Rings, fins and other things

We had quite a busy weekend working on the rocket. The following has been completed:

• The ring brace is now fiberglassed, sanded and painted
• The wiring connections to the servos and pressure switches are complete
• The parachute deployment mechanisms are complete
• The fins are complete
• The sustainer is finished
• The flight computers have been attached
  

Still left to do:

• Painting
• More pressure testing of various components and bottle assemblies.
• Simulations
• Attaching various things like parachutes and the ring brace to the bottles.
• Mounting a camera and altimeter in the booster
  
• Bunch of little fiddly things
• Full integration testing of the entire system at 20 psi
• Launch abort loop and hook
  

One of the main problems we've had is improving the yield of the splices at the 130psi range. Dad pressure tested the 9 spliced pairs to 130psi for 2 minutes during the week. Out of the 9, five were good. Two had very minor leaks of a few drops and a couple had more significant leaks. Dad had a go at sealing them from the inside with silicone and we are waiting to re-test them on Wednesday. We have about 7 spliced pairs currently that we need to test and get 4 good ones out of those. Otherwise there are still 2 good ones we have in the Polaron rocket should we need them.

There are still minor things to finish during the week, but most of the long lead time things are done.
The new ring brace can be seen in the image below (red with white stripes). The red Velcro strips around the bottles and lower section are only temporary at this stage to hold the rocket together as we work on it. It makes it easy to remove bits as needed and put them back.

In the photo below the rocket is still unpainted, but you can see the flight computer compartment on the right, and one of the parachutes on the left.


The new sustainer is a little shorter (about 6 inches) than the photo posted earlier in the month because we decided to put a Robinson coupling in the lowest bottle to generate foam in flight for a longer and more visible burn.

___________________________________