I've received some materials that I'll use for trial composite work, as well as most of the PML airframe tubing, couplers, centering rings, and plates for
the Q7 build. I also received the fiberglass nose cone from Mad Cow Rocketry. The quality of the nose cone is great, but the coupler was oversized for the tubing.
I built a fixture to be able to rotate the coupler tube while sanding it. It took about 8 hours of sanding on the fixture with a palm sander to finally achieve the proper fit with the PML phenolic. I developed a technique where I marked the tube with pencil and sanded until all of the pencil was gone. This is how I kept the sanding fairly even. Ultimately, the coupler wall thickness went from .09" to .07". The fixture and the marks on the coupler are in the last picture below.
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| A Bunch of Large Rocket Parts |
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Airframe Tubes Fitted Together with Cardboard Fin Mockups.
(The blue rocket is Positive Ascent, and is just shy of 9 feet tall.) |
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Another Size Comparison.
In this photo, Q7 is short by 50" (missing the whole forward section). |
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| Mad Cow Rocketry Fiberglass Nose Cone and Coupler |
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| Exposed Length is 36.5" |
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| Sanding Fixture and Coupler. |
