Mariah FG core sample - how to fix?

[Spurkey]

My fiberglass Mariah 38 had an 'electronics anomaly' on its last flight resulting in a core sample and a damaged tube end. The tube will be easy to fix by cutting the damaged part off, the problem is with the shock cord mount, what Giant Leap calls the supermount. The instructions have you mounting it relatively close to the nose cone end meaning if I shorten the tube, the shotgun assembly gets very very close to the supermount resulting in very little space for the Kevlar as well as the apogee ejection charge. You can sorta make it out in the picture below, I've positioned the shotgun assembly roughly at the shortened location and it shows that I've got maybe 1" of room in a 38mm tube (yay mixed units ) to squeeze the cord + charge into. This makes me a tad uncomfortable.



The supermount is epoxied to the FG tube with Aeropoxy. From what I can tell I have the following options:

1) Live with being uncomfortable, and risk having the ejection charge get smushed into the cord/cord getting bound on the mount/repeated flight anomalies
2) Figure out how to get the supermount out. Soaking the tube in acetone to soften the Aeropxy, or heating that area with a heat gun, risks also weakening the FG body tube
3) Cut the body tube well below the supermount and tack on a new piece of body tube + new supermount
4) ??

Any bright ideas for #4?

 

[REK]

Chop the section below the supermount and get a coupler and a new piece of filament wound tube. Turn the coupler into the new supermount using a bulkhead and an eyebolt and epoxy the new filament wound section to it. Then just fill the seam of the joint and you have a renewed supermount and you can have plenty of space. HINT: You can make the new supermount as a motor retainer as well.

Hope this helps.

 

[Spurkey]

Chop the section below the supermount and get a coupler and a new piece of filament wound tube. Turn the coupler into the new supermount using a bulkhead and an eyebolt and epoxy the new filament wound section to it. Then just fill the seam of the joint and you have a renewed supermount and you can have plenty of space. HINT: You can make the new supermount as a motor retainer as well.

I think this is the solution I'm gonna settle on, I appreciate the prod in the right direction. I was just being cheap and trying to avoid ordering a 12" piece of tube, shipping to Canada sucks. I'm going to rebuild the supermount as it was, with the dowel through the middle to allow motor ejection gases through, to allow motor ejection as backup - that's what saved the upper shotgun bay (and my altimeter) from becoming part of the core sample process.

 

[REK]

I think this is the solution I'm gonna settle on, I appreciate the prod in the right direction. I was just being cheap and trying to avoid ordering a 12" piece of tube, shipping to Canada sucks. I'm going to rebuild the supermount as it was, with the dowel through the middle to allow motor ejection gases through, to allow motor ejection as backup - that's what saved the upper shotgun bay (and my altimeter) from becoming part of the core sample process.

I know G10 filament wount tubes are expensive. That is why I make my own. Good luck on the rebuild. The Mariah 38 is one of my most favorite rockets from Giant Leap.

 

[ksm2001]

Peter, here are a couple Pictures taken of your flight. Beautiful rocket BTW and I'm sure you'll repair it so she's as good as new