Thursday, March 4, 2010

March 2010

Busy!!
Bought a small brick house in Hoboken so been pretty damn busy with projects and stuff. Although small, it's very nice. We like the two decks and the master is roomy with 13' vaulted ceiling..Only problem is neither of the bathrooms located on our floor, will need to drop $ to build a bathroom in master.

Rocketry
Red Glare 7, Price, Maryland 11/09
I took my girls down to our club's Red Glare Nov 2009. The weather was for crap, due to the hurricane but we did manage to have one good launch day!
My brother and Sister in-law came down and I belive they enjoyed themselves, especially with my girls and their high spirits. We gave Dave and Patti some cool medium power rockets so hopefully they will launch them at
MDRA's April 2010 Red Glare 8
My girls managed about 8 or 9 flights each on Saturday, they got to see Jackie C who they adore. She gave them some nice models of her L2 Pink Cobra, which she successfully did her L2 on, congratz Jackie!


I launched my Devastator on a cool J270W, which creates a huge fireball at the nozzle at ignition, just awesome and sinister looking...


ESL 140, Price Maryland 01/10
I managed to extract Steve from Hoboken in January to attend MDRA's ESL 140 launch. We both had a good launch, although there was a dearth of vendors. I flew my Devastotor on a HARD-HITTING Aerotech K1275,was a successful flight. One probelm was my rocksim calculated 5100 feet, however the altimeter reported 7200 feet, need to review the model parameters to see whay a huge discrepancy. Used my modified Garmin GPS dog collar, Astro 220 Tracker to recover the rocket, which landed several miles away from launc. Via country roads was about a 6 mile hike for me. Thank God for that tracker, rocket recovered intact!
Steve got one flight in on his awesome Binder Galaxy,nice recovery and several glowing compliments from MDRA RSO. I just need him to send me the pic's for that days launch so I can post.

Upcoming we have planned a trip to Price for MDRA's March 2010 launch, hopefully several friends will be coming. THEN Red Glare in April for three fun filled days with my twins and friends.
I'm working on a possible L3 certification attempt with a fairly unique scratch built carbon fiber rocket with outrigger engine pods that will airstart, calling it Cerberus


The twins and I are also working on several cool rockets scratch built with Starbucks materials as rocket body and fins....

Hobbies
My CNC DIY
After reading about DIY stuff in MAKE magazine for half a year and seeing some nice homebrew CNC machines over at .CNCZone.com I decided to try my hand at design of a sturdy 3' x 1.5' capable of cutting complexly shaped composite fins for my rockets, bulkheads and probably cool light gauge aluminum doodads. I chose 8020 Aluminum T-Slot 1530 & 1515 extrusions to create the frame, CNC Stepper motor chopper drive kit , completed build last night as electronics. For the actual motors I'm bidding on several different Vexta motors and still evaluating what i want to use for lead screws for all three axis.
X Axis rails will probably be 1/2 case hardened Thomson rail, Y and Z axis I've bought really nice THK low profile linear bearing and track.
Received the 8020 T slot last night, bought from 8020 ebay store, was nicely packaged. Pricey, but definitely worth it for the versatility and strength of the material. Stuff is EXTREMELY fastener friendly

Workshop
3rd Ward
Found an awesome NYC area workshop with great metal working/woodworking equipment-- plus a nice paint spray booth in Brooklyn, 3rd Ward.
Selected the basic membership $39/mo for now,hope to get there one or two days a month in to work my projects and take some welding classes.

Science Fiction
Film
Saw the movie Moon, was pretty good, little bit reminiscent of Space Odyssey. I must have a deep mean streak in me, i was laughing so hard when various 'Sams' get into the capsule for the launch 'home'. Highly recommended!
Writing
Absolutely no progress on Skimmer, I have faith I'll get final edit done in 20101 and submit it to Analog, more pressing priorities right now.