Warren B. Musselman

I ALWAYS plug my single use motors that I use for altitude shots. Pull the paper seal, dump the black powder and fill the hole with a bit of epoxy. On some motors I’ve epoxied in an screw-eye.Warren

Above D impulse, I do believe you would have to do electronic deployment to get maximum altitude in an optimized design – I think that’s a given. For every altitude record I have chased from E on up, electronic deployment…   Read more»

How about the Apogee F10? A local vendor, a VERY constrained mass, tight design requirements a given… and the possiblity of 7K or 8K given the 8.5 second burn… The motor is cheap too.Just throwing an idea out there, not…   Read more»

Brad,First – Hybrids are fine for cert flights. Most definitely. Of course you need to have your electronics act together as far as a deployment controller and most folks don’t do that until at or after their L2 cert.Second… Welcome….   Read more»

Excellent point Adrian. One thought that brings to mind is it seems to me that C-slot and moonburner motors more often than not “wobble” or “wiggle” or whatever in flight, particularly in minimum diameter rockets. Sometimes even when the rocket…   Read more»

Don’t forget two things – the principle of moment arm in leverage and laminar flow. Air flow close to the airframe is different than airflow further out. Also, stubby fins in terms of semi-span relative to airframe diameter have less…   Read more»

I’ve never seen the formula, but if the fin semi-span is less than the airframe diameter, the root has to go up a LOT to counterbalance reductions in semi-span. It is NOT linear.W

It’s not just fin area that matters, but semi-span. With a greater semi-span, you can do with a lot less fin area at the tradeoff of greater drag due to increased frontal area.Warren

Actually, we usually have the largest motor vendor in the country onsite for 90%+ of our launches. Tim Thomas of Giant Leap is a long time NCR booster and is almost always at our launches – particularly the big launches….   Read more»

I’ll be there… possibly flying an L1300 in my 4″ bird.Warren

I have precision lathe capabilities up to 8″ diameter and 13″ long. I’m more than happy to turn factory closures down. Not so happy to make one from scratch since I’ve haven’t learned how to thread things yet..Personally and not…   Read more»

By the official rules, ANY modification of a motor casing or closures is forbidden. This means that the many flyers who have drilled and tapped plugged forward closures for eyebolts or who have had custom rear closures made or turned…   Read more»

This isn’t a problem Mike and I can easily accomodate you on this, however be aware that this makes the motor officially “uncertified” and while NCR usually doesn’t make an issue of these things other clubs may do so.Warren

I have very thin mylar release – I believe it is .002. You’ll need a couple thousanths of slop in order to even fit the thing onto the airframe as the irregularities in the tubing will probably be that much…   Read more»

Mike, Like with the Tip to Tip glassing, I’d be happy to help out with this project. The key issue is having a mandrel to wrap around.1st step – take the Mandrel (in this case a piece of the airframe…   Read more»

Don’t forget the step where you have to “Compile” the engine files before Rocksim can use them.W

My mistake – the Research launch on Sunday has been cancelled.Warren

Not a problem Scott – looking forward to it.Warren

I’d definitely go ahead and do that if I were you… current record is 5967′ for SSS and 8975′ for SSSS…. pot is over $200 for SSS and right at $200 (I think) for SSSS.Potential for those that care is…   Read more»

My wife and I applied there and there was nothing for us, but quite exciting what they are doing.W