Recovery Gear

With the cold weather coming through southern Virginia I have been placed on hold with anything dealing with epoxy. With that said I decided to look at the recovery gear...

I have 60' of tube nylon that I cut into (3) 20' sections. The two sections closest to the deployment charges I slid a 36" cord protector onto. In the past I had trouble with the loop around the eye bolt burning...

I cut an old cord protector and sewn it at the end of the new one...

Slid the shock cord in with the link...

...and tucked the protector in. Now the whole cord is better protected.

One thing I saw a friend do was to zig-zag the shock cord back and forth to keep the cord organized and prevent tangeling...

He then placed some tape around it to keep it inplace. With a few strategicly placed cuts...the force of the ejection tore the tape but only after it was all thrown clear of the air frame. Test fires in the back yard proved it worked smoothly.

Here was the simple jig I put together.

I also put together a 98-76 reducer.

This is where I had to stop work. I got the airframe coated with epoxy and W-410. I've sanded smooth and have a couple of spots to fill again. My garage isn't heated so I will need to wait till we get out of the 20's to continue...

Here is a run down of my deployment laundry: 36" chute to pull out the Main (attached to the nose cone U-Bolt). Next is the 15' chute inside the deployment bag. Next is 20' of shock cord.

Of course the shock cord will be attached to the forward end of the electronics bay.

On the drouge end I will have 40' of shock cord and a 5' drogue attached at the aft end of the electronics bay.

Electronics Bay completed

Continuing from the last entry of finishing the fin can...

The upper centering ring with U-Bolt

A view from under the upper centering ring.

Applying fillets to the centering rings.

Lower and mid centering.

Using a 4" PVC pipe I cut it in half just above the center line.

Placing the cut PVC on the upper electronics sled. This will be the PML switch bracket.

Drawing out the locations of the switches.

Another view showing the pilot holes.

A dry set up of where the components wil be attached.

A closer look at the switch bracket.

Supports for the PVC bracket.

Bracket in place.

Wood screws to keep bracket in place and epoxy fillets down the side.

The fillets will just be used to keep the PVC from flattening out. I need to be able to take the bracket off incase any of the switches fail.

Both fillets finished and the electronics stand-off pegs glued in.

Electronics sled installed to check clearance.

The layout including wire hold down supports and altimeters installed.

Switches wired and layed out for connections.

Final connections made and wire harness cleaned up.

Jumpers installed to test the electronics.

I need to figure out how to strap down the 12 inches of wires from the ALTS2 Harness...

Fincan and Airframe

After a little research I figures out how to work this...

For full size photos please click the link below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/EricFadely/MyLevel3Journey?authkey=VO3TZlTtQfg

In the past posting I explained that the fins were too heavy and wasn't going to allow me to get all three on at the same time. I drew out a jig on some MDF. I have the fin slots cut out and clamping brackets installed.

The first fin attached and trued up with a square.

The third fin attached...

Epoxy is cures and show for fin can size.

More fillets to support the fiberglass.

A tip I use when applying fiberglass strips is to stick the strips to the fillets with super glue. This will prevent lifting.

Epoxy applied with no lifting.

Another goof up occured when I tried to plug the retainer inserts with wax...epoxy creats enough heat to melt the wax and it begun to ooze out the inserts...I guess the retainer will be put on sooner then expected.

With the fin can curing again I turned my attention to the airframe. First off is making a mandrel.

With the pre-slotted airframe I needed to protect the mandrel disk from epoxy with some wax paper.

I bought Easy-Glas from Giant Leap...easy stuff

Epoxy applied

I also finished the upper air frame too.

The pre-solts were cut at a slight angle so I had to widen them up a little. I'll need to fill that in a little later.

Back on the fin can I aligned the brackets for the upper centering ring...

Installed. I can't epoxy it yet because I will need to get to the middle ring when I epoxy the airframe to the fincan...