hello. i am new. it has taken me a year to get this far.

[karl.lambley]

thanks for telling me about your home. i love to learn where new people live then look up their home to see what their life may be like. obviously being english your culture looms large in my life. before i say anything i am super aware that discussing making sugar-rockets, black powder, and that sort of thing is probably a massive NO on this site. so bearing that in mind i do like the somewhat more relaxed rules in the US about that sort of thing. for instance i would like my 26mm rockets to have a seperate ejection charge near the top, on the foreward side of my flight computer. in the US i would just drill a bolt, make (or indeed buy) some black powder and put it in the hollow bolt, initiate it electrically and use it as a gas generator to either pop of the nose and 'chute itself, or perhaps use it to drive a piston.
This sort of thing is utterly disallowed in the UK, and i have yet to find a separate ejection charge for sale.
and if by posting any of this i have fallen foul of some rule I am sorry and please remove this post for me.

 

[karl.lambley]

I would just like to reiterate I have zero interest in doing anything that may be illegal in the UK. I was just pointing out the difference in our countries. now i have poster's remorse.

 

[karl.lambley]

Welcome to the forum. Definitely an impressive year of work.

thank you. you, like everyone, have been jolly kind and welcoming. i must admit before i joined a small voice in my head said "don't show these people anything. they'll be much better at everything than you and think you're a tit". i am so pleased I ignored it.

 

[karl.lambley]

Oh, there is so much "grand" here! Slug warfare with copper wool and tape, we do the same here! And normal? What the heck is that?
But you take the cake with "The vehicle is now on internal power,"like Gene Kranz (and the countdown voice was, I believe, Jack King, referenced a couple of paragraphs into the very funny linked story). Bless your heart, I'm enjoying this so much - I'm an Apollo nut myself. I almost fear igniting another fire in your creative brain - I was considering making a miniature "countdown clock" like the one in the spectator area from Apollo days, but my goodness, I just don't have the time.

And yes - I have a very tidy wife, good with plants, who bemoans both the tumultuous state of my workshop and my choice of hobby in hilly, tree-covered Western PA.

i watched a video on YT t'other day by Fran Blanche. i have always wondered how the amazing animated and illuminated screen that filled the wall of mission control was done. she goes into it in amazing detail.
Again my Apollo fascination is a Youtube algorithm thing. I was suggested this video



I watchwd it and was fascinated. then i realised i didn't know anything about it. so i watched oodles of YT vids. then i wanted to know how orbits and celestial mechanics work. so more YT vids. then playing Kerbal Space Program. one of the proudest moments of my life was the first time i made a rocket in Kerbal, launched it to orbit, rasided orbit to the Mun, got there, landed, took off again, and returned to Kerbin.

It is an amazing program. now i can do my knowing thing test about celestial mechanics and orbits (which is try and explain it clearly to someone who knows nothing about it, and at the end have them understand. it is amazing how often people think they know something, but they don't really. i find this explanation test invaluable)

Anyway, I adore Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. I have seen more Scott Manley and Everyday Astronaut vids than I would care to admit to. (and electroBOOM, I love Medhi's teaching ability. I have learned so much from him. Oh, and Ben Eater. thanks to him i have made a CPU on breadboards from discrete components and 74 series ICs)

I can't even remember what point I was trying to make (today has been a Sauce day, I am afraid). ah that's it, Fran Blanches Apollo wall vid. this one



it was amazing seeing how it works.

 

[karl.lambley]

another achievement today. i feel like the Roman god Vulcan! i drilled a 4.2mm hole in thin copper sheet. used my new tap set from Lidl, and made a hole with a thread! i got a 5mm bolt out my collection and it screws in perfectly (well apart from not being perpendicular(i need a column drill))

i have done a thing with metal! this is part of the journey to make my launch stand with in-built load cell to measure motors as they launch.

I would show you a picture but i cut my USB cable apart earlier to get a convenient 5v supply, now i can't find another one. and my phone (a google something or other lasts days without charging)has run out of power. it lasts so long i forget to regularly charge it.


Here is a pic of,now, fairly useless wire. I wanted to able to deliver 5v and 0v to 2 rather stiff solid core wires so i can poke them in the IC sockets I use for everything, in order to test the flight computer/recorder (dare I say Avionics?) before launch, but away from a PC USB connection. A sort of halfway test before inserting the 12v battery in the socket and launching.
And another important lesson i have learned to day is wear footwear for metal work. i have some coper swarf in the sole of my, as was bare at time, foot. bugger.

 

[karl.lambley]

I have go the phone working now. i am waiting for my thread vid to upload. but in the meantime look at my oak sapling - that is today's picture. the oak is just over a year old, and this years growing season started a week ago. believe it or not in the last week the growing bud has gone from nothing to 62mm! that is a 28% increase in overall height. for comparison is a pic from Thursday, a mere 5 days ago! (let me just check the spreadsheet....) when it's height was 32.2mm higher than the starting point.

when i am long dead and gone it will be massive!

-next to it is a cork oak, Quercus suber, in 30 years, if i live that long i will be able to harvest cork from it. interestingly it is an evergreen.

 

[karl.lambley]

This is my new threaded hole! my first attempt ever. It was done with instructions and advice from chatGPT. I know it is only 1mm copper, the next thing is 5mm mild steel, but I have plenty of practise bits of plate.

 

[karl.lambley]

can't stop thinking about next thing. i think rockets without fins look really cool. and , of course, all the drag they cause. so it is going to be TVC i think. but i have a box of b4-4 motors, they only burn for 1.5s. perhaps i could load more than one into a cylinder, so one lighting fires out the previous one.it puts me in mind of the Atlas's stage 1.5 staging. not really 2 stage, but not 1 either. and Christ knows how ill fit it all in a 1 inch tube.

just realised the 4 sec ejection delay would be fatal to my plans anyway. so ill have to buy another 30 motors. but i would still rather buy b4-0s as they are cheap.

 

[karl.lambley]

to makeup for all the times it is too windy in my park i have just bought an anemometer, and a compass. so i can go out, measure and records its windiness, so i can correlate rocketry cock-ups with specific wind speed and direction. only 20 quid for the 2 things from amazon. weather interest and recording - more rocketry fringe benefits.

 

[karl.lambley]

the more i think about it, model rockets involve- weather, aerodynamics, computing, physics, art and design, manufacture, research, gravity, electronics, electrics, mathematics, history, and geography. perhaps only rocketry should be taught in schools?

i just discovered to day that the thin stringy elastic, bigger than cotton, smaller than string is called Shirring elastic. that is only one of today's interesting rocket based things in my life.

edit-
another thing for the list. cartography. i wanted a map to plot my wind speed data on and have just learned about ordinance survey land-ranger maps. land ranger. what a brilliant name. over 200 maps cover England. i live near the middle of 129. now i want to own them all. especially old ones. another thing to exasperate the Mrs!

 

[karl.lambley]

another reflection is I am using this site in a similar fashion to people using 'the facebook' (i know it lacks a definite article now but sometinmes i can be frightfully peverse about such things as recent nomenclature). i am not sure my poxy few pounds a month donation covers such use. and all the long boring pointless vids I have uploaded. surely they cost too?

if mods would rather i shut up and stopped posting media i would understand. but 'till then this is awfully good fun (i dont use the facebook anymore, i do have an account. it is, unsurprisingly in my name. fish, horses, dogs, and a romany gypsy wife - that is me). and previously purple hair.

 

[karl.lambley]

i tried to buy another monthly supporter, to make up for my tedious posting. i was hoping it would give me 2 TRF Supporter badges atop each other. it didn't. computer says no. how can i give you some more money as i love it here?

 

[Blast it Tom!]

Ah, relax, mate! You're fine. I'm enjoying all your work even if I can't keep up with replies. Like now. I'm at the veterinary emergency room with my daughter's cat. You think you're going to have a free afternoon, and we find the cat almost unable to walk. They are away. Which really complicates things.

But just keep discovering, it's all good!