My Lvl2 Velociraptor build...or, I have a thing for boat tails

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Zauskycop

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Well, I'm sure many of you recognize that I am still fairly new to the forums, but I have the desire to keep pushing on with my builds. About 6 LPRs to my name, 2 PS II rockets, a Torrent and a Wildman Warrior JR are all in the stable, but I really want to get to lvl 2. I don't foresee ever trying for Lvl3 just because of the expense so this is where I'm planning on topping out. I certainly know enough to know I don't know nearly enough to get through this without some of the fine advice I have seen here, so Im definitely counting on it! This also will not be a quick build as Im planning on really documenting this and enjoying it. Will it fly by November? Who knows? But on that note, onto the Binder Design Velociraptor! Easily one of the most beautiful rockets I've found!

Came home last week to this lovely box delivery:
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I was definitely worried!
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Lucky for me all of the fragile stuff was at the bottom of the box and out of harms way:
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Obligatory Content shot:
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Tonight I'm just reading up the instructions..may I say how well written they are! I also ordered the A/V bay kit with the rocket and planning on doing my Lvl2 as a DD (which I have yet to do...). Will be learning that on the Torrent and Warrior Jr so hopefully I will be ready to go with that! One thing I do have to say is how well the entire kit is packaged. Everything (aside from tubes and NC/boat tail) is individually wrapped in plastic for easy ID, and the benefit of only needing to unpack what you need at that step...well done Binder! More as I keep working on this.
 
surely one of the coolest rockets out there, can't wait to see your progress with it. (SUBSCRIBED)

I myself just resonantly bought Binder's Devastator
 
A great looking rocket, I'd love to build one too. Will be following, oh and that's what I said too Level 2 max...
 
After reading thru the instructions and organizing everything it was onto Step One...starting to assemble the Boat Tail.

First thing I did was to sand down the seams with 220 grit sandpaper and clean off the plastic crud left over from the cutting process. While I was there I also test fitted the lower fins and found that the slots were a bit undersized. Some very light dremeling ensued and now the fins fit nice and snug.
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Oddly, the plastic wasnt even all around the boat tail. Still plenty beefy enough, but a bit lopsided, though after further inspection it may have been just on the edge:
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Next up (actually first in the instructions) was to locate the two centering rings in the package...easily enough found. The instructions said that there were two different sized rings and the smaller one went inside the boat tail assembly. Once again, comparing them made it easy to see which was smaller.
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This is where my first "small" bit of confusion hit. I took the smaller ring and placed it on the "large" side of the boat tail and it was still too large...significantly so. So quickly my mind moved to sanding it...or dremeling it. Then I slowed it down and took another look. The ring is actually supposed to sit on a "shoulder" according to the instructions. There was a shoulder on the boat tail, but it was further in from the large side. Then my AHA moment hit and I put the CR in sideways, went PAST the shoulder into the narrow end, straightened it out and pulled it back to the shoulder...and it fit perfectly. Pushing it back up into the boat tail, I scuffed the area where the ring would be epoxied with 60 grit sandpaper, laid down some Rocket Poxy, and brought the ring back onto the shoulder, making sure to give it a little twist to distribute the epoxy. Briefly I put in all the fins to make sure the CR was settled in, but pulled them back out after 10 minutes just in case there was some epoxy overflow...didn't want them to get stuck! Set aside to cure.
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I'm In... :pop:

I've got a few .ork files for the VRaptor. The prototype, the production version, and my custom version (a hybrid of both the prototype and the production version).



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Then my AHA moment hit and I put the CR in sideways, went PAST the shoulder into the narrow end, straightened it out and pulled it back to the shoulder...and it fit perfectly.

I probably should put something in the instructions to turn the ring sideways to get it past the shoulder and then flip it flat. It just seems really intuitive to me, but I've actually had phone calls saying that the ring is too big. And they are totally insistent and start to get mad when I say it isn't. The phone call goes something like this: Hold the nosecone in one hand and the ring in the other. Turn the ring sideways and push it in. Now flip it. Phone hangs up.....
 
Wow! Are people THAT silly that they can't figure something THAT easy out??? (Errr...glad it was past 6 pm or you may have had another... :facepalm:)

I probably should put something in the instructions to turn the ring sideways to get it past the shoulder and then flip it flat. It just seems really intuitive to me, but I've actually had phone calls saying that the ring is too big. And they are totally insistent and start to get mad when I say it isn't. The phone call goes something like this: Hold the nosecone in one hand and the ring in the other. Turn the ring sideways and push it in. Now flip it. Phone hangs up.....
 
I probably should put something in the instructions to turn the ring sideways to get it past the shoulder and then flip it flat. It just seems really intuitive to me, but I've actually had phone calls saying that the ring is too big. And they are totally insistent and start to get mad when I say it isn't. The phone call goes something like this: Hold the nosecone in one hand and the ring in the other. Turn the ring sideways and push it in. Now flip it. Phone hangs up.....

Do people really just hang up at that point? How rude. Then again, nothing should surprise me these days.

I am sorely tempted to try a 24mm downscale of this one day. I really love the design, but it's waaaay out of my size range. I'll have to monkey around in OR.
 
Do people really just hang up at that point? How rude. Then again, nothing should surprise me these days.

I am sorely tempted to try a 24mm downscale of this one day. I really love the design, but it's waaaay out of my size range. I'll have to monkey around in OR.

I've got an .ork (and two builds) of a BT-60 Downscale of it...

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?123564-K-Tesh-s-OpenRocket-files&p=1433811#post1433811

I've also got downscales of the Raptor and the Excelerator (with a custom color scheme).
 
Do people really just hang up at that point? How rude. Then again, nothing should surprise me these days.

Well, one customer after arguing with me for 10 minutes that I made the part wrong and that I should just send the correct one, and me insisting that it fits. And then they get really angry when I ask them to try it again. They don't even want me to walk them through the procedure. So after all that when it goes in really easy, I imagine they feel embarrassed and just hang up. So I hear, huh....click.

I had a customer call and say his fin slots were not cut all the way through the tube, and it was missing a coupler. He said he had fixed the fin slots with a dremel, but he needed me to send the missing coupler. You can probably guess what he had done. I put the coupler inside the airframe to reinforce the slotted end before I ship it. He slotted through the coupler and was mad at me for not mentioning in the instructions not to do that.

And another complaint I get is that I "forgot the coupler". If the coupler is at one end of the tube, it just looks like a thicker wall and almost becomes invisible when looking for it. I've had a few customers insist that it was not there even though I remember putting it in the tube. They'll insist over and over until I have them feel for it and then it magically appears.

And here's my all time favorite of how I can sabotage myself. I started throwing in free thrust rings with all of our older kits. I started getting a bunch of calls that one of my centering rings is cut wrong and I need to send a new one. This kept happening over and over and I kept paying shipping to send out new rings. then I realized that they were trying to use the free thrust ring as a centering ring. I must have lost $100 in shipping before I figured out what people were doing. And I was even labeling the packaging of the free thrust ring, but once they took it out of the packaging, they'd forget. So now, I don't put the free thrust ring in there, problem solved.

One time I made a 98mm complete motor and it was ready to ship except for the thrust washer and snap rings, so I waited for my Mcmaster order to arrive. That stuff held up the shipping an extra few days, so when it came in I match cut the nozzle washer angle to match the nozzle exit and then packaged it up in a massive amount of bubble wrap at the end of the package to keep the motor casing from getting marred by it. The customer contacted me to say it arrived but I had forgotten the hardware. I told him to check the end of the box. He said it wasn't there. When pressed, he admitted that they threw the box away. So he threw the snap rings, nozzle washer, and o-rings away and wanted me to send new ones for free because I had packed it too well and he didn't see the parts.

Just when I think I have it licked, someone always comes up with something new to keep me on my toes. :)
 
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Came home last week to this lovely box delivery:
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I was definitely worried!
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Lucky for me all of the fragile stuff was at the bottom of the box and out of harms way:
View attachment 300389

So glad it was undamaged. We've been getting reports of a few crunched boxes lately. Some of them look like deliberate abuse.

When the Terrordactyl first went up for sale, I ordered one. When the box arrived, it looked like it had been folded in half and then used as an accordion. Half trembling, I opened it up to find everything was just fine. :smile: Mike, I don't know how you figured out your packaging routine, but it sure seems to survive willful mishandling! Thanks for your attention to detail and great kits.
 
This is a great looking rocket, it's on my shopping list now. Thanks for posting the thread!
 
So we had a bit of a delay in the build...about a week. Sorry about the delay here but I had to order an engine casing before the next step. So I ordered up a 54 mm casing from Wildman (Yes, this is my first 54 mm rocket) and had a bit of a wait for it to arrive. We won't even mention the Labor Day weekend and work...just LOVE working holidays. Life as an ATC. Anyway, onto what you are reading this for.

While we waited for the Brown Truck, I did a little work on the body tubes. First up was cleaning up the fuzz on the fin cuts. Once I did, I found that the fins all seemed just a tad long for the slots...I mean BARELY. Just a little slot adjustment (Im talking under 1/16 inch) where needed and all was well.

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Binder is also nice enough to mark a centerline for mounting the rail guides later on!

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And finally, that job we ALL enjoy so much...filling spirals. Some CWF, some water to dilute it a bit, and you have some sanding to do later... I used Chris M's method of the back of a Xacto blade..dip, fill a bit, repeat for a long time on this rocket!

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FINALLY the Brown Truck arrived and dropped off a 54mm engine casing. Back to work on the rocket!

Onto step 3 of the instructions which is to put the motor retainer onto the MMT. This step has its own instruction sheet for doing this...nothing particularly hard but nice having a second sheet to refer to. First of all I cut out the nice aluminum retainer from the packaging, read the sheet, and removed the clip from the retainer

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Next step is to measure 1/2" from the end of the tube and make a few marks around the tube.

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After test fitting the retainer on the tube, next was to scuff the tube very lightly for bonding purposes for the epoxy. Time to mix up your favorite epoxy for mounting motor retainers...I used JB Weld...and apply a light coating up to that previously marked 1/2" point.

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Next I put on the retainer up to the previous 1/2" point and cleaned up any stray epoxy with Isopropyl Alchol, making sure to check the inside of the retainer also. After a clean up, I fitted the motor case and then made sure that the clip ring could still be installed. I had no problem with that, but felt it may have been a tad loose. I slid the retainer up just a little bit and checked that I still had some play between the clip and the casing. Finding a happy point I removed the clip and casing and set the completed MMT aside to cure.

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Next up: Finishing up the boat tail!
 
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Just when you think you've made something idiot proof, they go and make a better idiot.

I learned many years ago that you can only idiot limit things. Idiots are far more creative than they're given credit for.
 
Next up was assembling the boat tail. Previously I had assembled the MMT and retainer, and the boat tail with centering ring. Time to merge them as one!

Here are the pieces in question:

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First up was to scuff the inside of the boat tail for bonding purposes. I actually has test fitted the MMT an found it just a tad large (or the hole too small) and BARELY enlarged the hole so that the MMT fit in snugly. Then I scuffed the inside. After scuffing I mixed up some Rocket Poxy and applied (per the instructions) a THICK layer of epoxy around the bottom hole of the boat tail.

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After that I lined up the MMT and proceded to feed it through the hole, and continued upward to the centering ring, through that and inserting all the way until the motor retainer fit snug to the boat tail. However (as you can see) the boat tail wasn't cut completely square. At first I thought that maybe the retainer was crooked on the MMT, but after twisting the MMT both ways, the gap remained at the same place..and standing the assembly up resulted in a straight assembly. Only one thing left, and that was a crooked bottom. Perhaps that is why the hole was a tad small? I'm sure I can fix that up later with some Bondo, so no major hurdle. Maybe there is a better idea out there??

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I was planning on stopping here to let things cure, but I had some epoxy left so I pushed on to the next step of the upper centering ring. First up was to drill a 1/4" hole for the eyebolt. Quickly taking care of that, I installed and tightened the eyebolt, and put some epoxy on it to keep things tight. Next, I marked a line 1/4" from the top of the MMT, and then installed the centering ring. Pushing it past this line, I put on a layer of epoxy and slid the CR back upward to the line, creating a nice ring of epoxy which I then smoothed into a fillet with my gloved finger and alcohol. VERY IMPORTANTLY, I checked and double checked that the eyebolt did NOT align with any of the fin slots which would be very bad later... Easy Peasy...Set this all aside to cure. For size reference, the ruler standing next to the assembly is an 18" ruler...

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Next up will be putting fillets on all of the CR, and installing the lower tube!
 
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I'm going to experiment a bit with colors....I'm going to try one of the "Hammered" colors thinly applied over either and orange or green undercoat, so that the undercoat comes thru just a little. I have the orange decal set, so still not sure of the undercoat color...

Looking Good! What color scheme are you planning on going with?
 
I'm going to experiment a bit with colors....I'm going to try one of the "Hammered" colors thinly applied over either and orange or green undercoat, so that the undercoat comes thru just a little. I have the orange decal set, so still not sure of the undercoat color...

Sounds interesting... I presume you'll test the color scheme on some scrap materials. As for me, I'll be going with the green, in an attempt to duplicate the prototype. I usually paint things the way I first see them. There's a few occasions that I'll go with a custom paint job. When I eventually get my hands on that Excelerator, I'll be doing a custom paint scheme which will hark back to the Raptor and VRaptor.
 
However (as you can see) the boat tail wasn't cut completely square. At first I thought that maybe the retainer was crooked on the MMT, but after twisting the MMT both ways, the gap remained at the same place..and standing the assembly up resulted in a straight assembly. Only one thing left, and that was a crooked bottom. Perhaps that is why the hole was a tad small? I'm sure I can fix that up later with some Bondo, so no major hurdle. Maybe there is a better idea out there??

I'd just tape off the retainer and fill the gap with JB Weld. Sorry for the crooked cut, I used a chop saw on it. With all of the expansion to support the Max Q Aerospace products, I had to get rid of my old cutting jig because it took up too much room and I haven't built a new one yet. But thanks for letting me know so I can keep a close eye on it in the future.
 
Hi just curious have you finished your velociraptor,flown it, etc? Bought and built mine like 10 years ago, my second binder design kit. I built mine with the intention of putting the largest motor possible i could in it. My tailcone was also not square,i just sanded it down. The talon fins look cool but its second flight ripped one off and pushed another in so i removed them. Only real problem i had were the fins, they curled like pringles for some reason, i had one epoxied in or would of replaced them with G-10. My solution was to make shallow narrow cuts in the arch then fiberglass both sides and sandwich straight with clamps steel and wax paper. It worked great and after it was all done only one fin had a slight lean you could see only if you looked for it.

I flew it several times, the last time was on a CTI K660, was a memorable flight because it broke the PVC base of the launch pad. I watched in horror as the pad started to tilt and naturally the rail followed, the first rail button was off the rail as the rail reached its stopping point. It was enough to knock the tail of the rocket off and send it off at an angle, couldn't see it after 3 seconds or deployment. Its a good thing i had a tracking device in the rocket with a directional antenna. It still went 8,532 feet my tracker led me to it couple miles away. I like to see any velociraptor project, it's just a cool looking rocket with plenty of ways to customize it.
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Eric M
NAR# 85115 L2
 
I guess I forgot about this.... My apologies. Yes, the rocket is done and has done a test flight on an I161 in preparation for a level 2 cert flight which will (hopefully) happen on June 10! Had a few issues with the build and was frustrated, but I took my time and worked my way throught them, and now the rocket looks great! I will post some pics of it later.

As for the test flight, it flew awesome. Perfectly straight with no roll at all, which makes me very happy considering all those fins!

As for my issues in the build, there was the previously mentioned angled cut on the boat tail, and then one of the fins on the boat tail was cut about 1/16" offline. This frustrated me and caused some heartburn, but eventually I just took a dremel to the fin slot and expanded it so that it was inline again with the upper fin slots. Then some judicious use of epoxy to seal up the enlarged hole and all was well. Finally, I decided to use the baffle that came with the kit but I had gotten a little sloppy reinforcing the "talons" on the inside and some epoxy was on the upper side of the talons requiring some careful cleaning with a drum sander on the dremel. It still didn't slide in as far as I would like but it works.

Future is to figure out the Dual Deploy with the rocket. I have the sled made and the AVbay is already in. I just have to sit down (will be my first time doing this) and test charges. Also I am going to put a bay in the nose cone for a tracker (that is actually my project this week). I'm going to use the bay kit from MAC Performance after I'm sure it will work! Maybe I will get a video of the Level 2 launch with the JL Chute release (until I figure out DD!!!)
 
Awesome, good luck on you L2 cert i'm just coming back to HPR. Between work,finances,kids i took a step back and have been doing low power stuff for fun. Some of the new gadgets are cool, i had to look up MAC performance for the nose cone bay kit. I like the end look of it, still cheaper to make one though lol. I didn't use that baffle at all, had no intention of using motor ejection so i reinforced the coupler with fiberglass made another bay for a potential camera in the future. look forward to seeing your video.

Eric M
NAR# 85115 L2
 
Love this rocket. I did my L2 on this also. I have so many flights on mine, mainly CTI L motors. It is sitting above my desk at work currently (the resurrected version anyway).

Here is the build if you are interested. Sorry but some of the earlier pics fell off when the hosting service changed.
https://forum.ausrocketry.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1782

Subscribed :)
 
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