Loc Pk-66 Ultimate; Now a build thread w/pictures.

[Wallace]

Before I go any further I wanna show Y'all a couple of my favorite/handiest tools on the planet. Don't bother asking where I got the see through flexible ruler, it's just one of those things I've had forever, no idea where it came from but it sure is handy. If you do manage to find one be prepared to lose it on a regular basis. It pretty much disappears when laid on almost any flat surface.

 

[Wallace]

if you're not already aware of this, drop the Exacto knife directly in the trash and get one. Ten times sharper (more sharp?) and 20 times less expensive. Be extremely careful around these things, I personally accept no responsibility for any and or all mishaps involving a scalpel. For around 7 bucks on Amazon you can get 100 blades (I like the #11's) and usually a free handle to boot. The free handles are not that great so I bought this "premium upgrade" for another $7.00. I feel it was money well spent. I own a lot of crazy tools but this one by far scares me the most. Point being: Use with caution, very sharp. On the plus side though, the blades are sterile so when you cut yourself you probably won't get an infection...

 

[Wallace]

Was about to start installing the conduits but got scared because everything fits pretty tight. I decided if the fins are at least tacked it'll make everything easier to locate. Sooo, fin guides were in order. On pre slotted tubes I do check but unless something is really whacked I just go with it. I've yet to see a pre slotted tube that was perfect so don't sweat it. This one had 5 that were exactly 2" apart and one @ 1 7/8" so pretty much perfect enough.

 

[Wallace]

I know everyone loves to jump online and print out fin guides but my trusty 35 year old divider and compass haven't let me down yet. This being a 6 finned pre slotted tube made them unnecessary but I do use them for scratch builds. If I were to go through all the closets in the house I'd probably find a half dozen printers and not one of them works (I HATE printers) so dividers are my friend, they always work. Not only that, but you'd end up with a mismatch on the one fin that's off by 1/8". As long as the slots are already there, just transfer the marks, extend the lines and cut. Any time you can avoid measuring, well.... avoid measuring. It just eliminates potential errors. Commonly known as "tolerance stacking".

 

[Wallace]

Since drilling plywood, especially at the edges is sketchy at best, I decided to harden it with thin CA first. Turns out 7/32" tubing with a 45 degree flare fits nicely in a 1/4" hole which is a good thing since the smallest Forstner bit I have happens to be that. NO way would I attack plywood near the edge with anything else

 

[Steve Shannon]

A brad point bit does a nice job on plywood for smaller holes. They’re commonly used to drill for doweling jigs.

 

[Tim51]

if you're not already aware of this, drop the Exacto knife directly in the trash and get one. Ten times sharper (more sharp?) and 20 times less expensive. Be extremely careful around these things, I personally accept no responsibility for any and or all mishaps involving a scalpel. For around 7 bucks on Amazon you can get 100 blades (I like the #11's) and usually a free handle to boot. The free handles are not that great so I bought this "premium upgrade" for another $7.00. I feel it was money well spent. I own a lot of crazy tools but this one by far scares me the most. Point being: Use with caution, very sharp. On the plus side though, the blades are sterile so when you cut yourself you probably won't get an infection...View attachment 358570

+1 to that. Also there's a much greater choice of blade shapes with scalpels. Great build by the way.

 

[Wallace]

A brad point bit does a nice job on plywood for smaller holes. They’re commonly used to drill for doweling jigs.

Like the ones that would be used with this? The ones I either broke or lost years ago and never replaced? I am stupidly hard on tools...

 

[Steve Shannon]

Like the ones that would be used with this? The ones I either broke or lost years ago and never replaced? I am stupidly hard on tools...View attachment 358655

Yes, like that.
Here’s a set on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GOM3VO/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[Wallace]

To date, the motor mount/centering rings/thrust plate weigh just under 9.6 ounces. My plan, now that I have the strength where I need it, is to switch tactics and move to Titebond II in lieu of Rocket Poxy. Were it not for the thrust ring I'd probably stick (pun intended) to epoxy. Basically I'm gonna try to overcome the urge to overbuild. The only place(s) I'll use epoxy from here on out are fillets and possibly a nose cone bay.

 

[Wallace]

As I mentioned earlier, Cvank , fellow TRF'er was kind enough to post a free for the taking add in the yard sale. He gave me all of this "stuff" with the condition that I use it and post the results. Well Carl, here we go, thanks Mate. How cool is that. It therefore required me to build a cardboard rocket in order to utilize it. I've yet to attempt working with it, but from what I've seen it looks pretty straight forward. Was going to do a scratch build until the Ultimate caught my eye. How could I possibly resist such a cool looking 6 finned (yes, I do in fact find differentially finned rockets irresistible) 7 motor cluster? It's been close to a year now and I finally decided. Any opinions on color combos anyone?

 

[ECayemberg]

As I mentioned earlier, Cvank , fellow TRF'er was kind enough to post a free for the taking add in the yard sale. He gave me all of this "stuff" with the condition that I use it and post the results. Well Carl, here we go, thanks Mate. View attachment 358703 How cool is that. It therefore required me to build a cardboard rocket in order to utilize it. I've yet to attempt working with it, but from what I've seen it looks pretty straight forward. Was going to do a scratch build until the Ultimate caught my eye. How could I possibly resist such a cool looking 6 finned (yes, I do in fact find differentially finned rockets irresistible) 7 motor cluster? It's been close to a year now and I finally decided. Any opinions on color combos anyone?

Cool build and congrats on giving Monokote a try!!! Hope you like it!

Lots of good options there, but I'd go for Blue and Gold, with red accents...or something like that!

Just a small heads up that a bit of extra care is needed for the golds and silvers. The adhesive portion of the film is the same as the regular colors, but the color portion can be finicky; the color will sometimes wander a bit. In other words, getting the film too hot, or stretching too much will change the color's consistency...you may end up with dark spots, light spots, stretch marks, etc. Not a prohibitive problem, just something to be aware of. Personally, I only use metallics like gold and silver on simple surfaces; IE: wrapping a body tube or covering a fin is no problem. Compound curves such as nosecones, fillets, airfoiled fins, etc. are a bit more difficult.

Carry on...love the Ultimate and your excellent build thread!!!

 

[Wallace]

You're MonoKote thread(s) are fantastic! Assume the can of Aqua Net is mainly for the Monokote to wood interface? You're actually successfully wrapping nose cones? That would be very cool and probably very tricky...I do have a few cans of Duplicolor adhesion promoter and several plastic nose cones to practice on. Hmm.....

 

[Wallace]

I'm kind leading towards black @ the fincan since I have black dye for my Rocket Poxy. I was thinking along the lines of leaving the MonoKote "short" at the fillet lines and using black epoxy?

 

[Wallace]

Made at least a little progress this morning, been stupidly busy lately. Was really tempted to try ECyamberg's "slit and spread method" but having 6 fins and only 2 hands scared me off. It'll all have solid backing for re-installation and end up covered by the fillets anyway so I chose the easy route. Luckily my slotted tube had one slot slightly "off", worked in my favor as one of my motor tubes was off also. Better to be lucky than good? Used the front cr to back up the tube whilst making the cuts. Now I just need to trim the extra long fin tabs to fit. Thanks again Dave for pre-thinking of that for me!

 

[Wallace]

I do, most commonly on the fincan end of the harness as some fincans can really spin as they fall and twist harnesses up really good. Ocassionally on the chutes, depends on how much the chute has a tendency to rotate, some of my homemade chutes have this tendency.

Like this???

 

[Wallace]

Sorry no progress has been had in the last week or so. The "inlaws" decided to stop by and stay for a week which along with hel ping a friend remodel his truly sweet attic space left me with 14 hour days just trying to keep everyone happy..

 

[Wallace]

2 Part foam anyone...It was already over 100 degrees up there, you can imagine just how bad it got with this much foam reacting. As a kicker, they had to shut down the HVAC to keep from spreading stink/mess throughout the whole house. Insulation guys are goofy as far as I'm conc erned.

 

[rharshberger]

Like this???View attachment 359150

Pretty much yes!

 

[Wallace]

Pretty much not related to my Ultimate project but simply an explanation as to why no progress. When friends need help your stuff tends to get put on hold. I never want to hear another complaint about elevated working temps or anything related to 2 part foam. Hopefully we can resume where we left off...

 

[RocketFeller]

That is a really cool attic.

 

[Wallace]

Yup. Would be much cooler if it were mine

 

[r12ski]

My day job is restoring 18th and 19th century houses. So you can post all the eyebrow window and hipped roof photos you want. Judging from the plaster lines this is right in my wheelhouse. Maybe early 20th.

 

[Wallace]

House was built in 1927. Has radiused hips/valleys and eaves. I've coveted that house for a long time. It originally had cedar shake and was absolutely beautiful until about 25 years ago, someone completely disrespected it with some pretty bad 3 tab shingles. Obviously out of their league with the eyebrows and whatnot. About 6 years ago it was re roofed w/architecturals and while not terrible, it's still not "right". I'll get a couple pics of the exterior when I get a minute.

 

[Wallace]

As long as we're currently off topic, here's a pic of my alien mushroom that took up residence on the leg of my Fred Flinstone rocketry workbench.

 

[Wallace]

And...The table..About 10' long, probably 800 pounds. Waiting for it to dry out enough to plane it flat.

 

[Wallace]

Roof exterior o

 

[Wallace]

Ok, looks like I've been out of it for close to a month now. Gonna gradually get going on "this one" again. Was waffling on what to use for and how to install my "Y" harness for way too long. Had an inspirational thought last night: Keep it simple stupid...So I dug through my pile and found a 3' cutoff of 1/4" Kevlar and some heat shrink. Busted out the sewing machine and less than 10 minutes later it was all ready for install. In my mind this is the only way to get true redundance on a Y harness. Needs to be 2 separate pieces. If you just glue one long piece to the motor tube and tie/sew a center loop it can and with my luck probably always will fail @ the center of that loop. At that point it doesn't matter how many attachments you have at the motor tube. One other tip that has yet to let me down is to make it just long enough so that the quick link or widest part of the swivel ends up at the body tube edge. Spreads the load to avoid zipper effect.

 

[Wallace]

Found some "spare" time to make a bit more progress today. Was gonna just go with 2 conduits because I had 2 pieces of 7/32" aluminum tubing. A bit of testing proved I "could" get 3 double stranded runs of CAT5 wire through each one but it was tight. Back to the junk pile for me. Found a section of 1/4" that was just long enough, so plan changed to 3 conduit runs. Was at Menards a few weeks ago and discovered a bargain bin that had stupid low prices on drill bits. Bought all I could afford, probably 60 of 'em. Best part was I got about a dozen 12"ers (they call 'em aircraft drill bits, can't imagine why) and one just happened to be a 1/4", paid $1.49 for it and it sure came in handy today. Started by flaring one end...

 

[Wallace]

And then drilling scarily close to the edges of plywood rings...