I attained my L3 cert on 8/9/08 and was promoted to L3 TAP on 6/22/11. Let me know how I can help you achieve your level 3 on the very first try! Glad to serve. :)
All of a sudden this thing's really coming together. I cut all the airframe holes tonight and everything's piecing together peachily:
Despite all my Illustrator pre-work and all the iteration I still managed to aim the camera basically down a fin. It's a 16:9 aspect ratio camera and it's focus is fixed below the fin but still. Duh. The final motor tube/e-bay assembly's curing now. Tomorrow night I'll reinforce the fins and epoxy the entire booster together when that's done. I really need to complete the construction soon because I want this to be super glossy when painted and I have all those awesome Sticker Shock decals to apply before LDRS...
Yesterday I added one wrap of 6 oz. fiberglass to Der Red Mix's main airframe using Dave Triano's technique. This is mainly for aesthetics and secondarily for durability. It's very difficult to apply excess resin to this much area so there are many gaps in the otherwise glossy finish. It's also tough to apply adequate hoop stress on the 14 mil Mylar™ film so that didn't help this surface defect either. It'll finish up nicely anyway so I'm still happy with the result:
Here also are some studio shots of progress on the electronics bay and I think they better convey the final layout. This whole assembly will be epoxied into the above airframe after I cut fin, e-bay door, and video camera slots into it:
I continue to make progress on Der Red Mix's electronics bay and motor tubes. Right now I only have e-bay pix, however, so here they are:
The Flip MinoHD camera fits nicely through the side and I have room for both Parrot 2 and Raven altimeters + 2 9V batteries on that removable G10 board. I'm also working on the hinged door for the front and a simple plywood cowling to reduce drag on the dangle-cam.
I also finished building my Madcow Squat for the drag race at LDRS 29. Now I just need to finish and paint that puppy and it's all set:
Tonight I was inspired to drill the extra holes in all four centering rings, cut the motor tubes to length, and mark them precisely according to the plan a few entries below. Everything went together nicely but before I apply any epoxy I realize I need to finalize the electronics bay mounting board first.
You'll notice that I've elected to dual-attach the shock cord on the upper plate. I think this should reduce the tendency to zipper as the load will be divided in half. I'm quite sure the Gates Brothers used to employ that trick. Also that single aluminum tube bridges the electronics bay to the motor area and will facilitate e-match wire transport. Hopefully this week I'll get this whole assembly done and the rest of the build should prove fairly trivial. I think the first flight will probably be a central CTI 1596K500 Red Lightning motor on the ground then air-starting 2 x 408I345 White Thunders. Niiiice!
I'm still working on the full 48" payload for the 100% Viciously Mean Machine but, in the mean time, I bought a Performance Rocketry aluminum-tipped, carbon fiber, conical nosecone and it just looks bad ass with the shorter payload. That booster will fit a CTI 6GXL casing so I hope to fly an L935 in there soon.
[I corrected the lens distortion present in the other version of the image.]
I'm honored the Mandarin-fluent geniuses like [ElvisS_S blah blah blah] assume that enough people read not only my blog, but comments on individual entries, that it's worth spamming me. I will always immediately delete your drivel so find someone else to pester, shitheads!! Seek some less annoying way to earn a living.
Last night and this morning I worked up several templates based on my size/position guide (click image for larger version):
As this will be my most complicated scratch-built design ever I found it necessary to plan all the part positions precisely up front. I highly recommend either Illustrator or CAD for this purpose and I used the former in this exercise. I just need a few more parts and I can start cutting and adhering.
After finishing my taxes today I decided to repair several ailing rockets despite needing to build/finish several others.
First off I fixed the 4" bullet after an early I366 Redline flight with yet another incredibly short delay. That was the last of the Redline motors I bought 'round about 2002 and, even storing the delays separately, these old motors accelerate the delay burn by roughly 6x. As such the ejection charge blows even before the motor has burned out (and yes I'm certain I assembled the motor correctly). This is the third old Redline that's behaved the same way so I sense a trend. The bullet suffered a zipper about 1.5" long right through the carbon fiber reinforcement so it was going damned fast at the time. Luckily I had enough room above the coupler that I could just slice the zipped section off and the nosecone still fits unmodified:
If this rocket suffers another event requiring repair I'm cutting my losses and tossing it!
Secondly I'm trying to correct a warp in my Viciously Mean Machine's 48" payload section. I'm quite certain this happened during carbon fiber reinforcement due to inadequate support while curing in the oven. Today I taped a 10lb. weight to the high point in the tube, suspended it in the curing oven on a contiguous 1" dowel, and post-cured for roughly 35 minutes. I'll check it in a bit but if that didn't work I might be scrapping a second payload section. Dammit:
Finally I had experienced a wall deformation in my 7.5" Nike Smoke on its last M1939 flight. I'm quite certain this was because I flew it single-deploy and, when the 16 foot Rocketman 'chute inflated from the payload section, the payload coupler came out an an angle and cracked/deformed the top of the tube. I mixed up a batch of West Systems epoxy, dropped in a liberal amount of Kevlar pulp and white pigment, and slathered that mess on the inside of the tube. I then used packing tape on the bottom of the tube to prevent leakage, topped it with a sheet of vacuum bag film, laid in a section of 7.5" tubing, and clamped the whole thing together. I think this will work pretty well after I grind off the excess epoxy:
I'm way behind in my blog posts so I'll list what I still owe here so I don't forget:
March Plaster City launch report
April Plaster City Launch report (featuring 9,140' I284 flight which I think is a record)
Inexplicably wacky ARTS2 altimeter behavior
Mad Cow Squat build (due before LDRS 29 in early June)
2000MPH President's Challenge build (Due before May Plaster City launch)
I needed an easy sport flyer for 29mm motors as my Arreaux is aging. This kit goes together so fast! Here's the AeroPack motor retainer end:
And the forward end:
And the overview of the motor tube assembly:
And, using this stupidly simple masking tape rig, I was able to tack all 6 fins to the motor tube at one time. Big fan!:
And these last two pics complete the assembly. I forgot to take them before flying this three times on Saturday so that's why the white tail end epoxy looks soiled:
And no the top fins are not tilted. Chalk that up to wide-angle lens distortion. Now onto finishing...
Yeah this has taken awhile but I sorta got hung up editing vid. I marvel that Apple's Final Cut Pro 7 supports neither AVCHD nor Flip MinoHD formats natively. Guess what though -- Adobe Premier CS4 does!! WTF, Apple? Git yo shite togetha. Rant mode off. I didn't think I'd be able to fly this month because I was backup shooter at a wedding for my buddy Jaime on Saturday. However, our club scored an FAA waiver all day Friday, 1/1/10, so I went for it. El Bee accompanied me and fun was had by all even though the crew was sparse. Actually when you have Jack Garabaldi vending AND flying, Russ Sands successfully attaining his L3, and Paul Snow bustin' out a K1999 no options exist except to have a good time. Here are my select photos for the day. I flew light-ish today as it was short notice but I'm still happy with the results. I started with my Loc Bullet on a J825 for a thermite ignition test. I experienced ignition system issues and had three sequential misfires with an electric match + 0.5 g of thermite. The fourth time was sort of the charm with the match popping, the thermite doing something without emitting smoke, and the J825 igniting about 8 seconds too late for me to catch a photo. The flight was awesomely fast and now I know to use at least 1-2 g of thermite next time since instant ignition is my goal. Then El Bee and I took it easy and flew a super convenient Cesaroni Pro29 159G118 Blue Streak motor in my trusty Aerotech Arreaux for a very quick and cool ascent. Again we captured no photos but the rocket landed on a moto burm and again managed to avoid destruction. Next we flew the same Arreaux on a Cesaroni Pro29 176H123 but this time El Bee caught a great video with the Flip MinoHD video camera (watch in HD on YouTube):
Unfortunately I did an awful job of catching the liftoff because I was busy pushing the launch button and watching the flight. I like that our club offers control over one's own flight but it greatly complicates photography and videography. (Watch in HD on YouTube): The flight portion sucked but El Bee caught a nice liftoff sequence and here's the best frame (click for larger version):
I recently had my 1Ds III serviced and it nailed the focus on most shots today. The detail in the flame of that shot is awesome! It looks sorta like flamey fur:
Oh and here's another bonus... this flight attained 9,217' and I believe that's a record that should make it into Rick's altitude record database! There's another Pro38 J360 record from 2005 but this Pro54 J360 Skidmark wasn't released until 2009 so it must be new and different! :P Heh heh.
