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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Debut of the Dragon Fly

I finally finished the paint job on the Arreaux. I had it nearly finished and then screwed it up. It would have looked better than it does if I hadn't had to rework it.  I still have a bunch to learn about spray painting I guess.


Photo Album: 2010-09-20, Painted Arreaux

Monday, September 13, 2010

One Giant Leap...

...Rocketry order delivered, equals one small step forward for me. I ordered my Cesaroni Pro38 motor case, delay adjustment tool and spacers from Giant Leap Rocketry last week. The order was shipped last Friday, 3 days after I placed it. Today my order arrived. Everything looks great. My only complaint about the ordering process is a lack of transparency. After receiving confirmation for my order there wasn't any additional feedback. No order number for future reference, no shipment notice when the order shipped, or tracking information for the shipment. Since the order shipped USPS with delivery confirmation they could have at least sent the tracking number to me, though USPS doesn't show much in the way of information until after the package is delivered. I would certainly do business with Giant Leap again, despite my nit-picking.


Photo Album: 2010-09-13, CTI Pro38

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Another Busy Weekend

On Friday evening and Saturday morning I worked on installing nuts for my railbuttons. I had gotten some special nuts from another local rocketeer that were supposed to embed in the wall of the airframe from the inside. Unfortunately they were not intended for use in kraft paper tubes and wouldn't seat. I ended up having to epoxy them into place which was rather tricky, since the forward nut was nearly two feet down the inside of my 2+" tube.

On Sunday I got back to work on the rocket and got the payload and nose cone mostly painted. I got the airframe primed. The photos show the airframe ready for painting, with bolts threaded into the nuts to keep paint from getting into them and tape over the bolts to keep them from being stuck to the nuts.


Photo Album: 2010-09-12, Vulcanite Airframe

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Fin Reinforcement

I finished sanding out the fillets on the fins and decided to get going this evening on the reinforcement of the fins. I set up the airframe on my workbench and applied fiberglass to one side of one set of fins. This time I applied the epoxy before applying the fiberglass. I still had to apply epoxy to the fiberglass after I laid it on the rocket. Unfortunately I'm going to have more sanding to do as the epoxy has obviously settled into the area of the fillets. I'll also have to apply more epoxy to fill the texture of the fiberglass after the current round of epoxy has cured. I'll only be able to do one side of one fin at a time as I'll have to have the fin horizontal while the epoxy is curing. I'm going to first get the glass applied to all three sides of the rocket before I tackle this step. The thing I hate most about it is how wasteful it will be of my epoxy. I have to mix a full pump up and won't come close to using it all. I don't have any projects waiting in the wings that I can use excess epoxy on either. :-(


Photo Album: Tip to Tip Fins