Campitch 2

Pics by: KeithAlanK

This is the new improved Campitch 2.
It has the same features as the defunk Campitch 1 but is larger and beefier. Most notable is that the wing is much larger, by nearly 50%. The span is 2" longer, but the wing is made from
1/4" x 4" Sig airfoil stock instead of 3/16" x 3" stock. The thicker wing allows for a thicker 3/16" carbon pivot rod instead of the 1/8" carbon, then steel pivot rod on the CP-1. The hub assembly is about 1/2" longer on the motor side.

The CP-2 is already leading a better, or at least charmed, life than the CP-1 did. It has made three flights so far with nothing worse than some burn through charring [routine] and a ding on the wing tip.

The first flight back in August had us rolling on the ground, and we weren't even on fire! I launched the CP-2 on an Estes D12-3, it took off from a 2x4 pad low on the ground and ascended to no more than 3ft as it travelled 5-6ft upwind, then curved left going just over a modroc launch rack passing through a gap in the launch rods with scant centimeters to spare, then it drifted back downwind to land right next to it's takeoff point. It looked a lot like an olympic highjumper in action.

Todd, one of my flying buddies said he'd buy me lunch if I would fly it again. I didn't have any more suitable motors for it, so I told him I would if he could donate an Estes E9. For various reasons, I had yet to use any E9's before, so this one was my 1st. Well that turned in a perfect flight, 60-70ft up, transitioning to full autorotation mode about 1/2 way down and landing about 100ft downwind.

September launch dates were all rained out, so I had to wait till October for flight #3. Since the CP-2 flew so well on an E9 I figured it could handle one of my long sugar moonburners. These are sized the same as the E9 though heavier start to finish and has a higher sustain burn and longer duration. Well this spinny thang tookoff and immediately tilted about 45 degrees downwind for about 100ft then curved back and up in a boomerang turn till it was knife edged, pointing into the wind, at which point it ran out of sugar and dropped straight into the ground. Amazingly, the only damage was a little mushing of the wingtip, easily fixed by supergluing my fingertips to it.
The only other time I ever saw a monocopter with quite that flight profile was when I actually launched one with no flybar installed at all. Obviously a flybar with more authority is needed.
Not too surprising really, since the flybar was the same one the smaller CP-1 used.

Tig Bitty Alert

The orange paper has an exact [from the screen] print of
the other side of the shot glass.

This blogpost was substantially written by my brother Keith
and first appeared in his blog; Zzakk's Garage last year. I
edited it to make myself 1st person and made some additions.

Back in 1991 when my brother and I owned a screen printing
company (that did everything but T-shirts) we used to make
personal items from time to time. Keith handled the artwork
/typsetting and darkroom, plus made the screens--I was in
charge of the machinery and tooling (makes perfect sense if
you know us) and then we would do the actual printing
together.

I had Keith pirate the art of Patty Melt [one of Cherry's friends]
whipping out her tig old bitties from a Cherry Comics adult
comic book, and we printed at most a dozen shot glasses
[1 sub-carton]. We shipped two of the shot glasses to Larry
Welz, the comic's author, who then sent us the original and
never-seen-before-now drawing that's in the frame. We
traded a few comments about our favorite liquors and
thoughts on doing a production run. Unfortunately, our
epoxy based glass ink wasn't durable enough for hard use
[we termed it "Souvineer Quality"] so we declined due
to warranty concerns.

We put milk in the glass so our printing would be legible in
the photo, then drank it. Till someone else brought it up,
we never thought about the humor of our choice of liquid.

Probably the only time Keith has tasted white milk since
we made the shotglasses 18 years ago.
Personally, I can't get enough of the stuff.

The first issue of Cherry Comics was titled Cherry Poptart.
A great way to infuriate Kelloggs and Archie Comics at the
same time. There were some not so thinly disguised Archie
characters in that first issue too.

Time to Google Larry Welz and see what he's up to lately.
www.cherrycomics.com If you're 18 or older.

Girl Genius Comics, Steampunk Heaven

Not an artistic page but
Agatha's rant says it all.













2008 Hugo award


A quick plug for Girl Genius comics.
The hero is Agatha Heterodyne, an extremely sparky
mad scientist from a long and dangerous family of
sparky mad scientists. A nice girl actually, but she's
learning fast.
I wouldn't mind being her Lab Assistant.
Phil & Kaja Foglio just uploaded this great photo of
the Hugo award they won for Best Graphic Novel
of 2008. Great trophy. Absolutely fantastic comic.
I can't recommend it enough. You can read a new
page every weekday online, but support your artist
and buy the books, I have the 1st 7 or 8 plus a lot
of other Foglio comics and cool products.

I installed a link in the lefthand sidebar some months
ago but I wasn't fired up enough to do a blogpost
about it till now.

Back in the Saddle, NOT!

I had high hopes for upping my post rate this fall
here at the Lab, but such is not going to be the case.

In late September my landline was disconnected and
I about refuse to pay a further autodebited dime to
ATT/yahoo for their klugey [sp?] email that I have to
constantly wait for advertising to load on. I expect
advertising on Yahoo free sites, but not on something
costing me over $17/mo and is slower than ever already.
GRRRRR!
When the email software switched over, the previously
full featured address book lost everything except the
names and email addresses. All the phone numbers, all
the USPS addresses, all the aliases and side notes. ALL
GONE! DOUBLE GA-ERRRRR!!!
Of course this means my access is limited at the moment,
and I'm losing all my old email files and peoples addresses.

So my friends & relations who read this, please email me
at; kur.kzak@gmail.com
I tried changing my blog personal data to the new email
address and was denied. WTF?
If I can't resolve that issue I'll have to change emails again.
Gee, Google Blog and Google Email together sounded like a
Good idea at the time.

I also aquired a cell phone again after doing without one for
about 7 years and not missing it most of the time.
Thanks K&S.

Campitch 1 Monocopter Pt 3

A good ascent. Note wing gap.

Takeoff. Sign of an inadequate flybar.
1 ft up and already 1 ft sideways.

The wreckage.

The Campitch 1 is no more.

It made 10 flight attempts in 10 months.
Four flights were considered OK, one was very good,
and only one was nearly perfect. One way or another
it tossed it's wing four times. It tore up one part  or
another of the cam system four times, and broke one
flybar. The final flight did all three at once.

Even the best flight bent the cam follower bolt.  It
was the ninth flight and I used one of my 24mm E  
sugar moonburners.  It ascended to around 60 feet, it's
highest flight, and when it coasted about halfway down
it finally slowed enough to retract the wing into full
autorotation mode.   D motors never gave it the needed
height to do this.

On the tenth flight, I used an Aerotech E11J. At about
the 40ft mark, still under power it disintegrated. The
flybar was broken and the cam follower bolt was half
torn from the wing root, and the bolthead was pulled
through the G10 fiberglass cam track.

This spinny thang taught me more than all my previous
monocopters put together.

The biggest problem the CP1 had was it's pretty wing.
Being fully glassed it was too heavy [especially with
balance weight added to the leading edge], and that
eliptical wingtip made it too slick. Together this
gave it a higher than average rpm AND a tendency to
not slow down anytime soon.
Again, because of the wing weight, the unweighted
3/16" flybar used on the first five flights lacked authority.
This caused the motor and wing to pick their own pitch
angle and for the monocopter as a whole to squirrel
around and track at odd angles instead of going straight
up. The second flybar was 1/4" diameter and slightly
longer, but it had so much drag  altitude was reduced
by half.
The wing retract spring is always an issue. If it's too
heavy; it takes extra rpm to extend for takeoff.
If it's too light; it has to slow more to retract into
auto rotation. I used springs because I had a pile to
pick from. A better solution would be rubberbands
which might be easier to fine tune.
Finally, 1/8" pultruded carbon tubing it totally
unsuitable for D+ powered monocopters.  I managed
to break them outright 4 times, in three different
applications.

I'll spare y'all the flight log.
Yahoo Monocopter Group won't be so lucky.

Space Truckin'

Courtesy: Pirate Art Institute

I loved this painting the first time I saw it.
It was an illustration for a short story called; Ride to Live, Live to Ride. The story was about a biker who was a high-iron contractor doing orbital assembly, but ends up being a hero. It appeared about 20 years ago in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. I've long since lost
track of the issue, author and artist.

My brother Keith photographed and printed it for me. Some cleanup was done at the time with ink and brush. I had a grandios plan to screen print parts of it on layers of plexiglas, for a 3D effect. The back layer would've had the stars engraved and sandblasted into it. The stack would then be mounted in a deep frame and internally backlit and edgelit [fibreoptic].

More recently I scanned it and we digitally cleaned it up again and then added colors to the Grateful Dead logo.

Sugar Motor Testing Pt.2, Getting Sweeter

t
Art Applewhite's Cinco38 Prototype
Pizza Hut

My Tide Wave version with ISP
38-360 case for comparison

Tide Wave on 1st sugar flight.
Using Ultra-White recipe.

Tide Wave pouring on the sugar
and spinning hard.


A big update to the previous post.
Since that test took place back in February I've burned 3 more sugar reloads in the test series. Since the test stand is still broken [the new guage I want for it aint cheap], I went ahead
and flew them in an Art Applewhite 38mm Cinco Saucer clone, my Tide Wave, or in Art's prototype Pizza Hut Cinco38.
Since it's 1st flight I've trimmed down the wavy edges twice on the Tide Wave. The spin under power was fine by me, but the spinning causes recovery problems. I've also flown the Cincos on an Aerotech G64W reload and an ancient and suspicious single-use Aerotech 320Nt H145 manufactured in 1988. These 2 motors definitely bracket the sugars below in the medium H category.

The motor that blew the stand had Bi-modal KNO3 [an inspecific mix of powdered and granular], my usual opacifier 1% Lamp Black, plus 1% Red Iron Oxide. A very fast recipe.
The next 2 are the same as above but with 8% Titanium shavings added for sparks. One had fine sparks, the other coarser sparks. The mildest recipe, nicknamed Ultra-White, uses granular KNO3 and 1% Titanium Oxide as a white opacifier. The only test recipe not burned yet is Ultra-Pink. Same as Ultra-White above but with the addition of 1% RIO on top of the TiO2.

So far, except for the wrong nozzle incident, everything has worked well. Ignition with my now standard Copper Thermite ignitors has been a non-issue. The RIO sure is messy stuff but it
really does improve pouring viscosity, just as other sugar cookers have noted. I didn't doubt it, but wow, seeing it happen is amazing.

At this rate, I'll have to make more test loads by the time the test stand is repaired.
Aw shucks.

Sugar Motor Testing [not all sweet]

Ignitor hookup.
Black crescent at bottom of guage
window is probable damage.


Instant On! Ignitor wires inflight,
Guage needle is still on zero.


Burnout. Foreground smoke
came out of guage face


Expelling a bit of casting tube.


Blackened guage guts hanging out.


In order to evaluate possible changes to sugar motor recipes, I developed a new shorter motor that would be more economical to operate. It helps that I was given a damaged reload case [Thanks Ray!]. My long motors use two 6 1/8" fuel slugs, unfortunately the short motor, after repair, only fits 5 1/4" of fuel. An even 50% would've been nice, but this is close enough, and it was a free motor.

Late last year I made 4 pairs of reloads, all physically the same, but each pair has a somewhat different formula. All are moonburners since they burn twice as long. Eventually some will go to a thrust stand, but IMO, chamber pressure tests are initially more important. It's good to know what even works before tieing up [or risking] a high dollar digital thrust stand.

I made a new nozzle with a 3/16" throat that would be used with some of the new grains, especially the baseline formula. Being virgin territory, none of these reload kits have the
nozzles listed on the labels like I do with the larger mature reloads. On Feb, 20 2010, the morning of the test, I picked the new 3/16" nozzle and installed it with reload #1 rather
than with reload the mildest. Reload #1 was a hotty and should've been tested first with a 1/4" or even 5/16" nozzle. The motor survived the test but barely. Probably only because it trashed the guage and was blowing out both ends. As it is, it severely belled the nozzle washer and crumbled the corners of the nozzle where it was pressed into said newly angled washer. Despite the short foliage and limited dipersal angle, we never did find the polycarbonate guage window. There is evidence that the pressure guage was damaged previous to this test attempt.

The hydraulic test stand has been cleaned and is getting rebuilt. Besides the new & better guage, it's getting a grease fitting and a brake bleeder valve. Instead of filling the stand with brake fluid as before, I'm going to use grease. This will allow for easier transport of the stand and with a good grease gun I should be able to use the stand to pressure test motor case materials and other components.

Wanted: Spunky Lab Assistant

A recent Best Buy commercial shows some
customers shopping for a Geek Squad assistant.
This in no way inspired this post, the body of
which was already written, it merely makes it
timely.

In order to expidite the process I'm going online
in my search for a new Spunky Lab Assistant.

First let me dispel rumors about what happened
to my previous Spunky Lab Assistant [SLA].  She
did not get blown up, burned down, nor
bisected by lasers.  I did not turn her into a
monster, rather she turned herself into a 
monster all on her own.  Another story for
another day [off the web].

This is not as easy as I thought it would be.
I'm trying not to be too picky about specific
job skills, but there are quite a few that
are inherent to the long tenure of any Mad
Scientist's SLA.

Summary of desired job skills;
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Major or minor in any 2 of the following;
chemistry, mathematics, physics, applied or
theoretical, computers, or other tech field.
A dropout with a good reason has preference
over a graduate with a bad reason.

Experience with grant applications.

Know the A B C's of proper fire extinguisher use.

Be able to sew Ripstop & Tubular Nylon, Kevlar,
Nomex and Denim.

Know the charades gestures for; Sedative.

Be able to work both English and Metric factors
in the same equations without freaking out.
[It's a rocketry thing.]

Know what the Periodic Table is for, and NOT for.

Be able to tidy up without disturbing "all my
tubes and wires and careful notes."

Know how to make a lab coat and safety gogs
look jazzy.

Make GOOD Coffee, sometimes with makeshift
equipment, or under adverse conditions.

In the words of Dr. Hawkeye Pierce as played by
Donald Sutherland; "She's gotta be able to work
in close without getting her tits in the way."

Oh yeah, most important;  If I start running, she
should be able to keep up!

Apollo 11 Owners' Workshop Manual, No Really!

When I first saw this last year or so over on
Zzakk's garage, I assumed it was some kind
of spoof.  Not sure if the book even existed,
or was just a cover.

I found the link on Spaceflight Now website.
The link went to Amazon.  There it was, for sale.

I'd like to add that I had the Haynes manuals for
all my motorcycles and love them.  Much better
than Chiltons IMO.  Haynes books are more
likely to list a substitute for that hard to find
Grumman Z347L  pintle injector spanner.

Maybe if my brother buys this for my birthday 
I can fly that Lunar Lander out of my back yard.
It looks good there, but it's tough to cut around.