nothing tears out, the tube has been given an aluminum sleeve on each of the frames.
Admittedly, the flange is quite narrow, but that should be enough, especially since the motor is still sticking out.
So much for the current status