Warren B. Musselman

blush Wait until the annual meeting – we’ll be rolling out some new stuff.W

Sounds like it was good that I didn’t come out today – I still ended up freezing the nuggets most of the way off by wandering around on my roof trying to find a place to mount a 15′ mast…   Read more»

I have a couple sewn kevlar harnesses that have more than 20 ejection events on them and if I run em through the washing machine, they come out basically looking like new.W

A zipper is when deployment occurs at high speed (and sometimes not so high) where the shock cord or recovery harness slams up against the side of the airframe and either splits or rips down through the airframe, Zipperless designs…   Read more»

I’ve towed enough trailers to know… tongue weight is generally 1/3 of total load – our case more like 1/5 or 1/6. You need a beefy vehicle and expect to get crappy gas mileage.Warren

The crux issue is do you have a 2″ ball, able to handle 600-800 pounds tongue weight and have a 4 or 5 inline plug, 5 pin pentagonal or 7 pin round style wiring plug?Warren

I can shrink it a tad more… and will.As for the nose cone John, I’ve done a couple including helping out on the Delta II project. That was a stack of disks of styrofoam glued up to the overall size,…   Read more»

A little automotive paint store right on the south end of Main Street in Longmont. Can’t remember the name of it, but it’s in what used to be a house, South of 1st and north of Ken Pratt on the…   Read more»

I personally use the low-end PPG paint. The clear-coat is a two part paint and they have a primer that is two part, but the paint itself is just thinned with reducer and sprayed. Typically it is in the vicinity…   Read more»

I’d like to hear if there has been some kind of rule change. I’ve frequently gone to the north site and other nearby places in the grasslands to sight-in my rifles and do a little plinking over the last 4…   Read more»

Do be aware that we fly on federal land – the National Forest Service administers it. The rules are quite different. Firearms are explicitly allowed to be used anywhere on the grasslands subject to the state restriction of not within…   Read more»

You really need to get peel-ply from a composites vendor such as Fiberglast.com or Mr. Fiberglass. Aside from the fabric material itself, peel-ply is typically coated or impregnated with chemicals to assist with it’s resistance to epoxy bonding. Plain old…   Read more»

Although I do build a kit from time to time, 90% of what I do is scratchbuilt. Given the amount of work involved, it makes sense to buy what you can and only make what you have to.Oh yeah, this…   Read more»

I’ll agree, not many do what we do and most end up with a layer or two of glass soaked with about 5 times the necessary amount of epoxy or glass fabric poorly bonded to the tube because they didn’t…   Read more»

I live by peel-ply. I almost NEVER use mylar. I would rather have the textured, bondable surface and minimal epoxy that results from using peel-ply than a mirror smooth (hard to achieve) mylar surface. I fill the texture with epoxy…   Read more»

mylar is non-porous (unless you buy special perf’d mylar) so you don’t use anything in between the mylar and the tape. You ONLY use non-perfed mylar on the finish layer. All underlying layers should be wrapped in peel-ply or perforated…   Read more»

My 4″ carbon bird was pretty close to the ideal ratio of fabric to resin and came out about double the weight of the phenolic tube. There were 4 wraps of 5.6 oz carbon and a single layer of 3…   Read more»

Do one layer at a time if you’re v-bagging and make sure you squeegee all the excess out of the fabric before and after it’s layed up. Then wrap your peel-ply tight so that there are no bubbles, next your…   Read more»

I used a food-saver for years before I stepped up to a full vacuum system. Best for use on fins to be honest, although I have done a few airframe with it. Biggest problem with airframes is you end up…   Read more»

Carbon is expensive, but the price has dropped substantially over the last 6 months or so as production has ramped up. You can thank Boeing, Airbus and the Joint Strike Fighter for the price increases over the last 2 years….   Read more»