Yep, the ME was my very first paper rocket, but it has also *evolved* over the years. I designed her back in the 80's. When I would teach a rocket class I ran into more and more cases where the school, class or youth group couldn't afford the full price of the kits they wanted and I would wind up eating the balance. This started getting expensive, specially since I was doing 300-500 kids a year...
So, I came up with the ME as a low cost alternative. As an added incentive, I would decorate it with the school or youthgroups colors, markings and such, to make it special for them. Back in the beginning, the fins were just a simple fold-over, two layers thick. This was *easy*, but also resulted in some squirely flights as it was hard to keep them from warping. Also, the instructions were very simple, half page text as I knew that I would be there to hand/hold the kids through construction.
When I decided to put it into production with the FlisKits name attached to it, I worked out the current fin design to eliminate that problem. It *can* be rather complicated, but I think it works wonderfully
As for the launch lug... man, the "Mother of invention" thing there...
Seems that launch lugs were something that I *never* had enough of, so I came up with that as a solution. Want an launch lug? I can make one for you in the field with a business card in under 30 seconds! LOL
I do tend to put a lot of thought into my designs and I've noticed that virtually *every* design I've put up for production goes through subtle changes as I prepar it for manufacture. I've discovered that it is one thing to scratch build a design, but something else all together when I want to be able to provide a kit with instructions so that someone *else* can duplicate it. So, inevitably, I always build at least *one* more, as I am doing up the instructions, so that I can make a repeatable *kit* out of it...
Guess that course I took for engineering on "Design for Manufacturability" came in handy afterall
jim
