Spruce Goose Build Thread

Onebadhawk
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Greg Furtman said:
Beautiful. Olympic Peninsula?
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Yep, about half an hour west of Port Angeles. There's a campground on the lake on the west end, which is a fantastic place to camp. Incidentally, there's a trail along the north end of the lake (Spruce Railroad Trail) that was an old rail line that was intended to empty the area of spruce for aircraft in WWI. The war ended before a lot of trees were cut though.
 
I've been up on Hurricane Ridge. I was out there in early August and when we got to the top there was some snow. Being a Wisconsin Boy (and a Finn) I took it in stride but lots of people there were kind of freaked out. :)
 
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OK, OK, most wood pencils (and I did say wood) are six sided. He said a Ticonderoga pencil; the Ticonderoga pencil company makes them six sided. He also said #2, and I refrained from pointing out that one can't tell the hardness of the lead by a casual look.

Of course it's not a competition, but rocketry is tricky business and requires complete accuracy. If one builds it eight sided and call it a Ticonderoga pencil then one is just begging for a CATO. ;-)
 
I was going to weigh in with some Captain Technicality arguments (my specialty!), but you two have it covered. Carry on. 😀

It won't be a Mont Blanc gold finish though--"just" a straight up bright wood finish. I'm looking forward to the LCO reading out the color as "spruce and cherry".
 
I finally finished Spruce Goose today. The last step was gluing in the rail buttons after clear coat. I used two coats of urethane spar varnish at first, but there was no real space between “not enough coati g to cover sanding scratches” and “drips running down the rocket”. I finished up with a couple of coats of rattle can clear. It’s not a fine furniture finish, but then you don’t normally strap rocket motors to fine furniture. Normally. 😀

All up weight including parachute and JLCR But no motor or dog barf is 1327 grams. Plenty of room for a G motor and still staying under 1500 grams for park flying.

D7325860-D5BC-422D-AE19-4EB0CEBE3D54.jpeg

7EE4C08F-D175-4F8D-BCC7-F445B74E1AB4.jpeg

C7010014-80B0-4E12-96F0-8424A8732EFC.jpeg

Note the rail buttons are wood too-my daughter’s boyfriend turned me some mahogany rail buttons. He’s probably a keeper.
 
Spruce Goose finally flew on Sunday, on a CTI G126WT. It wasn't slow off the pad but it took a 20-degree turn with a shimmy right after leaving the rail. I don't know if that was due to weathercocking, fouling on the rail, or something with the rail buttons. The rail buttons looked fine after flight, and there wasn't THAT much wind, so the jury is still out. Otherwise, the flight went fine, though the delay was a bit long. I'm chalking that up to loss of altitude from the turn. I didn't have an altimeter, but it was simmed to around 650 feet. I'd guess it was around 550-600 with the turn. Everything recovered safely, so all's well that ends well. The pad weight was 1480 grams with no Chute Release, so it's a good thing it didn't go too high.

IMG_2949_Moment.jpg
 
The turn with wiggle sounds like rod whip, but you don't have a rod, and rails (typically) are not "whippy". Could something else be causing an equivalent action? Does the rail have some wobble in/on the ground, for instance?
 
jqavins said:
The turn with wiggle sounds like rod whip, but you don't have a rod, and rails (typically) are not "whippy". Could something else be causing an equivalent action? Does the rail have some wobble in/on the ground, for instance?
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That's pretty plausible. The legs are 2" ABS pipe, so they're a little bit flexible. Rockets in the 1-2 lb range don't have any trouble with whip on this pad, but this is heavy enough that it might have.
 
mbeels said:
Nice lift-off shot as well. So what motor will you use for the next flight?
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I can't claim credit for photography skill on that--I just took video, pulled a frame, and cropped it down. That works really nicely unless you're looking for glamor shots you can print out large.

Next motor? It's a little hard to say. Until I'm at a launch with an FAA waiver, I need to stick with CTI 2G or the Aerotech G80-ish LMS motors. I have a G83BS that would probably loft it nicely, and a G57 Classic that should be OK off the rail but I'd have to check. If I'm ordering some Q Jets anytime soon, I might also look into the G77-G80 range from Aerotech. It's been a while since I flew a green motor, I've never flown a G80, and CTI doesn't have a comparable red. I have a few G250 VMaxes, but the challenges of fitting it with an altimeter will probably preclude that.

In the grander scheme, I also need to figure out how often I want to fly it, since every flight has a small risk of loss. I don't want it to be a total hangar queen, but it won't be a workhorse, either. My L1 fills the latter role.
 
boatgeek said:
Spruce Goose finally flew on Sunday, on a CTI G126WT. It wasn't slow off the pad but it took a 20-degree turn with a shimmy right after leaving the rail. I don't know if that was due to weathercocking, fouling on the rail, or something with the rail buttons. The rail buttons looked fine after flight, and there wasn't THAT much wind, so the jury is still out. Otherwise, the flight went fine, though the delay was a bit long. I'm chalking that up to loss of altitude from the turn. I didn't have an altimeter, but it was simmed to around 650 feet. I'd guess it was around 550-600 with the turn. Everything recovered safely, so all's well that ends well. The pad weight was 1480 grams with no Chute Release, so it's a good thing it didn't go too high.

View attachment 436291
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Congrats.
Welcome to the club of planar geometric cross sectional rocketry.

You will never look at centering “rings” the same again!
 
boatgeek said:
In the grander scheme, I also need to figure out how often I want to fly it, since every flight has a small risk of loss.
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That's how I feel about almost all my rockets. :rolleyes:

Fortunately, because I feel that way about them almost equally, I end up flying them all about equally. That is, when I can actually go to a launch. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
BABAR said:
Congrats.
Welcome to the club of planar geometric cross sectional rocketry.

You will never look at centering “rings” the same again!
Click to expand...

Hey man, I joined that club with Dimetrodon way back in 2016! 😀 When you want to go to design spaces that are mostly wide-open, you end up doing a lot of weird stuff. Especially if you're on a biomimicry kick.
 
boatgeek said:
Until I'm at a launch with an FAA waiver, I need to stick with CTI 2G or the Aerotech G80-ish LMS motors.
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There are a few H's out there that fall underneath the Class-1 cutoff. You're certified and know the safety guidelines, so you have a few more options
 
boatgeek said:
Hey man, I joined that club with Dimetrodon way back in 2016! 😀 When you want to go to design spaces that are mostly wide-open, you end up doing a lot of weird stuff. Especially if you're on a biomimicry kick.
Click to expand...

Very cool rocket, I hadn't seen it before, so I went through your build thread. I've heard "biomimic" many times related to cycling, but I think that this is the first time it came up in rocketry.
 
boatgeek said:
Hey man, I joined that club with Dimetrodon way back in 2016! 😀 When you want to go to design spaces that are mostly wide-open, you end up doing a lot of weird stuff. Especially if you're on a biomimicry kick.
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https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/dimetrodon-a-square-rocket-that-doesnt-quite-fit-in.137885/
NICE!
Reminds me of one of my favorite songs. Trying getting this out of your head for the rest of the day!



But I started slow, with triangles

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threa...non-competition-helicopter.39114/#post-365709
 
Nytrunner said:
There are a few H's out there that fall underneath the Class-1 cutoff. You're certified and know the safety guidelines, so you have a few more options
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The problem with H's is that my field dimensions aren't really big enough for that. CTI does have a rulebeater red G at 159 N-s, but I'd need to make sure the all up rocket would be under 1500 grams.
 
mbeels said:
Very cool rocket, I hadn't seen it before, so I went through your build thread. I've heard "biomimic" many times related to cycling, but I think that this is the first time it came up in rocketry.
Click to expand...

I had a solid biomimicry kick at the beginning of my scratch build career. I think this may be my first-ever TRF thread: https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/design-comment-build-thread-tuna-rocket.121507/ That one had some fins rescaled off a tuna pectoral fin. Later on, I built a 3" diameter dragon-themed rocket with fruit bat wings for fins. I don't have a build thread on that, but here's a launch picture from Father's Day (flying on the rulebeater red that I mentioned to @Nytrunner above):

Fafnir.png
 

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