Tag Archives: LAPD CSP

October 2018 meeting

Posted on by

The RRS met for our monthly meeting on Friday, October 12, 2018, at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena. As usual, we got started by calling the meeting to order and reading the treasury report. We had a big agenda but covered most of the topics.

[X1]
Richard Garcia wasn’t able to join us at the October meeting. He wanted to report that he has made some design improvements to the RRS standard liquid rocket. He’s finished upgrading his engine design code to be able to analyze a blowdown engine (pressure-fed from the tanks). He also will soon have drawings for a thrust chamber design.

With some luck, I hope he’ll be back into testing at the MTA sometime soon next year.

[X2]
Electro Tech Machining (ETM) in Long Beach, California, specializes in graphite stock, graphite parts and Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM). They are experts and have been a loyal supporter of amateur rocketry groups such as UCLA and USC. The Reaction Research Society is happy to endorse them as they have been a great support to our society member’s projects as well.

Electro Tech Machining – Long Beach, contact information

Contact Cathy Braunsdorf at Electro Tech Machining.

Electro Tech Machining
2000 W. Gaylord Avenue
Long Beach, CA, 90813
(562) 436-9281

Electro Tech Machining in Long Beach, the graphite specialists

Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) – Wikipedia article

I stopped in this week to pick up some round stock for making more graphite nozzle pucks for the ballastic evaluation motor (BEM) that is nearing completion. Graphite makes an excellent high temperature material for nozzle throats or any low ablation surfaces. We have used graphite inserts into reclaimed alpha and beta nozzles over the years at the RRS. Our society members have used graphite throats in their larger solid motor tested at the RRS MTA back in June 2018.

Plastic nozzle puck used for scale against the graphite round stock acquired by the RRS from Electro Tech Machining in Long Beach, CA

Moving into the meeting agenda, we shifted the order a little, but I have kept the numbering the same:

[1]
The latest educational event at Weigand Elementary school in Watts is going very well. The LAPD CSP program continues to help sponsor the event and we get great excitement from the kids. This Friday was the fifth of six educational events where they get to assemble the empty rockets. Osvaldo, Larry and Frank were on hand to help with the build process. The kids are really enjoying the process of learning and painting the team rockets will done in the last session before going out to launch at the RRS’s private testing site, the Mojave Test Area (MTA).

Two of our young participants show their assembled RRS alpha rocket at Weigand Elementary, Frank Miuccio in the background at the right

[2]
The next launch event at the RRS MTA will be the final step in the RRS’s educational program for Weigand Elementary school. We have this scheduled for October 27th and we hope to have cooler weather than in prior events now that the summer has passed. We have nine alphas from Weigand Elementary and three more alphas from our new membership, Wilbur Owens, Xavier Marshall and Michael Lunny.

Xavier Marshall looks over his first RRS alpha, welcome to the club!

[3]
I gave my quarterly briefing on the SuperDosa project at the October meeting. This time, I organized my thoughts and ideas into a presentation to give the RRS a general overview of the project and where we are so far.

Largely, I wanted to reiterate the project’s overall goals to many of the new members who have joined the RRS since the project’s inception in January 2017. The RRS intends to retake the amateur rocketry altitude record and in the process reopen our ability to make larger solid rocket motors and expand our reach both in our own community and literally with payloads ultimately flying above the atmosphere.

SuperDosa quarterly report, Oct-2018

I also acknowledged the recent progress of some of our new members formerly of the Chaminade Rocketry Club. Also, USC had a launch attempt with their Traveller III rocket, part of their Spaceshot Initiative. Unfortunately, instrumentation was not functioning but the flight looked to be nearly perfect. I hope USC will come present their recent accomplishments at a future RRS meeting.

Materials acquisition and some discussion about how to proceed with the propellant burn rate testing were the highlights of the discussion. More progress needs to be made in a few areas for completing the first prototype:

(a) Complete the design of all parts for the first prototype (6-inch booster)

(b) Begin prototyping instrumented dart payloads to practice flying and recovering these while getting good data. Making these devices work under the tight and unforgiving conditions that they must.

(c) More work in parachute recovery

(d) Estimating friction heat loads and heat mitigation strategies for the payload

Much of this prototyping work can be done at the MTA by flying smaller subscale vehicles and testing subsystems to prove they can work. More importantly, these tests give the society practice for the large vehicle testing which will reclaim the altitude record for the RRS.

The response to the SuperDosa project’s progress was very constructive and many new ideas were offered. I’m thankful to Frank, Steve Majdali, Larry, Osvaldo, Bill Behenna, Drew and Xavier for their inputs. I have taken notes and given actions to other members who are willing to help advance key areas of the project. Unfortunately, this topic was to be the last of the evening as my presentation easily exceeded the 20 minutes I intended.

The next quarterly report for the SuperDosa project will be January 11, 2019, and I hope to report a great deal of progress.

[4]
We had a last minute addition to the agenda, with Steve Majdali talking about black powder rockets and some very nice black powder rocket making tools he acquired while on travel. Black powder rockets are a classic form of amateur rocketry and involve many techniques that are broadly useful in other areas such as composite grain motors.

Steve Majdali shows the RRS his metal spindle for a cored grain type of 3-inch black powder rocket

Steve gave us a lot of great information specific to black powder making, pressing and a wealth of other practical information. Based on this new avenue of research, I felt the RRS would benefit more if Steve discussed this topic in more length in a stand-alone article soon to be published here on the RRS.ORG website.

[5]
The RRS has been in contact with the Additive Rocket Corporation (ARC) of San Diego. They are a startup company in San Diego with the goal of making high performance rocket motors using their novel design methodologies and 3D metal printing equipment. Discussions are still underway and thus there wasn’t much to tell. ARC was an exhibitor at the 75th anniversary symposium this year in April.

Additive Rocket Corporation (ARC) of San Diego at the 75th anniversary RRS symposium

[6]
In my discussions with ARC, they were kind enough to offer to 3D print a simple small liquid rocket chamber I designed. Prices are not cheap, but this futuristic manufacturing technique offers a great deal of complexity that is not easily nor cheaply replicated by traditional means. I have been in discussions with ARC and hope to have more to present at the next RRS meeting.

125 lbf thrust chamber design, uncooled; prototype for the RRS standard liquid project

[7]
Alastair Martin could not join us at October’s meeting. I was going to have him discuss the current topics of interest at the recent 21st Annual Mars Society Convention held this summer. Alastair is very involved with the Mars Society and the RRS.

Alastair will be at the November RRS meeting so we’ll put this topic on the next agenda.

[8]
New RRS members, Wilbur Owens and Xavier Marshall, are active with the Experimental Aircraft Association, chapter #96, at the Compton Airport in the Los Angeles area. EAA-96 is a like-minded group of enthusiasts centered on experimental aircraft. The EAA-96 has hangar space and a range of machining tools offered to their members.

Experimental Aircraft Association, Spirit of 96

Xavier had mentioned at the last meeting that the EAA would love to host a visit by the RRS. Accepting the EAA’s invitation, the RRS has scheduled a visit to the EAA in Compton on November 3rd at 10:00AM. The EAA will give an hour tour of their facilities and projects. We hope to foster a strong relationship between the EAA and the RRS.

Talk with Xavier Marshall, Wilbur Owens, the RRS president, vice president or secretary for details.

Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) hangar
1017 W. Alondra Blvd.
Compton, CA, 90220
(310) 612-2751

One of the key points of discussion at this visit will be to discuss how the RRS and EAA can help each other or participant in joint projects. The RRS is interested in using the EAA hangar facilities if they are available. Annual membership at the EAA is $40 to the EAA national society and $40 more to the local chapter at the Compton Airport. As I understand but must confirm, with EAA-96 chapter membership, RRS membership can have access to the machining tools for building rocketry parts for those of us without facilities in our own homes.

Xavier had also mentioned that hangar storage was often very cost-effective which could be a service that the RRS could use as we look to expand our shop capabilities to our membership.

EAA Chapter 96 hangar, Compton Airport

The EAA hangar is just straight east and not very far from our regular meeting location in Gardena at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center just north of Artesia Blvd. (CA-Hwy 91). The address is above.

[9]
Osvaldo’s recent successful design of an alpha parachute recovery system was not able to be covered. We may expand this topic into a fully illustrated RRS.ORG article if we can not get this topic on next month’s agenda. This has been a quiet success and definitely worthy of exhibition to our membership.

[10]
Jerry Fuller of Aerospace Corporation had indicated interest in building and testing a larger subscale prototype of his liquid-infused hybrid motor grain. Aerospace had earlier this year successfully demonstrated a smaller prototype in flight at the RRS MTA. In choosing the next larger design, he has selected a common model rocketry size (98 mm) just under 4-inches which will allow him to use commercially available rocket body parts. Jerry is active with our friends at Rocketry Organization of California (ROC).

At this time, he is still working on the design until resources can be allocated. The RRS has invited him to present his results and the new prototype he has in mind. The RRS is happy to support private groups with a testing area and a community of amateur enthusiasts happy to assist.

[11]
The RRS had discussed having a small group of our membership go out to the next ROC event which is held the 2nd Saturday of the month. Unfortunately, neither I nor Drew were able to go this month. With the Friday night rains falling on the city, it might not bode well for the event at the Lucerne Valley as they must operate on the dry lake bed.

We are looking to coming out to the November ROC event in the Lucerne Valley and hope we can bring other RRS memmbers with us. In particular, some of our members are interested in getting more practical experience through the NAR or Tripoli prefect at ROC. Moreover, some of the RRS membership is seeking experience and support as we acquire letters of recommendation for the California pyro-op licensing in rocketry.

[12]
Saturday seminars have not yet been scheduled, but the RRS is still committed to offering an extended time period for fuller discussions by invited speakers.

[+] RRS member, Jim French, is a speaker of which we would be very excited to have. Jim was a development engineer at the famed Santa Susanna Field Laboratory here in Los Angeles during the development of the reliable and powerful H-1 engine and the injector for the massive F-1 engine. Later, he worked at TRW on the reliable, hypergolic fueled, Apollo Descent engine at TRW at their San Juan Capistrano testing site (now defunct). His book, “Firing a Rocket Engine” is available on Amazon and it is a great read.

Amazon.com – James A. French, Firing a Rocket Engine

[+] Reaction Research Society founder, George James, is another speaker we have been wanting to have. His founding work with his other organization, the Rocket Research Institute (RRI) was a great topic he covered only briefly at the 75th anniversary symposium in April.

[+] Rocketdyne retiree and materials expert, John Halczuk, is another potential speaker on the subject of his extensive research of the V-2 rocket. He gave an excellent talk last year at California State University in Northridge, on history of the V-2’s development and deployment. The V-2 guided many design decisions still used in modern rocketry today in both the United States and particularly in the former Soviet Union.

We were not able to discuss this topic in detail, but more information will be forthcoming, hopefully in the form of an announcement of our first Saturday seminar at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center on a Saturday morning.

[13]
The next RRS symposium date in 2019 will be set soon. Based on the powerful success of the 2018 event, the RRS has decided to further the tradition one more year. We hope to have an even better mixture of universities, private companies and government agencies.

Date to be announced in November, the RRS will hold the 2019 symposium at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena

There was no time to formally raise the subject, but it was decided by the council members present at the October meeting that the 2019 RRS symposium date will be formally set by an offline discussion and the date officially announced at the next RRS meeting on November 9, 2018.

[IN CLOSING]
The next meeting of the RRS will be November 9th at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena.

We will most certainly discuss the results of the MTA launch event scheduled for Saturday, October 27, 2018. I will build the agenda starting at the end of the month. Please contact the RRS secretary for ideas and information on meeting topics.

secretary@rrs.org

As per our constitution, the RRS will hold its annual nominations of officers for the next calendar year 2019 at the November 9, 2018 meeting. Voting by the administrative membership will take place thereafter and managed by our election chairman. Results will be announced at the next meeting on December 14, 2018.

Thank you for reading.

—- —-

September 2018 meeting

Posted on by

The RRS held its monthly meeting for September 2018 this Friday, the 14th, at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center. We were displaced from our usual meeting room, but got the upstairs room F with the window view which was pretty nice. We were well attended, but got a very late start. Meetings begin at 7:30pm. There were several little events at the meeting which did not make the agenda.

Alastair Martin, Bill Behenna and Richard Garcia at the September 2018 meeting of the RRS

[X1]
The RRS was glad to welcome new student member, Bailey Cislowski. We had a short little social event at the end of the meeting which was a nice way to end the week.

Bailey Cislowski and RRS VP, Frank Miuccio

Also, the RRS was glad to re-welcome new members Wilbur Owens and Xavier Marshall. Wilbur had his first rite of passage in the RRS by taking his first standard alpha rocket. He’s looking forward to filling it with micrograin at the next launch event on October 27th. It will be one of many to come!

Xavier Marshall and Wilbur Owens; Wilbur gets his first RRS alpha

[X2]
Xavier invited the RRS to come tour the Experimental Aircraft Association’s local chapter at the Compton Airport. The EAA holds regular events including educational events with local kids.

Experimental Aircraft Association, Spirit of 96

Contact information for the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association in Compton

[X3]
RRS member Alastair Martin is active with the Mars Society which just completed their 21st annual International Mars Society convention at the Pasadena Convention Center. If Alastair can oblige at our next RRS meeting, I have asked him to give the RRS a report on his experiences at the event.

Mars Society – home page

Besides film-making and photography, another one of Alastair’s talents is screen-printing on shirts. I recently had the RRS logo added to this bright-yellow shirt that I bought to better survive the hot Mojave desert climate of the RRS MTA. These bright-yellow “Ultra-Club” cool & dry shirts can be bought on Amazon in a variety of sizes besides the “XL” that I wear.

The RRS logo proudly worn on a fall afternoon

[X4]
I recently purchased a fly-away rail guide from Additive Aerospace. This company specializes in model rocketry parts including this simple clamp-on device that obviates the need for mounting rail buttons on the smaller rockets.

Additive Aerospace – fly-away rail guides

Additive Aerospace was nice enough to customize their standard 38mm design to fit the slightly smaller (1.25″ diameter) RRS standard alpha propellant tube. The fit check was perfect and the next step will be to attempt to launch an alpha from the 80-20 rail launcher we have.

Flyaway rail guide customized for an RRS standard alpha micrograin rocket is a good fit (and held closed by my hand).

Flyaway rail guide has two pairs of rail buttons to hold the rocket on the launch rail.

The flyaway rail guide is spring-loaded to open once the rocket travels up and off the launch rail, then simply falls away as the rocket speeds off

1.5-inch 80-20 aluminum rail extrusion, rail buttons are guided down this path on the rocket’s way up and away

12-foot aluminum 80-20 rail launcher, RRS MTA bunker in the background

[X5]
Osvaldo completed the cylinder piece of the ballistic evaluation motor (BEM) assembly that I designed for testing the burn rate of solid propellant samples. I forgot to bring the graphite nozzle pucks that Richard Garcia made for the assembly. Once the gaskets are fitted and the pressure transducer is checked out, we can begin to prepare 4-inch long samples of propellant into the 3/4-inch PVC tubes for which the BEM was designed to fire. This will be a useful tool in characterizing the AP/HTPB/Aluminum solid propellant batches that will be used in the prototypes of the SuperDosa project. Larry has already made a small batch of the RRS standard recipe solid propellant. Some of these first grains may be used in the propellant burn demonstration at the next RRS MTA launch event.

RRS BEM cylinder sits on top of the bottom plate, top plate in the background

[X6]
Thanks to Osvaldo again for his help with the two-stage alpha rocket that I designed. In this prototype, the payload tube was made longer for the possibility of a parachute recovery system for the upper stage. The 1-1/4″ PVC pipe was machined down to 1.600″ OD to fit inside of the standard alpha’s aluminum payload tube. The steel nozzle design, although simpler to make, may prove to be excessively heavy and throw off the mass balance of the rocket. The graphite nozzle design with its split retaining ring may be the better choice. More work is needed before attempting to fly this prototype design including completing the inter-stage timer circuit for deploying the in-line second stage motor in flight.

Two-stage RRS alpha rocket; second stage with a small AP/HTPB/Aluminum solid grain motor

[X7]
Since August, Osvaldo has made some progress in testing the load cell that will be used in the horizontal thrust stand. The bottle jack he used was tapped with an analog pressure gauge and the compression load into the load cell can be accurately measured. Despite some seal leakage problems with the older bottle jack, the results he and Matteo gathered from his data acquisition unit showed our S-type load cell matches the calibration sheet fairly well.

Load cell compression testing rig using a pressure gauge and a bottle jack

Finally, we got to some of the originally scheduled agenda topics:

[1]
Frank Miuccio gave an overview of the next educational event that had its first event of the series held today at Weigand Elementary school. This is the latest in the series of events we’ve had with the LAPD CSP program. The final event will the launch of the alpha rockets at the RRS MTA on October 27, 2018. Dave Crisalli will be our pyro-op at the event.

Osvaldo, Larry and Frank listen at the September 2018 meeting

[2]
We didn’t have another launch event planned yet for this year, but it’s always possible.

[3]
Richard Garcia gave a brief overview of his successful hot-fire test of his 1000-lbf kerosene-LOX motor on August 18, 2018. His pintle injector with an ablative chamber insert worked very well despite a leaking fitting at the LOX port. Some of the equipment did not work completely as hoped, but the overall test produced a stable thrust profile and clean cut-off. Richard put a lot of work into this first design which helps pave the way to the RRS standard liquid rocket project which will remain a regular topic with the RRS moving forward.

Richard Garcia after presenting his liquid rocket testing results; a proud day

Richard then moved into the details of integrating a liquid motor into a rocket body. Using commonly available parts and a few simply made connecting pieces, a simple but effective liquid rocket design can be made with a modest budget easily affordable to universities and individuals. This is still a work in progress, but the RRS is committed to bringing this project to fruition. We look forward to the next engine build which will likely be in a series of builds that will ultimately lead to the RRS standard liquid rocket design.

Richard’s Solidworks model showing both propellant and pressurant tanks plumbed into the rocket body

[4]
We had a very short discussion about the RRS expanding our roster of pyro-ops. Chris Kobel of ROC presented at our August meeting and gave a lot of practical advise on this subject.

Many of our next member “class” including myself have already written their rocket resumes to describe their experience with rocketry and have begun soliciting licensed pyro-ops for recommendation letters which is not a task to be taken lightly. Beyond the RRS regular and lifetime membership, the Rocketry Organization of California (ROC) was willing to help RRS members learn and earn their recommendation letters by attending and participating at events at ROC. The Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR) have also been very helpful to those of us who are aspiring to be new pyro-ops. The rocketry community is a small one and it is good to have the support of like-minded organizations to keep the membership across all societies safe, strong and active.

ROC holds monthly events on the 2nd Saturday of each month. I have been working on organizing a group of RRS members to go out to the next ROC event to get to know our smoke-and-fire sisters and brothers.

Rocketry Organization of California – Roctober event on Oct 13-14, 2018

To all of our membership interested in making this trip to the Lucerne Valley on October 13th, contact the RRS secretary. If we have a good number of people interested, we can make this a worthwhile trip. This trip would be on the Saturday immediately following the RRS meeting on that Friday night (Oct 12th). ROC will be holding an event with school kids, but if the RRS members bring their rocket resumes we may be able to have a conversation with the ROC leadership and get some advice and training. If we get a few members to ride out, I’ll contact ROC to let them know we’re coming. Please let me know by Friday, September 28th.

[IN CLOSING]
Next meeting of the RRS will be October 12th, which is always the 2nd Friday of the month. The quarterly update for the SuperDosa project will be part of the agenda as well as several items we did not cover in our agenda. All RRS members are welcome to make suggestions for discussion topics at future meetings. For those wanting to add topics, please let me know. I will post the preliminary agenda topics at the 1st of the next month on the RRS website Forum page.

As always, please keep your email and contact information up to date with the society. We’re glad to see so many new members and returning members. Even if you can’t make it to Gardena on a regular basis, just send us a line to say “hello” and tell us how you’re doing.

secretary@rrs.org

August 2018 meeting

Posted on by

The Reaction Research Society (RRS) held it’s monthly meeting on August 10, 2018 at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center. We were very well attended with four new people including returning member, Jim French. I was unable to attend the meeting, but other council members gave me their notes.

The RRS meeting got a late start at 8:00pm. (Our starting time is supposed to be 7:30pm.) The agenda items were not covered in order, but the list of topics to be covered were as follows:

[1]
This was to be a discussion of the 2018-07-21 launch event that the RRS held at the MTA with LAPD CSP and the student group at Watts. The event was successful with both the student alpha launches and a few RRS member alphas with payloads. The event was summarized in a previous article. A few things could have been done better which will make future events go more smoothly.

[+] A single, simpler briefing to the kids would have been more effective. The kids in the student classes do pay attention at the events (which is great) but the RRS is giving a lot of redundant information and a more concise presentation delivered by only the pyro-op will be far better than having three people talking at the same time.

[+] Also, every person conducting a launch or hot-firing at the MTA must submit a detailed proposal to the pyro-op for review at least a week in advance and gain the RRS and pyro-op’s approval PRIOR to coming to the event. The RRS used to be even more stringent on this requirement. The use of the RRS standard record form is required to be filled out by the experimenter for review by the pyro-op. The RRS requires advance preparation and there is no reason why this can not be done by all participants.

In recent times, our pyro-ops have been very casual about this requirement and have been kind enough to review things on the spot, but this was always at the pyro-op’s discretion. The pyro-op is the single and solo authority for what is and isn’t done at the launch event. The pyro-op should be the most informed individual about what is going to be attempted at the MTA.

The RRS has a Standard Record Form available on this website under the Membership tab of the Homepage and under the subheading of Forms. This downloadable document gives members a basic framework for the detailed information they must provide to the pyro-op describing their project and its goals. The RRS encourages members to present their proposed projects at the meetings and be very detailed in any reports submitted to the pyro-op and RRS president. The RRS wishes to keep good records to benefit the society and future projects.

RRS – Membership / Forms / Standard Record Form

[+] In future events where we have the student launch event conducted first, we should not plan nor conduct any events before the student launch. Getting back to an earlier point, having launch and hot-fire events declared, reviewed and scheduled days in advance will help make RRS events go more smoothly and safely. Years of experience at the MTA has shown that tasks ALWAYS take longer than planned and too much waiting can make coordination of large groups unnecessarily difficult. Therefore, having our coordinated events go off first without distractions from other planned activities will make it easier for our pyro-ops to conduct their duties and make our participants be more organized in their projects.

[+] The extreme heat of mid-July made it very difficult to conduct operations but having the motorized cart to shuttle the pyro-ops to and from the launch site made a critical difference. Bringing ice in the summer is a necessity. Having everyone well prepared for the hot weather continues to be the best advice.

[2]
Chris Kobel who is a member of Rocketry Organization of California (ROC) shared some advice for pyrotechnic operators (pyro-op). Chris has been a pyro-op for over 10 years and is pretty active with amateur rocketry. Safety was the primary emphasis of his presentation. He also mentioned a key point of contact at the Office of the State Fire Marshall (OSFM) of California, Tom Campbell. Mr. Campbell is very important authority at the California State Fire Marshall’s office who can answer important questions. Chris and the other pyro-op members at ROC were also willing to counsel RRS members interested in becoming pyro-op’s.

The RRS was glad to have Chris give our membership a wealth of information. We look forward to working more with Chris and ROC in the near future as the RRS is expanding our roster of pyro-ops for our growing events.

[3]
Osvaldo’s flight telemetry from his alpha flight on 2018-07-21 was briefly mentioned at the meeting. It was good that the flight was successful that data was taken. Given the time constraints, he’ll give more details at the next month’s meeting.

[4]
Progress on the RRS alpha parachute systems and future attempts was to be detailed by both Osvaldo and Larry who each attempted a unique recovery system built into the small confines of the alpha payload tube. Again, insufficient time was available at this meeting and this event can move to next month.

[5]
Sam Austin gave a presentation of MIT’s solid rocket launch and his upcoming liquid rocket hot-fire. Sam is here in Los Angeles for the summer on his internship, but managed to find time to launch his rocket from the FAR site on the same day the RRS held our launch event on 2018-07-21. The MIT team’s custom-built solid rocket motor (O4000) made from scratch reached an altitude of 33,132 feet as confirmed by dual altimeters. The vehicle weighed 121 lbm at liftoff and reached a peak velocity of Mach 1.8.

MIT’s rocket launch from FAR on 2018-07-21

MIT team poses with their rocket, 2018-07-21

Sam described a rough order of operations for their solid rocket grain making process and detailed their recovery. The rocket touched down safely 2 miles away and was fully recovered. The MIT team was elated and attributes their successful launch to careful design, many hours of testing that went into every component. The RRS is happy for MIT’s success and hopes they will test at the MTA with their next rocket.

[6]
There will be a liquid rocket hot fire testing on August 18th at both the Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR) site and the RRS MTA. Sam Austin has been working on his liquid rocket motor to test at FAR, next door to the RRS MTA site. Richard Garcia has built a small liquid motor for what could become the RRS standard liquid rocket design. Our two members have agreed to share resources and the hot fire events will take place on 2018-08-18.

Both projects will use a nitrogen K-bottle as their pressurization source and will share a liquid oxygen dewar to provide the oxidizer to both of their engines. Richard’s and Sam’s liquid rocket motors will use kerosene as a fuel. Richard’s design is a 1000-lbf thrust design with an assumed chamber pressure of 300 psig.

Sam and Richard have put a lot of work into these projects and we hope they have success. I plan to go out there to help document the event for a new posting to come shortly after.

[7]
The meeting was to discuss upcoming RRS launch events including the next one with LAPD. Frank has said that the next event with the LAPD CSP will be with the Boys and Girls Club. LAPD CSP is also working on setting up another school group in Watts for an RRS event. Specific dates were not yet set, but that information will be coming soon. We will post announcements of forthcoming launch events in the “Forum” section of this webpage.

[8]
RRS Instagram and YouTube account guidelines have been generated by RRS treasurer, Chris Lujan, and are now being reviewed by the RRS executive council. The idea of creating an RRS media manager position was proposed and accepted by the council. The RRS is considering offering this new position to RRS members, Bill Janczewski and Alastair Martin, who both have put forth a great deal of excellent work for the society. The RRS executive council will vote soon to better our social media presence to help our outreach efforts and give our followers a better view into the society.

Richard Garcia shared access information with the executive council on the existing social media accounts that the RRS has including Facebook and YouTube.

The RRS executive council now has access to Instagram and will be sharing photos from events more easily and quickly with our public audience. I have already begun to load photos I’ve had from recent events. More of the RRS will be posting to Instagram very soon.

Subjects not on the agenda included:

[BONUS 1]
The RRS will start to hold special Saturday morning seminars for special topics that can be covered in more depth outside of our monthly meeting. These bi-monthly sessions will take some work to coordinate, but should allow more of our membership to enjoy the quality of talks that we have been privileged to enjoy. Jim French agreed to give the first of the RRS Saturday seminars at a date to be determined very soon. Jim was a member of the RRS 25 years ago and we’re happy he’s come back to join us.

book by RRS member, Jim French

James R. “Jim” French also has the distinction of being a rocket engineer for over 60 years and worked at TRW on the Apollo program. He wrote a book about his experiences called “Firing a Rocket”. This first RRS Saturday seminar will be a great presentation to start this series. The date will be announced soon.

[BONUS 2]
I have been able to get the top and bottom plates made for the RRS ballistic evaluation motor (BEM) which will be a key part of the SuperDosa project and the RRS having the ability to take accurate burn rate measurements at the MTA for future motors. I am thankful to Matt Moffitt of CNC Specialty Machining in Huntington Beach. I hope to have the cylinder piece in the RRS BEM machined soon. This will likely require lathe work. Osvaldo is also looking into getting this part made. It is my hope the RRS BEM can be completed by the next quarterly update of the SuperDosa project in October 2018.

Top and bottom plates for the RRS BEM just back from the mill.

I have heard that Jack Oswald is trying to get into testing his large solid motor with an improved design. The RRS may have more to present next month on this subject.

[BONUS 3]
I wanted to bring a special device I bought from Additive Aerospace called a fly-away rail guide. I was introduced to this device by David Reese of ROC. Although the RRS has a very effective box-type rail launcher at the MTA site which will remain our standard technique, I decided to attempt a new method of launching an alpha just to get a longer guided path on launch.

Additive Aerospace – fly-away rail guides

This device allows a rocket to be fired from a extruded aluminum rail launcher such as the one we have at the RRS MTA, but without having to permanently attach the round launch buttons to the rocket itself. A spring-loaded clampshell piece goes around the rocket with a launch button on either side such that the clamp is closed when the rocket is on the rail. As the rocket takes off, the fly-away rail guide goes with the rocket along the rail launcher until the buttons clear the rail and swing open releasing it from the rocket as it speeds away.

Fly-away rail guide from Additive Aerospace; custom-built for an RRS standard alpha rocket, shown in the open position.

These devices are intended for common model rockets of the standard metric sizes (38mm, 54mm, 76mm, 98mm). I had this rail guide customized to fit an RRS standard alpha rocket which is slightly smaller than the 38mm size at 1.25 inches in diameter. I hope to demonstrate the fly-away rail guide device with a loaded RRS alpha from the 12-foot rail launcher at the RRS at the next event. I will relay my findings to the society and back to Additive Aerospace who is very interested to see how their design can work with the RRS micrograin rockets.

[IN CLOSING}

Meeting adjourned at 9:16pm which isn’t too bad. Our hosts at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center continue to graciously allow us to finish up despite the center’s closing at 9:00pm on Fridays. The RRS should seek to better finish on time as the staff at the center need to go home.

The next meeting of the RRS will be held on September 14, 2018.

For questions, contact the RRS treasurer, Chris Lujan.
treasurer@rrs.org