What did you do rocket wise today?

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Got a bit done on the LOC Zeus: I'm finishing the main fins model airplane style with dope and silkspan to add a little toughness to the thin ply skins and kill the wood grain. All four have been tissue covered and have three coats of dope applied. It's pretty humid here, so they will need a little extra cure time before I can sand them. Once sanded they will be ready for primer and some surface details.

I also started working on some nose cone detail stuff, which involved finding a glue that would stick to a LOC nose cone. Actually found something that actually seems to work and is cheap... :oops:

Yes, you read that correctly.

Here's a link to the post:

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/glue-that-works-on-loc-nosecones.159559/
 
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I freaking undid 4 different freaking epoxy jobs from a bad batch yesterday, UHG

so much work to get back to where i was before starting
 
mbeels said:
That was a fun build, some of the painting steps are tricky on a completed rocket, depending on what kind of paint scheme you do. In hindsight, I would have done some painting before final assembly.
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Thats the real rub. Do you have to go back with brush strokes on the glue joints?
 
Nytrunner said:
Thats the real rub. Do you have to go back with brush strokes on the glue joints?
Click to expand...

I did all the assembly before painting, so I struggled with the masking and some paint bled through to where it wasn't supposed to be. The hardest part is where the three outer tubes surround the conical nose cone. Before painting, I'd mask off the glue joint areas, and I think even if you had to repaint the joints after assembly, the whole process might be easier. But I haven't tried it that way, so maybe there are other snags you'd run into.
 
Not a what did I do today thing, but over the last couple days I have nearly finished a project I had wanted to take on for awhile. About 25 years ago during my first foray into model rocketry, I purchased an Estes Broadsword rocket. It was my 2nd, maybe 3rd rocket ever purchased and my build skills were minimal at best. But, I was happy with the rocket and thought it looked great with the red and black paint scheme and the big wrap around decal. So I flew it a few times,using the D12 Estes motor, got the typical 5-600 ft. and flights were successful. Soon after though, I had rockets flying 1000-1600 ft. and so I got the bug to get the Broadsword to fly higher. I saw a pack of D12 booster motors in the hobby store one day and immediately knew what I wanted to do, build a booster for my rocket and see how much higher I could get it to fly. So I built the booster and IT worked as a booster stage should work. But as I mentioned, my build skills were minimal which included me knowing nothing about center of pressure or center of gravity. So you can guess what happened. My first two stage launch was interesting. The rocket launched and at about 75-100 ft the main stage motor launched and the booster fell away, all perfect. But the rocket instead of continuing to go up flew a beautiful rainbow type arc. No harm to the rocket and it was kind of fun, but I knew I was missing something. So I purchased a book titled "Handbook Of Model Rocketry" by G. Harry Stine. There I learned about center of gravity and how to test a rockets stability by using the swing test. Now I knew enough to be dangerous. So after adding nose weight--a lot of nose weight-- I was ready to fly again. Again everything worked great and the rocket flew straight up. But thats when things kind of nosedived, and that includes the rocket. At apogee the rocket did kind of an about face and nosedived right into mother earth. I took it home, cut all the damaged tubing away and some days later attempted another launch . My thinking was that it was some kind of an anomaly that the nose cone had not ejected so therefore no parachute deployment. So I changed nothing other than the shortening of the rocket and the result was the same. So I took the rocket home and decided if I wanted to stay big but fly higher I needed another rocket so I purchased an Aerotech Initiator. Now, 20 some years later I have restored and modified my Broadsword. I cut all the damage away leaving the rocket about 10" shorter than original. I took a 14" BT 80 and set it on top of what was left of the broadsword and kind of liked what I saw, so what we now have is a 41" tall Broadsword instead of the original 36.5". I also installed a heat baffle, other than that it is all original. Touching up the red paint was difficult because I really wanted to preserve the decal (the main reason for restoring the rocket, I love the decal) so that took some careful masking. All that is left now is to hand paint some stars on the upper part of the rocket, put a couple coats of clear coat on the new paint job and it is ready to fly. Attached are a few photos of what it looked like before and some after shots. I've entered all the data as accurately as I could into OR and it has a 2.61 cal for stability flying an E motor and a 2.58 with an aerotech F32-10 so I am looking forward to getting out there and flying it again.20200220_063101.jpg20200510_072942.jpg20200524_074812.jpg
 
Epoxied in the remaining fins of my Madcow/RW Formula 54 and am now doing internal fillets.

I watched a number of rocketry YouTube vids. The winning entry was the BIG Daddy launch from LDRS.

Even Mrs. OD watched over my shoulder. She particularly enjoyed the retrieval of the rocket using a shotgun and a saw.

She wanted to know how high the rocket went and I was surprised to learn that apogee was approximately 7500’.

Impressive stuff.
 
yesturday our tripoli launch was scrubbed for winds. Today was at the upper end of the wind limits but turned out fine. Long story short got my level one back, haven’t been certed since 2000. Loc amraam 2.6” on a h123. Once I get all the media and data together I will make another post. On the pad. Then flew the MDRM on h148. Both good flights. 8529EA69-B876-47E6-B17A-29309EFA11F7.jpeg7EF6746D-2B19-4E56-9EEC-B2DB9F349F05.jpeg
 
Jay Dub 4009 said:
yesturday our tripoli launch was scrubbed for winds. Today was at the upper end of the wind limits but turned out fine. Long story short got my level one back, haven’t been certed since 2000. Loc amraam 2.6” on a h123. Once I get all the media and data together I will make another post. On the pad. Then flew the MDRM on h148. Both good flights. View attachment 418116View attachment 418117
Click to expand...

Congrats. Nice launch site an day also.
 
Test fired a few more 18mm motors. All worked, the old epoxy I was using wasn't hardening properly and causing failures.
Video of the tests
 
Jay Dub 4009 said:
yesturday our tripoli launch was scrubbed for winds. Today was at the upper end of the wind limits but turned out fine. Long story short got my level one back, haven’t been certed since 2000. Loc amraam 2.6” on a h123. Once I get all the media and data together I will make another post. On the pad. Then flew the MDRM on h148. Both good flights. View attachment 418116View attachment 418117
Click to expand...
Nice pictures. Wish I could find a launch site like that.
 
So here is another scratch built that I have recently finished. This was my special project for the year. I work for a large dairy processing company called Darigold. They recently dropped their pint sized single serve bottle and went to a 14 oz., reducing size instead of increasing price. Once I saw the bottle though, I knew what had to be done. So with complete blessings from the company I built my Darigold rocket. I was pretty sure the fins would not attach to the vinyl sleeve so I hand rolled a 4.5 inch section of tubing where I installed the motor mount and attached the fins. The tube of course was not anything close to any standard size rocket tubing so I had to make all the centering rings and bulkheads. So here is a few pictures of the construction starting with the pile of bottles and sleeves that started it all and finishing with the finished product. And no, I have no idea if this will fly. I entered as much data as I could and as accurately as I could into OR and it says that it will. Time will tell.20200416_184207.jpg20200425_074631 - Copy.jpg20200410_204320 - Copy.jpg20200502_065844.jpg
 
After our first attempt to flush Karen out at the Rillito River, we checked the map and we were nearly a quarter of a mile East of where we wanted to be. So we had to go back. Do we find Karen? Watch to find out.
#KarenMeme #Karen #Meme #ModelRocket
 
Jay Dub 4009 said:
Hopefully I get the other pics from the guys in the group soon. Our tripoli idaho site is great, lots of open space and 40K waiver. Only problem with it is that we can only use it 5 months in the year due to fire hazard
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Where in Idaho? I have a son who attends the University of Idaho in Moscow. The pictures look more like eastern Idaho where Moscow is in Northern idaho.
 
HiLonesome52 said:
Where in Idaho? I have a son who attends the University of Idaho in Moscow. The pictures look more like eastern Idaho where Moscow is in Northern idaho.
Click to expand...
Your son if he is a rocketeer needs to come fly with TriCities Rocketeers, we are about 2.5-3 hours west near Pasco WA, of course that means quarantine crap is allowing us to have launch again....
 

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