What did you do rocket wise today?

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Watched the contractor assemble my new shop. Tomorrow they will finish the roof and trim and other unfinished today parts.
It's gonna' be sweet to make rocket parts with a well equipped machine/woodworking shop set up just how I need it.

That is awesome Top, very happy for you.

Are you going to insulate it? I hear it gets cold up in those parts.
 
That is awesome Top, very happy for you.

Are you going to insulate it? I hear it gets cold up in those parts.
Yes, of course.
It will be great to be able to work on technical things throughout the Winter.
Iv'e been in a bad mental state since this Spring, because we had snow here in May, and my shop was delayed.by many factors out of my control. Things are finally coming together for patient me.
 
Yes, of course.
It will be great to be able to work on technical things throughout the Winter.
Iv'e been in a bad mental state since this Spring, because we had snow here in May, and my shop was delayed.by many factors out of my control. Things are finally coming together for patient me.

Awesome, gonna be SWEET!
 
Our high power launch was scrubbed due to weather, re submitted a email for next weekend.

I was getting batteries all charged, made progress with my 808 camera with a custom internal mount with a side view out of the payload bay on Gallo 24.

I made plans to fly 6 rockets at a local high school this evening. AT D15t to Loki G70ct in various builds ranging in altitude from 700' to 2400'.

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The wind was very calm, blue sky with a storm rolling in from the south west. In my mind the perfect launch video, a straight colum or exhaust with the blue sky, transition to the clouds in the background. But it was not ment to be, I have not launched much this year and my 12v battery in the milk crate let me down, and my 12v jump pack has been acting up aswell. I also left the backup Estes launcher at home, I had used it for deployment charge tests on my 1/4 scale Viking 7 build and forgot to put it back in the range box.

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Primed and sanded my Vanderburn Panavia clone. Too hot to do much else outside and the garage hit 90 degrees pretty ealry this morning.

Will add a second coat of primer tomorrow morning and dry sand in the evening.

I’m thinking about going with the Estes standard paint scheme but then again... I’m partial to a variation of my custumary fluoro pink/metallic black/ white trimmed flying colors.
 
So I thought I'd post some stills taken from videos that I took during our low-power launch yesterday. As noted above, it was my first launch of anything I built since I was a kid, in the late 60's/early 70's. We flew Chris Michelson's (sp?) "Birdie" and "Pigasus", my Estes Mercury Redstone and Venus Probe, and my son's Estes "Power Patrol".

Now since I'd themed my launch control box with Snoopy, Duck Dodgers, Marvin the Martian, and especially Wile E. Coyote, a fellow here had predicted that I'd face many disasters, including possibly the rocket remaining on the pad while the fellow pushing the button would get catapaulted into the air! And true to form, we started with Birdie just to check the wind. My first launch in forever CATO'd! The A10-3T blew out the nozzle and basically acted like a firecracker. We tried Birdie again later and a second A10-3T CATO'd as well, but we got more altitude that time. Maybe that "10" spike is too much for a small motor, or I got a bad batch or something.

4 generations were present for the launch - my wife's mother, my wife, her brother, and I, 2 of my sons, one of my daughters, her hubby and the 3 grandkids. All rockets flew and recovered. Damages were confined to superficial stuff - a cracked outer fin on the Redstone, a lost escape rocket nozzle on the Redstone, and a little body tube end damage on my son's Power Patrol. 7 flights in all.

And I am an idiot - took the 1920 x 1080 videos with the camera vertical... Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Lessons learned:

1. Venus Probe and Redstone can easily fly on "D" impulse- with Venus Probe, it's almost a necessity.
2. Pigasus is a great little flyer!
3. Rockets are very hard to video - I couldn't find them in the frame once they were up a ways!
3. Grandkids are enthralled with rockets! In the pictures to follow, look for my granddaughter (purple shirt) with her hands pointed up over her head. She's a rocket!

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Uh.. they're kinda out of order, but said grandaughter can be seen, hands over her head, laying next to the Redstone. Thank God she laid down gently rather than topling over like the Rocket did!
 
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For a brief moment, the side-by-side stills of the Redstone launch looked to me like a single photo (at least on my monitor) because my eyes went from the launch pads to the smoke, then to the rockets. I thought, "Two Redstones launching!" until I took in more of the photos - the people, the background, etc. :)
 
For a brief moment, the side-by-side stills of the Redstone launch looked to me like a single photo (at least on my monitor) because my eyes went from the launch pads to the smoke, then to the rockets. I thought, "Two Redstones launching!" until I took in more of the photos - the people, the background, etc. :)
Yeah, I wish I could put them in order. The toddler was just sitting on my lap watching the videos exclaiming "ROCKET SHIP!" "It went high!" "It's coming down!" in his barely understandable baby talk! That's almost better than the actual flights!
 
I like the side-by-side look of the photos (StackHorizontal in AviSynth video vernacular). The young ones do indeed add to the moments. My grandson enjoys launching and chasing our rockets. Always enjoyable having him along for the flights. Good times!
 
This is a weird rocketry activity, but it can be traced directly to a launch, so i'm counting it.

I got a piece of wood removed from my left middle finger today. I have been carrying it around for about 4-5 years, and it was quite stuck in place bh the scar tissue that had formed around the palm end of it.

How is this rocketry related? I got it when I was pounding stakes into the groubd for a flag line before a launch. One of the stakes was apparently end of life, and I didn't realize that until it shatered when I hit it (hard). The hammer carried through and buggered up my left hand. It was bad, but nit so baf I couldn't use about half the on site first aid kit to buh ndle it up and fly that day. Well,ot was such a bloody swolen mess by evening that I didn't notice an entrance wound amongst the others. It slowly healed, never got nfected, but something wasn't right. I could move and feel just fine, but I had a lump, but it didn't hurt, so why worry about it...partially torn muscle something that just healed weird I figured. A few months ago the finger end of it shifted,and it became obvious it was not a piece of me in there. It was also at the joint, so more shifting could be real bad, hence today's fun.

Before
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After (about 5mm more came out seperately)
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This is a weird rocketry activity, but it can be traced directly to a launch, so i'm counting it.

I got a piece of wood removed from my left middle finger today. I have been carrying it around for about 4-5 years, and it was quite stuck in place bh the scar tissue that had formed around the palm end of it.

How is this rocketry related? I got it when I was pounding stakes into the groubd for a flag line before a launch. One of the stakes was apparently end of life, and I didn't realize that until it shatered when I hit it (hard). The hammer carried through and buggered up my left hand. It was bad, but nit so baf I couldn't use about half the on site first aid kit to buh ndle it up and fly that day. Well,ot was such a bloody swolen mess by evening that I didn't notice an entrance wound amongst the others. It slowly healed, never got nfected, but something wasn't right. I could move and feel just fine, but I had a lump, but it didn't hurt, so why worry about it...partially torn muscle something that just healed weird I figured. A few months ago the finger end of it shifted,and it became obvious it was not a piece of me in there. It was also at the joint, so more shifting could be real bad, hence today's fun.

Before
View attachment 427701
After (about 5mm more came out seperately)
View attachment 427702

What was that?
 
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Estes Designer Special kit came in. I wanted a “spare bin” of parts for fixes, repairs and build assistance, and this was the quickest method. The nose cones and templates for fins are unlikely to be used, but they’re nice to have. I’m eying the transition sections as possible boat-tails.
 
Some more work on the Spacemonkey V2.

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Stuffer tube completed

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Airframe trimmed.

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Aft nozzle trimmed.

Thinking about a build thread later if anyone is interested.

I have two of these kits in the pile. One will be finished as a Soviet R-1. This one ill be finished as one of the 'lost' V2s shipped to Japan in late 1944.

"According to decrypted messages from the Japanese embassy in Germany, twelve dismantled V-2 rockets were shipped to Japan.[87] These left Bordeaux in August 1944 on the transport U-boats U-219 and U-195, which reached Djakarta in December 1944. A civilian V-2 expert was a passenger on U-234, bound for Japan in May 1945 when the war ended in Europe. The fate of these V-2 rockets is unknown."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket
 
This is a weird rocketry activity, but it can be traced directly to a launch, so i'm counting it.

I got a piece of wood removed from my left middle finger today. I have been carrying it around for about 4-5 years, and it was quite stuck in place bh the scar tissue that had formed around the palm end of it.

How is this rocketry related? I got it when I was pounding stakes into the groubd for a flag line before a launch. One of the stakes was apparently end of life, and I didn't realize that until it shatered when I hit it (hard). The hammer carried through and buggered up my left hand. It was bad, but nit so baf I couldn't use about half the on site first aid kit to buh ndle it up and fly that day. Well,ot was such a bloody swolen mess by evening that I didn't notice an entrance wound amongst the others. It slowly healed, never got nfected, but something wasn't right. I could move and feel just fine, but I had a lump, but it didn't hurt, so why worry about it...partially torn muscle something that just healed weird I figured. A few months ago the finger end of it shifted,and it became obvious it was not a piece of me in there. It was also at the joint, so more shifting could be real bad, hence today's fun.

Before
View attachment 427701
After (about 5mm more came out seperately)
View attachment 427702

So build a rocket to launch that thing into space as an offering to the Ewoks...
 
Soldered and then 5 minute epoxy "potted" the drogue ejection terminal strip on my Level 3's aft av bay closure.
Thought I had messed up the epoxy mix until I realized I was dealing with "amine blush" due to the high Central Texas humidity.

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