Warren B. Musselman

That’s a great motor – I have one sitting in my buddy’s magazine right now and planning on flying it in a minimum diameter bird either at Mile High Mayhem or in June.Warren

Actually our 1010 and 1515 rails are mostly 8′ sections although we do have a couple old Blacksky rails (same as the 1010 for buttons) that are 6′ and a couple sections of 1515 that are only 6′ long. Figure…   Read more»

It is possible to get good enough at doing rocketry that your rockets wear out rather than are lost or destroyed. Really it is… eventually I may actually figure it out myself.Knowing exactly how your rail buttons are mounting on…   Read more»

For that size rocket you almost certainly want to use buttons for 1010 rail and I wouldn’t consider going larger until I passed 25 or 30 pounds or so and even then it’s probably overkill until you hit 45 pounds…   Read more»

Ya gotta love machine shop tools. I have access to one, but have never used it for G10 tubing. A definite improvement over the cutoff wheel – the slow speed keeps the dust down.Warren

I use a 10″ chop saw with a cut-off wheel and then dress the cut edge with my benchtop disk sander. After that I go over the cut edge by hand with some 220 wet/dry paper under water. Wear a…   Read more»

Never. You will also find folks who use a single charge with dual matches in situations with redundant altimeters. You better damn sure know your charge is sized to be absolutely reliable about kicking the laundry out though.Warren

In practice, you’ll find that it’s pretty difficult to get two barometric altimeters to fire at the same time. Aside from sensor tolerances, altimeters like the RRC2 family just don’t have the resolution or precision to fire at the same…   Read more»

That wasn’t our doing that he wasn’t there for Oktoberfest. Guess they didn’t make enough money at MHM due to the rain out.The things that require the vote are NCR Club President.For Tripoli Members, add Tripoli Club Prefect and Tripoli…   Read more»

I watched it just the other day and paid attention and still can’t get a couple of the answers…Warren

Afraid I’m going to have to pass on the Parrot until after the Christmas season or further on. Grandkids and kids gotta come first right now.Also, if you’re going to do another altimeter – whether baro only or both, the…   Read more»

Honeywell sells ring-laser gyros and IMU’s based on them for not a huge amount of money – about $11,000.00 for a flight-worthy unit rated sufficient for rocketry.Warren

The biggest problem with solid-state gyros (the only kind we can afford as hobbyists) is that they are rate-gyros, not absolute position sensing gyros. They’ll tell you the rate of rotation, but drift is horrendous – like ended up 180…   Read more»

Well I want dibs on a production unit Adrian. Any possibility of getting one within the week? I have some F and G motors that go out of cert on 12/31 and I need to make sure I take those…   Read more»

What I’d like to know is the specifics of certification. Despite asking, I have no idea what tests are performed. Frankly, I don’t trust any altimeter to be accurate, precise or repeatable based on my experience. The Parrot has a…   Read more»

I too would love to see more female participation in the hobby – hell, in engineering and technical fields in general.While it’s becoming fairly common to see women in IT, the hard engineering disciples like networking, hardware design, OS design…   Read more»

There’s a gun store right on the east side of College in Fort Collins that sells 4F.One reason people will look at you funny when you ask for 4F is that it’s basically only used for flintlock rifles and then…   Read more»

I do NOT tap the airframe holes – only the nosecone or coupler. In addition, I usually put some talcum powder on the coupler and nose shoulder to lube things a little bit. Finally, since I generally fly altitude birds,…   Read more»

On smaller birds I use the round stock that John Wilke mentions in his post. On 3″ and 4″ birds I use 2-56 nylon screws although if the nose is heavier I’ve been known to go up to 4-40. I…   Read more»

Rocketryplanet gets a bit chatty for me. Much prefer it here.Warren