The Syracuse Rocket Club’s Annual Family Launch is not exactly as ambitious as LDRS, or even NYPower; still, it’s our own biggest event, and lots of fun. This year’s had weather about as good as it gets; temperature in the 70s F, calm winds and clouds in the morning giving way to clear skies and…
Yesterday was the Syracuse Rocket Club’s Annual Family Rocket Launch, our biggest launch event with food provided, free launching, door prizes, and even a porta john. Friday evening some of us were there setting up the big tent, the pads, and some of the other infrastructure. Then yesterday I got there sometime before 9:00 and…
As I predicted, there wasn’t time to finish up the electronics. There was barely time to finish everything but the electronics. Here’s the “nose cone”. The bottle was a little too large compared to the balsa plug, so I glued a few layers of paper on the plug before epoxying it into the bottle. I…
I’m about out of time. I’ve been doing some thinking and coming to the conclusion I’m not going to finish the electronics for TRDRM by Saturday, not unless it’s at the expense of something higher priority. So I’ve decided just to focus on getting it, and the Bad Cholesterol, ready for day launch. I can…
The battery holders have the power switch on one side and the access for the batteries on the other, so you need access to both sides. This limits the ways you can mount them.I decided I’d put them against the sides of the VB, with a hole drilled to allow the switches to be flipped…
Onward and… well… upward. I connected the two rows of three LEDs for the Pink Bismuth Bottle (PBB), epoxied them to the tube, and connected up the wires coming from the BBB and going to the Vaseline Bottle (VB). The wire ends were taped down so I could keep them straight while applying a voltage to…
Time to start putting the airframe together. Here’s the Big Blue Bottle (BBB) dry fit onto the tube. There are notches around the hole in the lid for the wires and shock cord to pass through. I wasn’t sure how well epoxy was going to hold to the unknown plastic, so I put a centering…
Earlier I’d cut some notches around the hole at the bottom of the Pink Bismuth Bottle (PBB) to accommodate the LEDs. Which I realized a couple days ago was highly stupid, because I didn’t consider that there would be wires between the LEDs that would also need clearance. So I decided to just go ahead…
OK, I lied. I woke up early this morning and decided to do some soldering. Here’s the first two rows of three LEDs, each with a 220Ω resistor. Two LEDs are spaced wider than the others in order bend up to clear the hook. We don’t want any shorting.
I’ll be away from home for the next nine days, so I might as well show what little progress there’s been because that’s all there’ll be for a while. One correction on the LED configuration. It will not be 5 rows of 4; it’ll be 6 rows of 3. I built the motor mount, just…
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