I started out making a truncated gore pattern and a spray template out of cardboard. The template can be downloaded from here: 86mm Von Karman nose cone / spray template. The two A4 papers can be easily aligned with tape and secured to the 1mm thick cardboard with spray adhesive. You will have to fabricate
Alternatively to the foam plug I decided to try out a 3D printed plug for increased accuracy of my 86mm Von Karman composite nose cone. Initially this was due to the fact I ran into some inaccuracy / concentricity difficulties of the finished wet lay up of the foam plug (which in hind sight was not related
So it is time for a new rocket, a minimum diameter one. With this new rocket the need for a custom nose cone arises. After some consideration and positive builds by “cryoscum” on Australian Rocketry Forum I decided to make a foam nose cone with wet lay up. Just to test this principle as I
Another launch together with the Navro and DARE. Conditions were fine with a picture perfect launch. The Intimidator 5 was flown on a KNDX 2% RIO reload, together with an updated 440 Mhz – 1W Talky GPS tracker by LD and an 5.8GHz – 600mW VTx with ImmersionRC antenna tracker ground station. Please click here to read the
Dashwhat??? DashWare is a piece of software that lets you add telemetry as on screen display over your videos and as from February 23rd DashWare is free to download. I have been following DashWare for some time but was never interested in paying USD 60,- for software which I didn’t know whether it would support
May 20th, was the first launch day of the 2016 season. Instead of all Dutch rocket organizations having their own separate launch days at the OTCVust, this time it was a combined launch campaign from the DARE, NAVRO, NERO & T-Minus with 12 rockets and 1 static motor test. We successfully flew the Intimidator 5 for the
UPDATE: Currently on-hold / cancelled. Some initial sketches. I’m trying to use the existing workhorse Intimidator 5 as a booster by replacing the nose cone with an inter stage coupler. Re-using the I5 makes it a bit more difficult getting the whole rocket stable. It requires two new 98mm motors of which I recently stumbled upon some suitable phenolic casting tubes. Initial
An easy trunk launch on a nice authum launch. Two picture perfect flights of my Intimidator 5 and the XOC-XL of LD. Please click the following link for a short impression and videos of the flights.
Amazing launch weekend at an even more amazing launch site: Drawsko Pomorskie in Poland. Hosted by the kind people of Polskie Towarzystwo Rakietowe. We have been told the launch site comprises of 25 x 25km with at least an wavier up to 17km. Although we did not came close to those limits we did saw
So all parts came in to construct the manual vacuum rotary feedthrough. I will use this as a proof of concept and possible will stir some propellant with it before upgrading to the motorised unit. It took me a good 2 hours to machine the temporary shaft and base part. The shaft was machined slightly conical to