What did you do rocket wise today?

[Lugnut56]

Completed a Rocksim file for a Fliskit "US TOG". Other than not being able to duplicate the angle cut tubes, it came out fairly accurate.

 

[RocketTree]

Finished the BT80 upscale Black Brant IV Hawaii with 29mm motor mount (left)

 

[4regt4]

Finished the BT80 upscale Black Brant IV Hawaii with 29mm motor mount (left)


View attachment 681210

Really nice! Sources for transitions, etc.?

Hans.

 

[dhurstell]

Working on my first DD project.

Did my L1 on this rocket with motor deploy.

This is using a new Featherweight Blue Jay altimeter. AWESOME product at a GREAT price point.



Simulation testing with old christmas bulbs.
View attachment 1000003330.mov


This is a FAILED test. No lights. There was some software error saying the BlueJay was unauthorized. Fixed it by restarting the app, but I dont have the video.

After the electronics test seemed to work, its time to load up the black powder.

1g for the Apogee
View attachment 1000003421.mov

This is a failure. The drogue chute is still in the body tube.

.5g for the main.
View attachment 1000003422.mov

Success!

Testing with 1.2g
View attachment 1000003450.mov

Chute STILL stuck in the tube. Not exactly ejecting with authority either...

Back to the garage and moved the chute attachment point closer to the AV bay and packed with 1.5g now.
View attachment 1000003452.mov

A "technical" success by pulling the chute out of the tube, but I still dont feel like this ejected with "authority"

2g tomorrow.

 

[rharshberger]

Really nice! Sources for transitions, etc.?

Hans.

Larger one looks to be 3D printed then epoxy coated after sanding based on what i am seeing.

 

[Art Upton]

Working on my first DD project.

Did my L1 on this rocket with motor deploy.

This is using a new Featherweight Blue Jay altimeter. AWESOME product at a GREAT price point.

View attachment 681234

Simulation testing with old christmas bulbs.
View attachment 681229


This is a FAILED test. No lights. There was some software error saying the BlueJay was unauthorized. Fixed it by restarting the app, but I dont have the video.

After the electronics test seemed to work, its time to load up the black powder.

1g for the Apogee
View attachment 681231

This is a failure. The drogue chute is still in the body tube.

.5g for the main.
View attachment 681230

Success!

Testing with 1.2g
View attachment 681233

Chute STILL stuck in the tube. Not exactly ejecting with authority either...

Back to the garage and moved the chute attachment point closer to the AV bay and packed with 1.5g now.
View attachment 681232

A "technical" success by pulling the chute out of the tube, but I still dont feel like this ejected with "authority"

2g tomorrow.

I think you might try to put the charge at the bottom of the booster instead of the AV bay charge well. It's not acting like a cannon. Extend the wires so you have a "floating" charge at the bottom pointing up.

Think of the wire like a Capital J but pointing up at the end. Then your wadding/chute protector , then chute.
That pushes the chute out, BLOWS it OUT the cannon, and uses less powder. You don't want to blow a hole in the side of the body tube.

It's just my opinion, but I never used an AV bay mounted charge well for the booster section if using a chute. If your doing drogueless at apogee then AV charge well is fine. Again just how I did things.

If you do want to use that charge well, put the drogue much closer to it. As the charge fires pushing the main's cannon off the booster, it is also pushing the drogue back down into the booster tube.

 

[RocketTree]

Really nice! Sources for transitions, etc.?

Hans.

Thanks. Nose cones and transitions are designed in OpenRocket, then 3D printed with an Ender3.

 

[dhurstell]

I think you might try to put the charge at the bottom of the booster instead of the AV bay charge well. It's not acting like a cannon. Extend the wires so you have a "floating" charge at the bottom pointing up.

Think of the wire like a Capital J but pointing up at the end. Then your wadding/chute protector , then chute.
That pushes the chute out, BLOWS it OUT the cannon, and uses less powder. You don't want to blow a hole in the side of the body tube.

It's just my opinion, but I never used an AV bay mounted charge well for the booster section if using a chute. If your doing drogueless at apogee then AV charge well is fine. Again just how I did things.

If you do want to use that charge well, put the drogue much closer to it. As the charge fires pushing the main's cannon off the booster, it is also pushing the drogue back down into the booster tube.

Thank you so much for posting this.

That concept has been baking in my brain all day and for another experience rocketeer to essentially confirm it is one of the things that makes this forum so cool =).

So... the question then... use the whole 18" of ematch wire to get the charge down in the body tube?

 

[JoeFilgas]

Finally got the white paint on!

 

[Art Upton]

Thank you so much for posting this.

That concept has been baking in my brain all day and for another experience rocketeer to essentially confirm it is one of the things that makes this forum so cool =).

So... the question then... use the whole 18" of ematch wire to get the charge down in the body tube?

Yea, I used the full length of the match and bought long ones. Used those plastic floating vials , centrifuge tubes for the charge

When I only had short matches , I extended them with shooters wire. This is called "floating charge", some use cut off fingers of surgical gloves. But if drogue less and you have a charge well on the AV bay, might as well use it, as you have no chute to worry about pushing back into the body tube

This is how I did it, as I was following how others before me did it at my club and at other launches I went to. There are others doing it the way you were in the video, but you will find you can only use so much powder as your fighting the physics of pushing the chute back down into the booster tube. Up in the air, it may well come out, or at worse it would just be a drogue-less recovery flat spin until the main is pushed out your chute cannon.

Edit:
I used these, or the larger straight walled ones in large diameter rockets. I put a hole at the bottom just a little to get the match wires down into them from the top. when the match was at the bottom I put hot glue or silicone sealer at the bottom to seal it. Make sure you don't short the match leads pulling the match too tight into the tube.

I would fill to the point I needed with BP and put dog barf into the rest. I either closed the lid or cover the top without the lid in masking tape. The idea was it was full with BP then dog barf.

On the straight walled tubes I would place the match down into it and fold over the wires at the top and seal it with dog barf and masking tape, with masking tape on the side of the tube holding the wire to it folded over into the tube. I did not put the screw on lids on the straight walled tubes they came with. Many times I cut the lids off the vials and just sealed with masking tape instead.

 

[BrendanH69]

My rocket buddy 3D printed four CRs for me today. These were to finally put together my 158mm mandrel for future rolling of airframe sections with the 300gsm flax twill material for my intended Level 3 project. Just tool and jig manufacturing at the moment, but had some good news yesterday about a new TAP appointment, so I'm hoping to get officially moving in the next couple of months.

Got to foam the inside next to ensure its very rigid for the airframe rolling process, especially as I'm considering vacuum bagging it as well.

 

[Hammster]

Thanks. Nose cones and transitions are designed in OpenRocket, then 3D printed with an Ender3.

Ok, this is cool. I just tried fiddling with something in Open Rocket, saved it as obj so my printer could open it and then made it into an stl file then g code for my printer.

 

[Chad Holm]

Slowly working on two of my builds. 54mm min diameter and a 2.6” two stage. Have to move slow since the parts to finish are on my Christmas list.

 

[4regt4]

Yea, I used the full length of the match and bought long ones. Used those plastic floating vials , centrifuge tubes for the charge

When I only had short matches , I extended them with shooters wire. This is called "floating charge", some use cut off fingers of surgical gloves. But if drogue less and you have a charge well on the AV bay, might as well use it, as you have no chute to worry about pushing back into the body tube

This is how I did it, as I was following how others before me did it at my club and at other launches I went to. There are others doing it the way you were in the video, but you will find you can only use so much powder as your fighting the physics of pushing the chute back down into the booster tube. Up in the air, it may well come out, or at worse it would just be a drogue-less recovery flat spin until the main is pushed out your chute cannon.

Art:

How are you handling the wiring from the controller itself to outside of the AV bay? I'm retrofitting a motor eject rocket, and I'll need to pull out the Eggtimer Apogee from inside of the AV bay to charge the battery. Looks like I'll need an electrical connector, but that leaves a length of wire flopping around inside the AV bay with no real way of anchoring it.

Hans.

 

[Art Upton]

Art:

How are you handling the wiring from the controller itself to outside of the AV bay? I'm retrofitting a motor eject rocket, and I'll need to pull out the Eggtimer Apogee from inside of the AV bay to charge the battery. Looks like I'll need an electrical connector, but that leaves a length of wire flopping around inside the AV bay with no real way of anchoring it.

Hans.

I have always ran the match wires directly to the altimeter's terminals. I do that thru a drilled hole in the bulkhead that I cover with either tub and tile sealer or silicone sealer. I can always pull it off later and put new down, it's not glue. My Big Bee RDF 432mhz transmitter antenna [wire] in the 3" Av-bay I posted yesterday goes thru such a sealed hole as well.

I am currently looking at my Apogee board and what to do as it does not come with terminals. I will be adding them to the Quasar I just got early next year but have not decided on the apogee board. If a terminal fits I probably will add it. For the battery I have a JST connector whip/wire I will solder to the Apogee board and plug the battery into that. Battery will be tied down and board will be screwed down to a sled/bulkhead.

To lengthen a wire I would solder it, it's only a one time use wire. A very small length of wire from the battery to the altimeter I have not yet had a problem with not glue it down so far, I don't think it really was floppin' around much.

See SLCF side of sled here with battery wire, the switch when in the AV-Bay where that jumper pin is, is connected to a pair of wires that go to an external screw that is a switch. The pin was used for testing yesteday.


Here is the battery side, no real problem with runs like that I have had, see the Antenna wire fed out a hole that is sealed on the other side with sealer.

 

[4regt4]

I have always ran the match wires directly to the altimeter's terminals. I do that thru a drilled hole in the bulkhead that I cover with either tub and tile sealer or silicone sealer. I can always pull it off later and put new down, it's not glue. My Big Bee RDF 432mhz transmitter antenna [wire] in the 3" Av-bay I posted yesterday goes thru such a sealed hole as well.

I am currently looking at my Apogee board and what to do as it does not come with terminals. I will be adding them to the Quasar I just got early next year but have not decided on the apogee board. If a terminal fits I probably will add it. For the battery I have a JST connector whip/wire I will solder to the Apogee board and plug the battery into that. Battery will be tied down and board will be screwed down to a sled/bulkhead.

To lengthen a wire I would solder it, it's only a one time use wire. A very small length of wire from the battery to the altimeter I have not yet had a problem with not glue it down so far, I don't think it really was floppin' around much.

See SLCF side of sled here with battery wire, the switch when in the AV-Bay where that jumper pin is, is connected to a pair of wires that go to an external screw that is a switch. The pin was used for testing yesteday.


Here is the battery side, no real problem with runs like that I have had, see the Antenna wire fed out a hole that is sealed on the other side with sealer.

Thanks for the help.

I don't have easy access to the bulkhead in my installation unless I completely rebuild the AV bay. The bulkhead is in the middle of a coupler. I currently have the electrical goodies (Pnut altimeter, 2 trackers) mounted on a basswood plank that is a tight friction fit in the payload bay, secured with plastic rivets. It's worked very well for what I have been doing. Now I'd like to place an Apogee on that same board, but it looks like it'll need a wire connector for the ematch. Not a big deal except that the length of wire is loose.

Also, what happens to the ematch wire/plastic vial after separation? It seems it would be flopping loose out of the back of the AV bay, possibly able to get tangled up with the shock cord/laundry. Unless I'm not understanding correctly.

Again, thanks for the help.

Hans.

 

[ross_an_artisan]

I finished this gender reveal Estes Xtreme that we'll be flying tomorrow, with appropriate-colored streamer and cake glitter deployed at ejection.

View attachment 680789

Girl or Boy or Unsuccessful Launch with parachute not opening .

Really cool idea btw

 

[Art Upton]

Thanks for the help.

I don't have easy access to the bulkhead in my installation unless I completely rebuild the AV bay. The bulkhead is in the middle of a coupler. I currently have the electrical goodies (Pnut altimeter, 2 trackers) mounted on a basswood plank that is a tight friction fit in the payload bay, secured with plastic rivets. It's worked very well for what I have been doing. Now I'd like to place an Apogee on that same board, but it looks like it'll need a wire connector for the ematch. Not a big deal except that the length of wire is loose.

Also, what happens to the ematch wire/plastic vial after separation? It seems it would be flopping loose out of the back of the AV bay, possibly able to get tangled up with the shock cord/laundry. Unless I'm not understanding correctly.

Again, thanks for the help.

Hans.

I have never had a problem with the ematch solid wires floppin' about inside an AV-bay. Never had a camera inside one*** to look but they worked and were replaced each time.

But I have seen the floating charge wire on a few on-board videos. I have not seen it tangle with the laundry, but it is out there floating about, not violently as the rocket is now under a recovery mode, even if drogue less

Floating charges were the norm, before folks started selling charge wells for/on AV-bay bulk-heads. For the apogee charge if not drogue less, it causes the charge to push the chute back into the tube. I imagine you could fasten the wire to the recovery harness in a few spots on the harness up by the AV/bay, but I never did.

A different issue but look at the fin on the left, the ignitor wire that went up the P motor core to the top got taken by the edge of the fin somehow all the way to apogee, where on tip over, it falls off



Tip over starting, you can see the rest of it that was trailing in the wind stream on the way up, and if you stop action the video you can see that the whole ignitor stick was taken up. You can sorta see the stick in this still




for those that might want to see the video:

 

[Art Upton]

.

 

[Art Upton]

*** from up above Dr. Zooch [Wes] had one of my cameras lookin' inside the Ant-Stro-naughts cabin live on a launch.

You could see their antennas move during the flight. I still have that video.

 

[cellofellow]

Girl or Boy or Unsuccessful Launch with parachute not opening .

Really cool idea btw

It was, unfortunately, unsuccessful ejection of the streamer. The nose cone and the motor both ejected but there was too much wadding (why did I use wadding? It had a completely inflammable crepe paper streamer in there.) and the rocket took a core sample in the dirt. I pulled out the streamer (and the edible glitter) and poof! it was all blue and it was anti-climactic but fun. I put the rocket back together and it flew a second time with the whole dramatic reveal of the blue streamer. The first flight was a little hop on an A8-3 but the second flight I said "screw it" and flew a C6-5 and it was quite a high flight. I severely oversized the streamer for visibility so the descent was quite long. The rocket is a bit broken now and probably won't fly again but it was a grand day out.

Bonus: we're naming our son with the initials A.P.

 

[4regt4]

Bonus: we're naming our son with the initials A.P.

Will his nickname be "Ammoni"?

Hans.

 

[pugachu]

I finished this gender reveal Estes Xtreme that we'll be flying tomorrow, with appropriate-colored streamer and cake glitter deployed at ejection.

We did a gender reveal launch for our last kid (girl), but with a pink or blue parachute. It was a small Estes rocket, with nylon parachutes.

She's 7 now, likes painting rockets, but doesn't like building them, and doesn't like going to launches..

 

[jmasterj]

Assembled motors for my rockets for this weekend's launch at Higgs Farm. Wednesday night I'll prep the kids' rockets and Friday night I'll prep my DD rockets.



K550W: Backup for Demon 5 if the winds are high or I wuss out on the L
H165R: PSII Nike Smoke
I430LB: Little John 4
J500G: Flying Pumpkin
L910CS: Demon 5 in normal wind conditions

 

[dhurstell]

Assembled my first eggtimer product. No soldering experience before a week or so ago.

Wi-Fi switch used to power my backup altimeter (RRC2+)

Great vid from inverted pursuit really helped out too.

Designed and printed a piston/baffle for my drogue ejection.

Ground testing tomorrow.

 

[Lugnut56]

Ordered a 3' Ramjet kit from Dragon Rocketry today. I built and flew a clone of the original Estes kit earlier this year and am hoping to have as great a flight with the 3" rocket as I did with the clone. And I have a copy of the decal sheet saved as a SVG file so I can upscale them for the 3" kit.

 

[Brayzure]

Got the Quasar bundle from the holiday sale finished and enclosed!

 

[dhurstell]

Assembled my first eggtimer product. No soldering experience before a week or so ago.

Wi-Fi switch used to power my backup altimeter (RRC2+)
View attachment 681444
Great vid from inverted pursuit really helped out too.

Designed and printed a piston/baggle for my drogue ejection.

Ground testing tomorrow.

I think you might try to put the charge at the bottom of the booster instead of the AV bay charge well. It's not acting like a cannon. Extend the wires so you have a "floating" charge at the bottom pointing up.

Think of the wire like a Capital J but pointing up at the end. Then your wadding/chute protector , then chute.
That pushes the chute out, BLOWS it OUT the cannon, and uses less powder. You don't want to blow a hole in the side of the body tube.

It's just my opinion, but I never used an AV bay mounted charge well for the booster section if using a chute. If your doing drogueless at apogee then AV charge well is fine. Again just how I did things.

If you do want to use that charge well, put the drogue much closer to it. As the charge fires pushing the main's cannon off the booster, it is also pushing the drogue back down into the booster tube.

Tried this today and it worked great on 1.4g

 

[Lugnut56]

Got the various tubes for the "US TOG" chamfered and cleaned up. Planning to paper the fin balsa sheets (as suggested in the instructions) tomorrow. Also mulling over the order for painting and assemble.

 

[RiffD]

Delivery day from Chris' Black Friday sales. Picked up a 5.5" Goblin for a L2 attempt next year and added to my wife's build pile. Not mentioning which in case she comes across the forum...