- Joined
- Oct 22, 2011
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With the announcement of LDRS coming to the Eastern US and looking for a winter project I decided to start on my L3 certification journey.
Initial criteria for me:
Naturally as soon as my box of goodies arrived I had to tape it all together and stack it up to get a sense of scale. I'll file this under large.
Aside from my extra fin, below is what you get with the Ultimate Wildman kit. The only exception is I cut myself an extra 1/8" G10 bulkhead for the nosecone. You'll see later on I used this to create a stepped bulkhead so I'll be able to maintain access to the nose cone for GPS trackers and other payloads.
I did the usual parts cleaning with warm soapy water to get rid of any stray dust/fibers and mold release.
All surface preparation for bonding fiberglass components will be based on advice from this forum and consist of sanding with 220 grit and cleaning with either acetone or denatured alcohol until a good water break surface is achieved. This 6" Bosch sander has been worth its weight in gold for prep on large diameter rockets and will continue to do so for this build. Hooking it up to a shop vacuum also greatly reduces the fiberglass dust let loose in the shop. My epoxy of choice is Total Boat 5:1 thickened with West 406 colloidal silica when needed. I've recently tested this product combo on a K2050 flight in a 4" bird @ 44Gs, and then proceeded to cut that fin can loose and drop it out of a 60 foot pine tree and not a single fillet was cracked.
Initial criteria for me:
- Fiberglass airframe, as I occasionally launch on frozen lakes and they don't treat cardboard well.
- 98mm motor mount adapted to an AT M1315 in 75mm hardware for Cert flight.
- Apogee under 10,000ft to be east coast waiver friendly.
- Four fin design for added drag and better stability.
- Capable of flying on an L-impulse shake down flight
Naturally as soon as my box of goodies arrived I had to tape it all together and stack it up to get a sense of scale. I'll file this under large.
Aside from my extra fin, below is what you get with the Ultimate Wildman kit. The only exception is I cut myself an extra 1/8" G10 bulkhead for the nosecone. You'll see later on I used this to create a stepped bulkhead so I'll be able to maintain access to the nose cone for GPS trackers and other payloads.
I did the usual parts cleaning with warm soapy water to get rid of any stray dust/fibers and mold release.
All surface preparation for bonding fiberglass components will be based on advice from this forum and consist of sanding with 220 grit and cleaning with either acetone or denatured alcohol until a good water break surface is achieved. This 6" Bosch sander has been worth its weight in gold for prep on large diameter rockets and will continue to do so for this build. Hooking it up to a shop vacuum also greatly reduces the fiberglass dust let loose in the shop. My epoxy of choice is Total Boat 5:1 thickened with West 406 colloidal silica when needed. I've recently tested this product combo on a K2050 flight in a 4" bird @ 44Gs, and then proceeded to cut that fin can loose and drop it out of a 60 foot pine tree and not a single fillet was cracked.