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Got the color on folks. Took me three tries. I had red on the fins but the shoddy rattle can (Valspar) sprayed blobs everywhere, couldn't even direct the paint, it did what it wanted. I was able to remove all that and get it cleaned up only to have the white mess up on the second try. Wiped down again and grabbed a new can of white. Same brand, color, everything, (some sort of Krylon, but not Fusion) it worked much better with the new can. Grabbed the Duplicolor Engine Enamel for the fade on the fins, and also on the nosecone. Duplicolor is limited on colors. Otherwise I would use it all the time. It lays down like a dream. I normally polish my rockets but once started it has to be seen through, and can take a while, so I will just leave it as is. I will inspect it once dry see if there are any glaring issues but I am not gonna worry much about the finish. It will be beat to death before long anyway. LOL

Wanderer paint.jpg

My daughter has offered to paint a heart on it. Same daughter that wants me to build a rocket to match her Sultan Wave, adorn it with skulls and such and name it Sultan Death. Kids are weird.

All that is left is finish up the recovery gear and clean out the launch lugs. I know some goo got in there but that's an easy fix. Other side has conformal rail guides BTW. I also need to get the shipping box ready but that should be a small thing.

I really I hope I get to fly this thing before sending it on its way. Still waiting on permission to use a larger field, and the wind will need to lay down a bit. There are a few fields right here local I just need to knock on some doors, will be taking the offspring along as folks are less prone to tell a toddler no than a semi-grumpy middle age man.

@shawn_rocket
I don't know how big the stickers are so use your best judgement. If they are too big don't worry with it. Slap it on the box.

If you want to be able to edit the google sheet I will need your address to add you as an editor so please get that to me. Of course it can be done once you have the rocket. If you don't want to edit it then don't bother. LOL
 
Paint looks really good! Crimson and cream might have been a better combo, but to each his own (grin).

*Really* interested in seeing how you're going to box this.
 
Paint looks really good! Crimson and cream might have been a better combo, but to each his own (grin).

*Really* interested in seeing how you're going to box this.
Ha! Crimson and cream indeed. Sheesh. I am hoping the blue and white helps with recovery while allowing signatures to show up. I may add black on the tips of the fins and nose cone.

On the shipping. The box I had originally planned to use is out, too small. I have several to play around with...from Amazon, Wal-Mart, LOC, etc, the best prospect was the one from US Composites, but I decided to go with a large flat rate box from the post office. Rather than attempt to reuse the same box I will make reusable packing that fits in a readily accessible box. It won't be pretty but it should be sufficient. I can't find my Gorilla glue so I hope epoxy holds the foam together, but I'm not holding my breath. It should ship for about $10 but if it gets heavy (with all the photos 🤪) then the flat rate of $15.15 will apply. I can use a smaller box but I think this is the best way to go. Anyone can redo it if they have better means and resources.

I have secured a field less than a half mile from my house, it stays wet and has a large pond though; but it's large enough that I can avoid the pond, the mud will have to deal with. I will get the TRA permission form signed this week and hopefully fly it later this week or this weekend. Back to five 10 hour days next week because our managers can't manage people, money, man hours, etc.
 
Finally got an as-built weight. This is with my Altimeter3 in the nose and everything ready for flight with 24mm motors. 6.64 oz with Cg 9" from nose cone. I can fold the chute and ease it into the nose cone as far as it will go and get the Cg to 8.75". Without the FSmini I can only estimate the specs. But the mass will be slightly less as well as stability. The sim with the FSMini and the 1 oz ballast is what I am uploading and what all my estimates and recommendations will be based on.

I can adjust weights here and there and I get semi-wildly inconsistent results. I can increase the mass of the nose cone ballast and get more speed off the rail. I can decrease mass in the nose cone ballast and lose speed off the rail. Moving the chute forward like I do above, lowers velocity off the rail. Makes no sense.

Rail/Rod in the sim is set to 43". My rail is 4' but of course I won't be utilizing the entire length.

My thoughts. This rocket is 9:1 length to diameter so 0.9 CAL is what most would call sufficiently stable. NAR requires at least 0.5 CAL.
As built it has 0.7CAL with a D12 and D15. I am comfortable with that, but others may not be. Kicking the ballast up to 1 oz brings the stability up to 1+ for the D motors, and doesn't lower rail velocity any appreciable amount. The D16 has a rail velocity below 40 ft/s, even as built now, that is getting a little low. If I was going to be alone I would try it but I will use fly with a punchier motor. I have flown plenty at 41 ft/s. My Big Bertha on a B motor is pretty darn slow and it may be below 41 ft/s itself. I will have to put the ALT 3 in it to see get some data. So I will probably bring the ballast up to 1 oz so it can fly punchy motors. The C18 looks great for a park flyer.

I will print out some sheets to accompany the rocket as to what motors are acceptable, for those without OR or RS, along with estimated altitudes. I say print, my printer is low on ink, so write will be more appropriate. And of course include it on the thumbdrive.

@Sooner Boomer
Here is the packing:
20210120_173505.jpg 20210120_173559.jpg

All of the foam comes out and can be fitted into another box. The notebook, pen and sharpie will go on top in the small box.

The property owner, who is an insurance agent and has that mentality, of my new launch site has some small reservations about me flying on his property, liability questions, but his brother has stepped in to help me. The plan was to grab my gear run out there and fly The Wanderer. Quick and easy. But now....the property owners brother, who is the near-wife's boss and my liaison to the property owner, has two young boys who are "super excited" to see the rockets fly; he is pitching hard to get me permission to use the land. The kiddos are wanting to bring drones and Go-Pros to record some flights. So looks like I will digging out some more rockets and putting on a little show. Need to make sure my gear is tip top so as not look like a fool! LOL. The Estes Cluster Bomb should be fun for them; Red Flare is a big dumb fun rocket; and Big Daddy is always fun. Once the property owner sees what it is all I about I am confident he will let me fly some larger rockets. The field isn't big enough for much altitude but I can fly a big rocket and keep it low.
 

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That packaging is beautiful. Well done, sir.

Are you an up to date NAR member? If so, you should tell the land owner that you come equipped with $1,000,000 of liability insurance. That should help.

If not, join NAR in a hurry and then tell the land owner that you come equipped with $1,000,000 of liability insurance.
 
That packaging is beautiful. Well done, sir.

Are you an up to date NAR member? If so, you should tell the land owner that you come equipped with $1,000,000 of liability insurance. That should help.

If not, join NAR in a hurry and then tell the land owner that you come equipped with $1,000,000 of liability insurance.

Thanks.

I am Tripoli L2 and we have similar insurance. He is more concerned with the rocket drifting or flying into traffic more and doesn't want to be liable for that. But we will be far enough from the road to avoid such an event. Once he sees the rockets he will be more at ease. And it would probably help to put together a packet of safe practices, distances, insurance policies and so on; and I need to walk the field. Our schedules conflict and it has proven difficult to meet up and talk, hence the need for liaisons.

The field stays pretty wet and was drying up pretty well, but we have rain coming in and it will get sloppy again. I have my eye on a better field I'm just having issues finding the owner.
 
Doesn't NAR have a hobby safety apcket for talking with landowners? I may have made that up, but I feel like its a thing that exists
 
Launch Report:
(don't get your hopes up)

An old friend of mine let me use his field yesterday. So finally after some plumbing repairs, a trip to town, a few more things we finally got set up late afternoon. Of course the wind picked up and us being on a hill in middle of the field made it even worse. He walked up with his wife and daughter to watch. Originally they weren't going to be home but we delayed long enough they made it back before we showed up.

I couldn't get my Altimeter3 to power. Tried it Friday and it was at 79%. Saturday, nothing.
Three Estes starters and three low current composite starters later, it was still sitting on the pad. I packed up and went home. We managed to get one igniter to light using my battery but it was just a test fire and wasn't in the rocket. He had his wife bring his tractor up and try that battery. Nothing.

We all know the possible reasons it didn't light: wiring, battery, starters, motor, and so on. I don't want this thread to turn into a troubleshooting and "did you", "you could've/should've" thread, so let's not get off on that path. LOL. It was supposed to be a quick flight, with no spectators so I wasn't prepared for all modes of failure. I have used this equipment and setup many times.

I did learn though that I now must make a new pad. My current one was designed to toss into the bed of a truck, which I no longer have. I need a portable one. And I will make a new controller while I am at it.

Sooner Boomer has sent a thumbdrive loaded with rocket goodies that I will include in the package. When it arrives I will probably send The Wanderer on it's way. Everyone has shown patience but it is time to get this thing moving. I have some C18s ordered from Chris that will let me fly the rocket at home but I will back on 10 hour days starting Monday and it is raining again, so there is no telling when I will have a chance to fly. Will see.
 
Bad luck, happens to us all. That new Estes Pro pad is basically what I have out of 2in PVC and a drill chuck. Pretty great to just toss in a trunk, light enough to carry one-handed as needed.
 
Okay folks ... finally. I was about to the point I was going to ship this off unflown. I never got the go ahead for the original launch site but after reviewing the sims for The Wanderer and for previous flights here at my place I decided that it would be safe to do it here in the yard. Almost no wind. The wind of course knew I was trying to fly a rocket so it would gust a tad but not too much. Just enough to let me know it was there...watching. I bought a 15" Top Flight thinmil for this project which I decided to reef to bring it down faster. Motor was the C18-4. It had plenty of punch and a nice throaty roar. I was not expecting the roar for sure.

First some pics of my ground crew, with her recovery vehicle ready to go ... bird poop freshly washed off (the launch was delayed waiting on her to get it clean). She loves that thing.

ground team (1) a.jpgground team (1) b.jpg

And on the pad. Remember what I said about my rack not being portable. Now you see why. It is a repurposed weight bench. Works great here at the house and when I had a pickup to carry it in.

On pad 2.jpg

Liftoff!!

1a.jpg 2a.jpg


Every rocket I have flown here has gone out into the field, some have drifted out of the field into the woods beyond but The Wanderer decided to do something completely different.

3a.jpg


And it paid for it.

recoverry 1.jpg

That is the tallest skinniest tree in all of Slagle. That tree and the ones beside it are part of a single row of trees left alongside the road when the timber was cut off of that property a year or so ago. They left a single row of trees. There were more but, with them being a single row as they are, they acted as a wall to catch the wind when Hurricane Laura came through as a Cat 2 hurricane and laid several of them over the road into my yard, bringing with them the power lines. The idiots that left them like this....well....they're idiots. One tiny limb snatched it. A larger chute and it would have missed entirely and landed in my yard. A streamer and it would have landed safely behind them. It tried to come through that gap (the tree that was in that gap is still there, it is just snapped off about halfway up thanks to Laura) but that tiny limb wanted it badly.

With the help of a friend we were able to recover it safely and intact.

Short video. Sorry ... TRF doesn't like my video and won't let me upload or embed it. So it is on my Youtube Channel. While you're there take a look at my other videos and subscribe if you'd like.



It took a hard hook not long after it left the rail. It wasn't the wind. It looks like it left with plenty of speed and OR said it was good and although it could have been an irregularly eroding nozzle, and I can analyze the flight to death, it's likely the C18 was not the right motor for the job, I have only had one hook hard like that and it was flying on a subpar motor. I would have liked to fly it on the D12 or D15 but that just isn't in the cards. Hopefully the other Hosts have nicer flights. I may have the record for flight duration though. The numbers don't lie. 😁 My sims say around 280', had it not hooked like it did, it could have made 220', maybe 250'.


Flight report 2.jpg

The descent with the reefed chute is exactly where I like it, 22ft/s. I marked the shroud lines in case anyone else wants to reef it. I used blue tape to reef it and marked the top side of the tape. I am also sending along the 18" rotofoil for anyone wanting to use that. I'll sign it and let the gremlin paint her heart on it and it will be on it's way.
@shawn_rocket
You're next...You ready?
@Angie
I told ya I would keep you in the loop. You're in the loop. Still waiting on those stickers BTW.😁
 

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Get the address of your YouTube video and just paste that into a post. That should do the trick for you.
 
No sir I'm not. Firefox and Chrome.
My apologies, I mistook your link for incredibly annoying new Edge behavior. In that case it *looks* like you created a link in the post editor (using the link button) rather than just pasting the Youtube URL right into the posting. That bypasses the forum mechanism of auto-recognizing Youtube URLs.

If that's not what you did, then I got nuthin'.
 
My apologies, I mistook your link for incredibly annoying new Edge behavior. In that case it *looks* like you created a link in the post editor (using the link button) rather than just pasting the Youtube URL right into the posting. That bypasses the forum mechanism of auto-recognizing Youtube URLs.

If that's not what you did, then I got nuthin'.

Yep. That's what I did.

How I do it with Firefox: Go to the ellipsis and click the arrow for the drop down menu. Click Media and paste your link
I'll try to remember that as well.

It looks like both of these work. I don't post videos very often but just about every time I do I go through this. One day I'll remember. Until then, thanks for the assistance.
 
My old H&R 20 gauge was the actually the second friend I called. My "Diller Killer" 10/22 was the first... and fourth. . LOL. Subsonic rounds and had the trunk as a backstop, the direction I was shooting, there are no homes or houses for a long way. Number three was my Benelli Nova 12 gauge with some old reloads that I wasn't even sure what I was shooting. I knocked down several limbs but not the one holding the rocket. In the end it was a lineman friend who came to help. His boom was fully extended and his wiggle stick was fully extended but he got it. I told him if he could get a grab on anything to just pull it, it was fiberglass and kevlar so it would handle it. Had it landed in a tree on my property then yeah friend number 1 would have been Mr Stihl.
 
Sweet! Glad you got to fly it, and (really) glad you got it back! No worries about trees where *we* fly, the airport near Sayre, OK.

sayre.jpg

That's a group from SWOSU carrying their "Argonia Cup" project back to the pad.

No trees, but if things go **really, really** bad, we might hit a buffalo. I'll call and you can come get it.
 
Sweet! Glad you got to fly it, and (really) glad you got it back! No worries about trees where *we* fly, the airport near Sayre, OK.

View attachment 449247

That's a group from SWOSU carrying their "Argonia Cup" project back to the pad.

No trees, but if things go **really, really** bad, we might hit a buffalo. I'll call and you can come get it.

Sure thing 👍 I'll grab a trailer and head on up. That sure is a nice site, what's the waiver?
Our HP site in north Louisiana has one clump of trees near the pad but it is open for a long way in all directions after that. We have power lines that criss cross the field though, seen a few, mine being one, get hung up on those.
I lived in Oklahoma when I was a child, Elk City and Canute area. Then built a paper machine in Lawton in the late 90's, been considering taking the family up there for a trip one year.
 
Sure thing 👍 I'll grab a trailer and head on up. That sure is a nice site, what's the waiver?
Our HP site in north Louisiana has one clump of trees near the pad but it is open for a long way in all directions after that. We have power lines that criss cross the field though, seen a few, mine being one, get hung up on those.
I lived in Oklahoma when I was a child, Elk City and Canute area. Then built a paper machine in Lawton in the late 90's, been considering taking the family up there for a trip one year.

I *think* the waiver now is 16k feet. There are things we could land on, ie. hangers, beacon tower, gas tanks, etc.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/S...595ceb298fe9906!8m2!3d35.291162!4d-99.6400969
 
My old H&R 20 gauge was the actually the second friend I called. My "Diller Killer" 10/22 was the first... and fourth. . LOL. Subsonic rounds and had the trunk as a backstop, the direction I was shooting, there are no homes or houses for a long way. Number three was my Benelli Nova 12 gauge with some old reloads that I wasn't even sure what I was shooting. I knocked down several limbs but not the one holding the rocket. In the end it was a lineman friend who came to help. His boom was fully extended and his wiggle stick was fully extended but he got it. I told him if he could get a grab on anything to just pull it, it was fiberglass and kevlar so it would handle it. Had it landed in a tree on my property then yeah friend number 1 would have been Mr Stihl.
Gee, my firearm of choice would have been to .22 rifle. Might take a couple of tries to hit that little branch, but once it's hit, the little slug is all you'd need.
 
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