Stupid Stunts.......

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swimmer

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Sometimes I can't win for losing.

Just finished repainting tonight the blue on my mini-Armageddon after repairing two cracked fins. While de-masking I had to cut a piece of tape off and as I drew my knife away I knicked one of the fins putting two marks on an otherwise pristine paint job. Touched it up, looks ok, but..........

These kind of stupid moves drives me crazy. I usually manage to bang up my rockets no matter how careful I am before getting them to the launch site. Think I'll just fly them nekked.

Am I the only one or does Murphy just hang around me?? :( Anyone else do things like this, or is it just me??
 
Nope, you are not alone.

Yesterday, I painted the blue section on the GOONYBIRD ZERO. I wanted to get the masking tape off to ensure none of the paint bled underneath. Well, I managed to put a fingerprint in the freshly painted blue paint!!
 
me too, seems like I'm always knocking something over
and I have had terrible luck with painting lately...

mabey it's the coffee
 
I do it all the time. Mostly i screw the paintjob while its being sprayed so I can't tell what I bruised and what happened during painting... :rolleyes:
 
To me the worse thing I do and I do it a lot, is to have a perfect pristine paintjob.

Pick it up look at it, admire it, and realize that the paint is still soft and I've left fingerprints in it.:mad:

sandman
 
Well, I do that allll the time on my LPR birds... But I use a different technique on my bigger rockets, so they dont get banged up as bad.

I take the nose cone off, and hang the rocket from a tree, so its just dangling there. That way nothing can whack it, so, believe it or not, a lot of my more-recent paint jobs actually look pretty nice!
 
Actually painting a rocket is the only real use I have found for a Mantis launch pad. I'm sure there are those of you who think it is a good pad, but I've had no luck with 2. However after extensive repairs, I made a set of adapters from used motors, and I just set the thing up in the middle of the back yard.

A
 
Originally posted by Swimmer
Sometimes I can't win for losing.

Just finished repainting tonight the blue on my mini-Armageddon after repairing two cracked fins. While de-masking I had to cut a piece of tape off and as I drew my knife away I knicked one of the fins putting two marks on an otherwise pristine paint job. Touched it up, looks ok, but..........

These kind of stupid moves drives me crazy. I usually manage to bang up my rockets no matter how careful I am before getting them to the launch site. Think I'll just fly them nekked.

Am I the only one or does Murphy just hang around me?? :( Anyone else do things like this, or is it just me??

You've got Parkinson's! Just like me!

shrox
 
Originally posted by sandman
To me the worse thing I do and I do it a lot, is to have a perfect pristine paintjob.

Pick it up look at it, admire it, and realize that the paint is still soft and I've left fingerprints in it.:mad:

sandman

ROTFLMAO......if you'll own up to it I guess I will too!:eek: :eek:
 
I use wooden skewers on my nose cones to hold them for painting. I stick them in the garage door track so they hang horizontally to dry. Last Sunday, 8 perfectly painted nose cones are drying, I hear the doorbell, I open garage door, snip snip snip is the sound of the garage door track wheels cutting my skewers and it's raining nose cones onto the dirty garage floor. Turned some conical to elliptical and all are currently being refinished.
 
You think that's bad? Last time my brother was with me at a launch, as I prepped my rocket I was explaining to him why I don't use, or need, a checklist. So of course, what happened? I forgot the ejection charge.

Then there was the time I was painting something with a brush, and my wife starts worrying because I was wearing a "good" shirt. I insisted that it would be fine, no need to change shirts. So of course, within 30 seconds I somehow managed to dribble black paint down the front of my shirt. I survived that little incident only because she didn't see it happen and I spent the next 20 minutes scrubbing the shirt with paint thinner and acetone.

Fortunately I don't have these "Homer Simpson" moments very often.
 
I cant even say how many times i've done the whole "What a perfect paint job!! It's wonderful, not a white sp... Oh.. Not dry either..." thing... Man, that's just a kill to your attitude.. Lately though, the rockets have found other ways to hurt the paint job...

Justin Horne ( I now notice there is a Justin on the board not me.. Could get confusing! :))
 
what's even worse is to put that *perfect* white paint job, and are patient enough to let it dry thoroughly...

then do the *perfect* paint job on the BLACK rocket... then you go and pick up the white rocket with black paint still on your fingers.....

UGH!
 
I've done the fingerprint thing, brushing it up against bushes (just don't ask :rolleyes: :eek: ) but the thing that just drives me NUTS is when freakin' bugs land on it while I'm painting it! They get stuck in the paint! They seem to be attracted to it! :mad:
 
well, it happens here too...

Just last nite I was working in the shop, used my scissors to cut a plastic bag open, placed them back on the shelf, and missed. They slid off and dropped pointy side down...right into one of my F-16 big Ducted fan jet wings I had leaning against the shelf below! You can guess the words...then only saving grace was it was a wing I had just spot-primed for a repair and it hit dead center in that area. A little filler and more primer will fix it, but bad luck seems to happen everywhere.

Carl
 
all the time ,every time.In fact one of these days im gonna have a major incident in which all my rockets are involved in a domino effect accident...aarrrgghh:D
 
Hmm...let's see. I had my Decee Thunder leaning up against a chair after all the glue joints were dry. For some reason, I turned around to grab something and upon turning BACK around I walked (or sat) on it breaking it in 5 or 6 places. Disgusted with my stupidity I quickly ended its existence and splintered it to many tiny pieces and threw it into the trash. I can't stand clumsiness. There is no need for it or place for it in this world. I also can't stand it when rockets land in lakes that conveniently have alligators guarding them. :mad:
 
I got one, happened back in March while I was working on the Quest Shuttle Intrepid... I had just CAed the wing tips on the tiny little glider, and was admiring my work, picked up the completed booster section, and was holding it with my thumb and fore finger finger "pinched" onto one of the fins so as not to touch the still drying black paint on the edges.At this moment, I glance down at the Glider sitting there, and pick it up with my left hand's pinky, sticking it in the airframe tip - where the balsa cone will be glued in. I'm getting a profile of them together, right ?

You might know where this is leading, because as I put the glider back down, and started to set the booster down, I suddenly realized I had glued my entire thumb pad to the booster. Worst of all was the beautiful USA on the left wing was right under it. I don't know this yet, but I've set up a terrible chain of events - even though at this point I'm so darn ticked off I can't see the disaster to come

At this point, I'm baffled as to how to remove my thumb without causing a lot of damage to the pristine paint job, so being the wise and dilegent rocket guy I am (read - idiotic moron who never thinks his next step through very well), I reach across with my left hand to grab the Finger Nail polish up on the shelf (used to smooth in Signal Putty) and as I do, the open CA bottle has been bumped with my elbow, and has attached itself to the shirt sleeve covering my left arm by a small drop of CA on the tip. I begin to try and open the Cutex lid with the thumb and forefinger on my left hand, while the booster dangles solidly attached off my right thumb, and then it begins.

It being this little voice in the hollows of my cerebral cortex, akin to the dwarf who tends to smoke too many cigars and look at hustler magazines in that blimp story some time back, only this voice is screaming stop, don't move. I of course, being the larger voice of the two, decide to once again ignore said voice, and continue to pry open the Cutex. Not only was there a drop of ca on the tip of the bottle that is now stuck to the shirt sleeve near my left elbow, there was a larger drop which had slid down onto the side of the bottle, and my reaching across had caused the bottle to touch and barely contact the just finished and drying glider.

As I twisted off the lid of the cutex, I look down to make sure I've not jostled the glider sitting on the table, and realize its disappeared. A quick search of the floor nets no results, and then as any 40 year old tends to quietly do, I try to remember where the glider has went in the last 30 seconds. I look up on the shelf, then not seeing it, stand up thinking I put it up there - out of harms way - so I could attack the central problem. No glider. I turn, look to the desk beside me, again no glider.

Then the catstrophe reveals itself. The glider has now dettached itself from the bottle of CA, and fallen to the floor, I hear it, bend over to pick it up, and spill the entire bottle of opened cutex down the left arm and hand, onto the glider and floor, I'm cursing, screaming NOOOOOOOO in a loud voice, which sounds exactly like a 10 year old girl confronted with a giant hairy spider, pick up the now soaked glider with wing tips falling off, set it back on the table, sit down and stare blankly at my still-glued thumb now with no Cutex to help remove it.

As I'm sitting there, I feel a jostle on my left arm, and realize its the bottle of CA. In a fit of rage I try to swat the bottle off with my right hand momentarily forgetting the attached booster, and succeed in bashing the booster onto the corner of the desk, knocking off one fin, the booster itself, and leaving me sitting there with a piece of painted balsa dangling by the smallest amount of CA. I flexed the thumb, and the fin flutters to the ground.

The moral of this story is, IF this happens to you, never, ever let them hear you scream.
 
Originally posted by Max_Power004
I've done the fingerprint thing, brushing it up against bushes (just don't ask :rolleyes: :eek: ) but the thing that just drives me NUTS is when freakin' bugs land on it while I'm painting it! They get stuck in the paint! They seem to be attracted to it! :mad:

I suffer from this one too! I was experimenting with gloss paint through a spray gun on my phoenix, and was very careful to avoid touching it throughout the long dry time - I even took the kids out for the afternoon to protect them and it. When I returned it was bug city! ( and then the wife got a bit grumpy because I'd manged to paint a large white circle on the grass with overspray - Arrrgh
 
And Silverleaf wins!! With the quickest, most effective involuntary destruction of a rocket pre-flight!! :eek: :D

Wow man, that sounds like something I'll probably wind up doing one of these days. I feel for you though. ;)
 
Silverleaf,

Are you related to Tim the Toolman Taylor..??? heh.. dang that sounds like a tool time episode in the making.. too bad that shows gone..

Since i've gotten into rocketry a couple years ago I just can't help but think of the potential they missed with an episode that involved rocketry, I mean can you imagine tim building a high power rocket.. heh..

I've seen happen, or done the same or similar to most of the stories above myself, and it's only cause we are trying so hard to be careful...

Ever notice the cheap, already been flown several times, little time invested rockets sitting in the corner of the rocket room, doesn't seem to matter what you do to them nothing bad ever comes to them.....

Just more proof positive of Mr. Murphy
 
Originally posted by eugenefl
Hmm...let's see. I had my Decee Thunder leaning up against a chair after all the glue joints were dry. For some reason, I turned around to grab something and upon turning BACK around I walked (or sat) on it breaking it in 5 or 6 places. Disgusted with my stupidity I quickly ended its existence and splintered it to many tiny pieces and threw it into the trash.

LOL,LOL,LOL, :D :D :D :D
 
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Two years ago my wife bought me a "Lunatic" from Rocketman. While setting the motor mount and forward centering ring i broke the aft ring. Managed to keep the mount centered by using the two aft ring pieces. Epoxied the first fin in the next day, the second fin the third day, and the third fin the forth day. All was well till I started the internal fillets. The last fin had slid around the motor mount and was so crooked I embarresed my self. The rocket hung from the bedroom ceiling, crooked fin up, untill last week. I got brave, pulled out my dremel tool and amazed myself by cutting it loose and regluing it. I was hot now! Fillets are done, t bolts are in the new aft ring and I just glued the ring in backwards. Backwards! Aw crap! Screw heads are inside and just alittle larger than the t bolt holes. The epoxy, apparently grabbed the screw heads well, and I put a good amount of epoxy over the ring/mmt/body tube area. Think it will hold back a 29mm case? I think a ground test is in order.
 
you will be fine, will just need to explain the backwards T nuts ;) ;)

the worst think I usually do it start painting, and get "alligator skin" instead of stopping I keep going, and then get more. Then I try to wipe it off. If just gets worse till I have a big sticky gross mass of paint and the rocket gets tossed.

Luckily that has only happened once
 
Well, heres my latest rocket-painting mishap...

I paint the top section of my Shadow and Flame, and leave it to dry... I go inside, have dinner, take a shower, and start watching "Pirates of the carribean". Partway through, I look up, and say "hey, wheres my S&F...???" Oh, CRAP! So by now its past dark, and theres dew on the grass... Luckily the paint was dry by then, so its just a little water that I quickly cleared up.:eek:
 
My stupidest stunt, painting it rite infront of the newley painted white garage door. Needless to say, there was a outline of a Deuce's Wild until I used the laquer paint thinner on the garage. EVEN dumber mistake. How was i supposed to know that out garage used to be and off white before they painted it bleach white????
 
my fliskit mosquito clone where i had been sanding, i had the rocket pinched by the big ring fin. somehow, i dropped it right into the sawdust. i sprayed over the top of te sawdust, and dropped it again.

i let it dry, scraped off te big chunks and figured that was as good as it was gonna get...

it has flown a bunch of times and still keeps coming home!
 
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on your point of view) I've never had any really serious "Murphy Moments" - just the usual run of the mill ones...picked too long of a delay (of course, THAT one was on an Aerotech Tomahawk launched at Ross Dunton's Grandma's farm for a Magnum tv commercial), forgot the chute, knocked over a freshly painted model, etc.

But, a few years ago, someone on RMR posted a hilarious story about how he had just finished an original Estes Maxi-Brute Honest John with some extra detailing and other mods. He had painted it outside, but was bringing it inside and tripped. The model proceeded to bounce down each basement stair (still with wet paint, mind you), until it hit bottom - at which was located a previously used kitty litter box.

Trust me, it was MUCH funnier the way it was originally written.

In the same thread was a story from someone who had spilled a bottle of CA on a "certain location" on his jeans - while he was wearing them.
 
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