How to Make a Fiberglass Rocket Body Tube
Contest Rockets
The lonely life of a theodolite
A panoramic shot of LUNAR’s Snow Ranch launch field in Farmington, California starring one of the club’s theodolites, used for tracking altitudes of contest models.
In a sketch prepared in November 1964, Dr. Wernher von Braun envisioned developing a Saturn V S-II Stage into a space station.
(via spaceandstuffidk)
C Dual Eggloft Altitude
Diagnosis of a total failure! The piston failed in one of the very infrequent but sometimes happens cases. The piston head became stuck about 6 inches behind the motor, where the motor thrust burned through the piston tube. No piston assist plus the additional loss from having to free itself of an unsealed piston meant the rocket was not traveling very fast at all when it left the tower. Ejection was way past apogee and the model suffered a lot of damage. Then it hit the ground, causing scrambles!
1/4A Helicopter Duration
This is a really tough event. Building a small, light model that can coast for 3 seconds, deploy blades and then come down slowly is quite difficult. The easy way out is to build a Tasmanian Devil, as shown above. No moving parts, and my biggest problem with these models is that they spin so fast the blades will come off in flight sometimes (okay maybe that is only a problem when you put D and E motors in them).
Anyway, above is the 13mm build of this plan:
NAR Competition
A very extensive set of documents on flying every competition event, with photos and plans for many events.
Trip Barber’s NARCON 2013 talk about International Rocketry Competition, long but lots of details!
He (and Chris Flanigan) recently put together this huge and incredibly detailed site on FAI competition: https://sites.google.com/site/xfaispacemodeling/
Pretty cool post about rockets (and airplanes) from the UK. I have a model of the Black Knight, but it has a different (less cool) color scheme.
Some might find this interesting.
all of these are test prototypes produced by Companies in the UK that have been Years ahead of their time yet the Government has pulled funding and candled the projects. Total madness.
1&2. Black arrow / black night rocket. A full operation orbital delivery system that successfully placed a communication satellite Prospero into orbit (1971) built and deployed entirely by the British. Interesting fact this was a HTP system requiring a smaller engine and fuel capacity. The black arrow variant was a long range ICBM capable of transcontinental flight. This was candled when the UK government purchased trident from the US. (Great idea spend money when you could provide jobs and stimulate own economy)
Building a reliable, dependable rocket for Set Altitude
160 meters or 1/10th of a mile is the target with C motors.
LUNAR-FUN-4 Photos And Results
These results included LUNAR members too young to officially compete, for official NAR Results, check here: http://rgc.name/prcb/results/6005-13R.html
1/2A Altitude
A Division
1 Tran, Kira 51m
2 Tran, Reese 48m
3 Tran, Cody 37m
C Division
1 Bassham, James 150m
2 Desmarais, Tom 92m
3 Coleman, Ryan 87m
4 Tran, Michael 51m
— Hagerty, Jack TL and broke the string holding the motor to the Mosquito!
Set Altitude (160 m)
A Division
1 Tran, Cody 18% off (133m) (27% closure, not good enough for NAR, but good enough for LUNA)
2 Tran, Reese 50.0% (240 m)
— Tran, Kira TL
C Division
1 Freeman, George Wes 7.5% (148 m)
2 Desmarais, Tom 21.25% (126 m)
3 Tran, Michael 30.0% (208 m)
4 Bassham, James 36.87% (101 m)
5 Coleman, Ryan 66.25% (54 m)
Open Spot Landing
A Division
1 Tran, Reese 18.0 m
2 Tran, Kira 29.0 m
3 Tran, Cody 32.0 m
4 Wise, Aidan 34.0 m
C Division
1 Coleman, Ryan 2.0 m
2 Bassham, James 8.0 m
3 Tran, Michael 17.0 m
4 Sojourner, Cliff 39.0 m
— Desmarais, Tom FAR
— Freeman, George Wes FAR
— Hagerty, Jack FAR
— McGrath, Kevin FAR
Predicted Duration
A Division
1 Tran, Kira 20.0% (48 s)
2 Tran, Cody 20.29% (55 s)
3 Tran, Reese 34.69% (32 s)
4 Wise, Kevin 48.65% (55 s)
C Division
1 Bassham, James 2.08% (49 s)
2 Coleman, Ryan 2.7% (36 s)
3 Tran, Michael 16.0% (42 s)
— Desmarais, Tom UNS
1/8A Parachute Duration Multiround
C Division
1 Bassham, James MAX + 31 + 11 = 82 seconds total
2 Coleman, Ryan 9 + 20 = 29 seconds total
3 Desmarais, Tom 9 = 9 seconds total
A Rocket Glider Duration
C Division
1 Bassham, James 27 + 21 = 48 seconds total
2 Desmarais, Tom DQ + 36 = 36 seconds total
3 Coleman, Ryan 28 = 28 seconds total
Concept Sport Scale
C Division
1 Bassham, James Argus 585.0 static + 100.0 flight = 685 points
2 Sato, Jonathan 91301 534 Mars Snooper 395.0 static + 90.0 flight = 485 points