Alpha

Yet another paintjob finished. This one is a red metalflake. One of my favorite rockets from when i was younger, hopefully this one flies as well as the one I had back then.

Done the paint job on this simple rocket, except for a few coats of clear gloss. Takes a while to get everything all smooth and perfect. But this is the first one that I am actually proud of the finish. Most of my old ones sort of sucked when it comes to the finish.

Should figure out a design for a simple display stand for these rockets that can't stand on their own.

Been a bit busy with real life stuff. Howiever have also been working slowely on projects still. Have been working on my rocketry projects, getting some painting done, and repairs on the scale model of the Black Brant V. So far things are coming out well, however I need to pick up more primer and some clear gloss as well. Hopefully I will be able to get a few people together soon and do some launches. Organized some of my rocket parts too, hot glued some dividers into a box to make storage easier. Have tons of random bits and pieces (big supprise).

Also am really interested in getting into hand launched R/C gliders. Will have to look into getting a good electric glider to start, get some flight time in and then start looking into ones that are competiton legal. And should build some old timer type freeflight models. Found a bunch of interesting article reprints from the 30's. Should be fun.

Started selling some of my computer hardware that isnt getting much use so I can focus more on the models, robots and embedded systems. Doing very little with clusters and the such. Would like to play with CUDA to do some high end simulations for airflow and stability for model designs. Would be an interesting project.

Rockets

Worked today a bit on my rockets. My collection of model rockets was destroyed years ago and am slowely rebuilding a collection of models. Have a bunch that are half done at the moment, in that they need all of the finishing/painting. Worked a bit on painting the scale model of SpaceShip One. It is a very cool model. I am putting a lot of effort into the painting, since that is my greatest weakness in model making. I love putting the things together, but rush the whole painting part. Which was the biggest shortcoming of my older rockets. Hopefully this will help me become more skilled with a can of spraypaint.

Also worked a bit on another kit I had laying around. I laminated the fins with paper. Not a very difficult technique, but something I haven't done before. I think that it will make the finishing much easier, as the fins are now nice and smooth. Always found dealing with the grain of balsa a bit of a pain in the arse.

Also going to put together a set of notecards with all the important launch data for all of the rockets. Should make it much easier at the field when selecting motors.

Ornithopter

Decided today to make the Orly ornithopter project from Make vol. 8. Kind of a cool one day project. Learned a few things from it. Mostly about the importance of the crankshaft in an ornithopter. Kind of screwed up on the first one and the speed of flapping was very slow, made a second one and it works much better. Just have to tune it up a bit and get a better flight out of it. Right now it banks to the left a bit, so have to deal with that. Also want to lighten it up with some sandpaper and get some better performance out of it. Once I get this one working I am going to probably try some more complex ones. Found a bunch of old article reprints online from different aviation model magazines.

Also put some liteflight 2" wheels on the arduino vehicle platform. Much better traction with that; doesnt slide around all the time like before. Now its time to add some more software and design some good sensor modules for it.

Want to design a completely open source humanoid robot kind of like the robonova. Think that with the openservo boards and a 32 bit arduino like controller it would open up some serious functionality and be very powerful.

Been playing a bit with the little BEAM projects i have laying around. They are also lots of fun. Will post a pic of all my robots sometime.

Yay for R/C sailboat finally being finished. Have had it for years and never gotten around to finishing it because I never had any servos for it. Had some laying around, so I finished it last night. Think it came out well. Should be lots of fun.