Neurotic Ape Rocketry

Prepping for Okctoberfest

2010-08-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

Ordered:
Darkstar 2" 38mm FG kit
6G Pro-X 819J-354-16A White
Altimeter One
Kevlar, Nomex pads, ignitors, and misc. build items.

Construction:
Repaint Excel Plus nosecone
Rebuild Excel Plus e-bay
Build Darkstar in SD and DD setups
Finish Apogee Aspire

Fly:
Excel Plus on some I motors
Darkstar on an I then the J for my L2 Cert.
Aspire on a G80R trying to break Mach 1 and the Single Shot Sweepstakes at NCR

Tripoli Level 1 Certified!

2009-05-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

I flew "Neurotic Ape" on a CTI I-345 White Thunder motor Friday afternoon. Due to wind there was a little bit of weather cocking and it was coning a little bit. However it flew up to 1998ft and deployment was just past apogee. I recovered it fairly close to the launch site, returned to the LCO got inspected and John W. signed off on my L1 Cert. Mailed it off to Tripoli yesterday, they should receive it soon.

Pictures, video and a big update about the Mile High Mayhem coming soon.

Planning on a minimum diameter 38mm rocket for my next one to get a little more performance.

Pictures & Graphics

2009-05-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

I finally took a few quick snapshots of the rocket. Not the best pictures, but I needed something to post before I left for the launch.

Before the Vinyl was applied:

Full View:

Nose Cone Art:

Layed Out:

There will be video

2009-05-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the month I picked up a Flip Ultra camcorder. I will be using this to video prep and the launch from the ground. It is also small enough to be mounted inside the e-bay if I so choose.

Today I picked up an Oregon Scientific ATC2K "Action Cam" This comes with several mounting options, one of which is a very strong silicon rubber strap. I plan on securing the camera to the mount with some Kevlar thread as suggested on EMRR's Rocket Review page. I'm hoping by the end of the weekend I should have some nice videos.

While purchasing the ATC2K I was offered an extended warranty which I initially declined, then the following conversation took place:
Me - "Well, what does that warranty cover?"
Cashier - "Everything, full replacement"
"So, say, if it was launched on a rocket and something happened?"
"That is awesome! It should be covered, let me check"
Manager comes over
Cashier - "So they are going to strap this to a rocket, would the extended warranty replace it if something happens?"
Manager - "Hell, I'll replace it!"
Me - "Sold"
$5 later, full warranty, just in case.

Graphics 75% complete

2009-05-20T07:09:00.001-07:00

I ended up opting to paint the nose cone then apply the vinyl over it as opposed to just wrapping it in vinyl. Due to this change I won't have it finished up until tomorrow most likely. We did get the rocket wrapped from the nose cone shoulder down to the fin can however. It looks really, really good and it went on quickly. Learned a few lessons and the next one will be even better. Pictures soon.

Graphics are being printed

2009-05-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

My friend who has a vinyl graphics company is doing some for my rocket. I worked out what I wanted this week and he printed/cut them last night. Sunday we will be wrapping the rocket, this is the first time either of us have done vinyl on a rocket. If this goes well, we'll be wrapping one other. I have some plans after that if these come out clean and look nice.

Build Progress

2009-05-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday I got some good build time in and some assistance from my friend Kevin. I built the e-bay, 38mm motor adapter, 1/2 of the 54mm motor mount, and slotted the fin can. We also sorted out motor retention, recovery hardware and ejection charges. More building to come this week along with some pictures.

I have a Tripoli #

2009-04-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm officially a member of Tripoli now, I got my member # not 2 minutes ago :)

Tripoli App Submitted

2009-04-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

I just paypal'd my funds over to Tripoli. Hopefully I will get my card prior to Mile High Mayhem, but it not I'm sure we can work it out.

Still planning on doing my L1 Cert at that time along with my friend Kevin.

Build delayed

2009-04-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Recent events in my personal life have been taking up any free time I have. I'm hoping in the next few weeks I can get some build time in and try to get it done in time for the Memorial Day launch event.

First high power rocket received

2009-01-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

I received my Binder Design Excel Plus with Av bay yesterday. I plan on building this over the winter months and launching it at Mile-Hi Mayhem in the spring to get my Level 1 Certification. I got a few extra components along with the kit so I'll document the changes I make during the build here.

Baby Bertha Fest - Coming this Spring

2008-10-14T07:46:00.001-07:00

I'm officially delaying this until the spring. Hopefully I can work in another group launch in early November however.

I'm still processing the 5,000 pictures I took during Oktoberfest. Hopefully I'll get those up later this week. Lots of great shots.. both pictures and launches.

Baby Bertha Fest and Oktoberfest

2008-09-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to delay the Baby Bertha fest until the spring. I'm not going to be able to get mine built or it organized before November at this rate.

I'll be attending NCR's Oktoberfest this weekend. Friday-Sunday rockets all day, I'm excited.

Baby Bertha Fest

2008-08-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

Coming in September.... Baby Bertha Drag Races! I've asked all my rocket building friends to build a Baby Bertha kit. Then in Sept. we are all going to get together for a launch day and spend it solely on the Berthas. I think we have enough pads to do a 4+ drag race as well as other fun things. So if you are in the Broomfield area and want to join in, start building.

Saturday's launch report

2008-08-04T08:16:00.001-07:00

IMG_1685
Originally uploaded by ActiveOptics

Several people joined me early Saturday morning to do some low-power flights. Justin, Kevin, Jeremiah, Andy and his son all made it out. We flew a lot with several great flights and recoveries. I'll have a nice photo of all the spent motors up later tonight that gives some indication of the flights we did.

I tested The Outsider (seen at the right), the first flight went decent, the second flight I jumped from one A8-3 to a C6-5 and 2 A8-3 motors. The C6-5 was just too powerful and caused all kinds of problems. Both boosters ripped up early, then it sustainer took off horizontal and slammed into a concrete step across the field. The sustainer was destroyed, the boosters are re-usable with a little work.

Overall we had a great time and all the new launch electronics, etc. worked very well. If you'd like to see all the photos from our little launch day please visit my Flickr Page.

I ended up flying:
The Outsider x2 (1 failure)
Eulogy x1 solid recovery... in a tree.
36 D Squared x1 great boost on two E's, recovery failure, undamaged
The Patient x1 on a C11-3, great flight to 450'
Vanishing x1 on a E9-6, flight to 2053' but the ejection charge fried the body tube
Blue Streak x1/2 shredded on an Aerotech D21
Big Daddy x2 the Aerotech E30 blew out the baffle, I flew it again on a C11-3, perfect low altitude flight with ejection right at apogee.

Did some work last night

2008-07-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

I got my Kevlar supplies finally so I was able to get some more work done. I glued in the Kevlar line and 1/2 an Estes shock cord to Vanishing. A somewhat difficult feet given that its a minimum dia. rocket and the engine block is already in place. Hopefully it will hold.

I also tied the lines around the engine pods for The Outsider and hope to have it ready to launch this Saturday, we'll see how that goes.

I started work on an Estes Big Daddy to launch this weekend. I'm only doing minor changes to the kit; Kevlar shock cord with 1/2 estes cord, ejection baffle (first try at this), papered fins, foaming the fin can/motor mount. It will most likely fly unpainted.

Oh, I also got a box and the parts together for my 12v cluster ignitor and made a 6 lead clip-whip to light off forthcoming clusters.

More to come after I get another build night on Wednesday.

Next launch date - 8/2 9AM - Broomfield Commons

2008-07-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

I'll be heading out with some friends to do launches on 8/2 at Broomfield Commons park. If you are in the area and want to come launch with us, stop by. I plan on setting up around 9AM and flying for several hours.

Attended my first High Power launch

2008-07-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

I went to the Northern Colorado Rocketry club Research Launch on the 19th and 20th. Their site is located on a national grassland in northern Colorado. It was a beautiful area that reminded me a lot of Wyoming where I grew up.

In attendance was a great group of rocketeers that took me in and made me feel very welcomed. Everyone was very patient with my questions and invited me to hang around and assist with things.

I also met Ray LaPanse who gave me some wonderful tips on rocket photography and really helped me get up to speed quickly.

To see all the pictures I took this past weekend check out my Flickr Collection

Here is one of the major projects that was launched, Freeze Frame:

The Outsider and Vanishing

2008-07-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

Vanishing - This is my final prep rocket before building my super-sonic Aspire kit. It will be a minimum diameter 24mm rocket to fly on D+E engines. Last night I started the e-bay, nose cone prep and installed the motor block. I also selected fins from my mass of un-used Estes kits, in this case Comanche 3 upper stage fins. I'm going to do flights with 2 different nose cones: 1 ogive from a Comanche 3 kit and 1 long conical. Both have had some lead fishing weights added and held in with Gorilla Glue.

The Outsider - Parallel staged 3 motor rocket. This is a kit bash with an Estes SpaceShipOne kit and some other tubes I had. I've come up with a unique way to hold the boosters on, we'll see how this works. The plan is for 2 rear-ejection boosters flying on A-B's and 1 main C in the sustainer. I'm leaving room to use staging electronics in the future as well.

Everything set together:

Booster slide (split launch lug):

Basswood BBQ skewer and hardwood stick:

Glued together to create slide for booster to mount to:

Extended motor mount and plastic shroud:

Flew The Patient again

2008-07-13T18:02:00.001-07:00

This time I flew it on an Aerotech E15-7W motor. This went to a maximum 1822' feet at 300MPH. The rocket performed well but the ejection charge caused some problems. The chute, e-bay and rocket all came down separately. We located the rocket and chute early on but spent 15-20 minutes trudging around the grass/marsh area to find the e-bay and altimeter (Thanks Justin).

~~More to come on this launch.~~
Update
Justin took most of the pics using my gear, so thanks to him for that.

We started off with the Snarky - hence forth known as Eulogy. To re-cap it has now flown 3 times:
Flight 1- 6" zipper
Flight 2 - E motor Failure
Flight 3 - Roof landing, but the owner was nice enough to assist in recovery.

We fired off the Estes 36 "D" Squared 3 times, the results were: 1 motor launch, long delay before recovery, landed safe. 1 motor launch, wild flight, recovery fired on the ground (below) and finally a 2 motor flight that was perfect.

Lesson Learned - Time for a clip-whip.

Ground Recovery:

Launching on 1 motor:

We also flew the Commanche-3 as a 2 stage C-C, that was a solid flight.

Final flight was the Dragonfly. Slow launch, crazy flight, eventually lost sight of it.

I also met a nice guy and his 2 kids flying some Estes starter kid rockets. They had several nice flights and very close recoveries.

First launch of a scratch built...

2008-07-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

This was my first kit bash, officially called The Patient. This was made from the body tube and cone of an Estes Mean Machine. I made through-the-wall fins, papered them and then Cy'd and sanded the edges. I also used epoxy clay to make the fin fillets. It has a built in e-bay for the altimeter. All these were processes I wanted to test here before applying them to my Apogee Aspire, hence the name of this rocket. Overall I learned a lot and I'm very happy with it. It flew almost perfectly straight and went fairly high. Suffered no damage and recovered well. I also learned quite a bit that I can apply to the Aspire build.

Here is a picture of my "rocket retriever" Carson:

Altitude and speed on the Aerotech E15-7W, Estes E9-6 and D12-5 motors:

A few pre-launch pics:

YouTube video pending download of a video editor.

How I became a Born Again Rocketeer

2008-07-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

Back at the beginning of May Lori and I were trying to come up with something fun to do for my 30th birthday. While at Hobby Lobby we saw some model rockets and I commented on how I used to launch them. She suggested that maybe we build/launch some for my birthday.

So I sent out the information to everyone. We setup a few build dates before the "launch day" and got to work. When it was time to launch we had 20-30 people including friends and neighbors. We had 5 separate launch pads setup and must have burned through 40+ engines over the afternoon despite the high winds.

We had a lot of first time build/launchers and I think everyone had a lot of fun. To cap the day off I launched an Estes36 D Squared carrying a PerfectFlite altimeter. Due to the wind it only hit about 875' but then it drifted for over a half-mile. I retrieved it the next morning in the middle of a neighborhood thanks to some kind person who found it and set it out. The rocket was damaged but it is now being re-purposed to act as a booster "Useful Idiot" for my lander "Triad".

If you'd like to see all the pictures from my "Birthday Blast" check out the flickr group.

Here's a sample of the mess of rockets we built:

PS Kudos to whoever picks up on the new rocket naming theme, more to come.

To sell or not to sell

2008-07-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of domains, this is about 5 of them, they are Sendmetospace.net .us .org .info .biz

Currently I have .us up for auction, but no interest so far. So do I let these domains go (auction), try and build them into something or just let them lapse (not likely) and lose them ? I'm still leaning towards selling them, but I wonder if I should build them up first. Into what I don't know. Maybe a blog about all the current commercial/private ventures working to provide civilian space travel.

A very "Curious" rocket...

2008-07-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

My GF (Lori) and I watched the Curious George movie several months ago. She fell in love with George at that time. As I have an interest in rockets I thought I would build her one to try to draw her into the hobby a little more. Here I present my "Curious Rocket"

Both flights were straight and stable on an Estes B6-4. The delay on ejection was a bit long and the chute didn't fully deploy on either flight. On the second flight it landed on the only hard ground within 300' and was damaged (bent tube, broken fin).

The small frame and short height there cause some space issues. Because of this I don't want to risk flying the rocket any more. I am going to paint it up real nice and it will be a "display" model. In the future I hope to build a mid-power version to fly on 29mm motors, that should work much better.

Overall I had a lot of fun building this rocket and I think Lori really got a kick out of it.

She went down in a burning ring of fire...

2008-07-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

So after repairing the zipper on the Snarky from the last launch I thought we'd go out and try it again. This time I decided to launch on an Estes E9-4 since I had some handy. Got it all setup, hit the button and it lit! Then it went up about 6" blew out the rear nozzle, slid back down and proceeded to burn, slowly. The end results were; Scorched Snarky, 1 loose fin, lots of cosmetic damage, slight toasted chute and a badly burned engine mount, along with a 4 launch old Estes "E" pad that was melted through.

I will rebuild it! But not repaint it, obviously this rocket wants to be hurt.