There are great launches and less than great launches, and yesterday’s was not in the great category. Not terrible, but not great. Let’s start with this, which you can take as a tip for the next launch you go to: It helps if you bring your rocket motors. Failing that, it helps if you, like…
Seems I haven’t entirely shaken my launch jinx. Saturday was the Syracuse Rocket Club’s annual Family Picnic Launch, our big launch event. My flights started off well enough with the Bohica’s Dead Ringer on a B6-4. It flew as it always does on that motor, straight up, down under a streamer. Camera problems resulted in…
I have a cheap metal ligature to go with the cheap mouthpiece, but a strict reading of the NAR Model Rocket Safety Code would prohibit using it. I might get away with it but why get into it? Instead I invented the electrical tape ligature for which future generations of clarinetists will thank me. Yes,…
Hey, what’s this? My rocket has holes in it!Question is, though: Does it play? Sort of. Badly. But it plays. I neglected to try out the cheapo mouthpiece on a real clarinet before gluing it to the rocket, so I don’t know how much blame to assign to it. I thought the tone holes would…
Here’s the nose cone. The finest clarinet mouthpiece money can buy anywhere, if by “anywhere” you mean “from Chinese eBay merchants” and by “money” you mean “five dollars”. The fit was just a little loose into the BT-55 tube inside the barrel; a couple wraps of tape snugged it up. Then I epoxied it in…
The “keys” were cut from silver trim Monokote. What I ended up doing was pulling my “unrolled clarinet” photo into GraphicConverter, using the Edges effect on it, and flipping it horizontally before printing several copies. Then I used repositionable glue stick to adhere pieces of these pictures to the back of the Monokote, after which I…
I also painted the R13.Next comes the interesting part. I don’t have a Buffet R13 clarinet but I do have a Buffet-made Evette,* which, let’s be honest, is kind of like saying I don’t have one of these but I have one of these. Anyway, I took 16 pictures of it at different anglesand then…
Having come away from eRockets with ten 3″ long 3/16″ launch lugs, I’d say it’s time to finish (for now) work on the R13. On the upper lug I used a scrap of balsa for a standoff, just enough to clear the barrel. The bottom lug was glued into the holes (after some adjustments) in…
That little piece of BT-55 forms the middle of a barrel-shaped transition between the main body tube and the “nose cone”. I glued in BT-50 to -55 centering rings. Then I cut out the upper and lower transition pieces, two of each printed on cardstock, with gluing teeth on one piece of each pair. Here…
The launch lugs are going to have to stand off the ST-115 just slightly, because there’s this ridiculous tiny piece of BT-55 going in at the front. Only a tenth of an inch larger diameter, but there you are. I don’t have a punch the right size and strength to make the needed hole in…
Rich's Rockets 