Rocketober 3, 2016

All this month I'm posting photos on Twitter for #Rocketober. They'll appear here with slightly expanded text.

I recorded a new episode of The Rocketry Show podcast last night, so this post is on yesterday's tweets.

"Day 2: Rocket t-shirt"

 I don't have any rocketry t-shirts (though I should), but for yesterday's theme, I posted this. I bought this NASA shirt to wear while teaching Rocket Camp, and wore it to my first club launch. That's me with Trident, a scratch build of mine before its last flight.

All fin slots have been cut, and here is Sky Wolf dry fitted together. Note that nothing is glued in place yet (except for the aft centering ring, which I did on Day 1).

Sky Wolf is small, but powerful. Only about BT-60-sized, it has a thicker airframe, and can hold 29mm motors. It can fly fast and high on composites, and can take anything from D to H impulse!

A notch cut out of the forward centering ring. The Kevlar shock chord will pass through this and be anchored to the motor tube.

A knot tied in the shock chord 3 inches from the end.

The knot serves to help anchor the shock chord, acting as a stop to prevent it from slipping through the notch in the centering ring.

The spiral grooves in the body tube were shallow but wide. They filled easily with my minimal-sanding method.

The stressful moment of getting the forward centering ring glued exactly in the right spot - not stuck too far forward or aft - is done.

Finally, the end of the shock chord gets dipped in epoxy, laid onto the motor tube, and wrapped in black electrical tape to cure. Once the epoxy is cured, the tape will come off.

There was too much chance for a mess at this point, so I didn't photograph the epoxy process. I needed to get it on there and wrapped up before it ran anywhere. You'll see it when I take the tape off.

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