The good news is they did a FANTASTIC job! Look at the paint on those fillets – all of my other rockets will look horrible in comparison. Oh well
The bad news is I have two days left to finish the rocket.
Things left to do:
a little rewiring on the AV-Bay. I found an intermittent short on one of the ematch wires. Better safe then sorry.
Need to weight all the parts and recompute the CD/CG. Determine if I need nose weight, then epoxy in the allthread into the nosecone. Also need to foam the nosecone, build some electronics compartments and install the forward bulkhead
I re-fit the AV bay into the upper sustainer, and retest the main parachute deployment. now that everything has been painted. I decided on redundant BP blastcaps for both the drogue and main deployment charges. Better safe then sorry, and I can always remove them later.
drill air holes, sheering pin holes, altimeter arming holes,altimeter breathing holes, and 1515 rail button mounting holes.
when you look at it in this big AV bay. The raven is more complex to install since it uses a common + wiring scheme. While the Marsa4 had discrete connectors for everything (a + and - for each e-match, the battery, and the power switch), the Raven only has 4 terminals and a battery + for everything. This means the power switch has to be inline, and each e-match has to be connected to the same + battery post. Not a big deal, and great if you are putting this in a minimum diameter rocket. With the amount of space in my AV bays, it’s kind of unnecessary. That said, this is my most 
I ended up with on the wing tops and fin can. Worse, I can’t really fit an electrical sander in that area, so I’ve had to create all sorts of sanding devices to get into that area. You can see what looks like multiple colors on the wings and fins in the picture on the left. This is indicates in some areas I have sanded through the top layer of fiberglass into the Kevlar. That’s not necessarily a good thing, 
put a damper on rocket building and pretty much everything else. Worse, I have taken a lot of my OLD rockets out of storage few weeks ago (a Brutus, Maximum Thrust Thunderbird, and a few other 15+ year old HPR rockets) to show my kids, and clean up for flying this weekend at Bong. Given how thick the snow is, I can’t imaging wading through it all in my leg cast trying to recover the rockets 
. I’ll still go up to see if either of my tap sponsors want to see my progress, but if I fly something, it will be small. 
to get the wings on. First, I had to re-cut the wing slots. The lower portion was glassed over when I made the fin-can, and the whole slot itself wasn’t quite thick enough for the wings to fit through. I repeated the process on the other side, until I could dry fit both wings with a tight fit. One of the issues I will have with the wings is my limited ability to make interior fillets since both sides of the centering rings are already glued in place. First, I filled the interior of the wing’s nomex honeycomb with epoxy and put it into the slot. I let the epoxy ooze out of the honeycomb, then removed the fin. This gave me a line of epoxy on the motor tube where the wing made contact. I repeated that process a few times to build up the epoxy on the motor tube. I then drilled a few half-holes in the wing-slots which allowed me insert a syringe into the body and add epoxy for a sloppy, but effective internal fillet on each side of the wing. Once it was dry, I was able to look through the upper center ring hole I made to pour foam to ensure a the wing was touching, and had a a fillet, and taped it up to cure. I repeated the same process on the other side until both wings were secure w
ith internal fillets.
was a little more tricky than the fins because the wing is more than twice the length. Worse, there was not enough clearance between the wing 
and the fin for me to use the same diameter washer I had used on the fins. Eventually, I settled on using my finger to spread, and create the fillet, dipping it in alcohol between pulls, exactly like using the washer. The result was significantly more messy,
but just as effective in creating a very smooth fillet, with clean lines. This will reduce the amount of sanding I will have to do before glassing the fins.
sustainer which I was using as a lever to keep the lower sustainer in my rocket holder to mount the sustainer upright. It’s foam time! Once again I calculated the empty volume on each wing side, mixed the proper amount (266 ML, half part A, half part B), made a quick funnel out of paper and poured in the foam. Within about 5 minutes, the foam had expanded, almost perfectly to the bottom of the pour hole. I love it when a plan actually works so well! I repeated the same process on the other side, mixing exactly the same amount of foam, but when it was done expanding, I could barely see to top through the pour hole. 
Yikes! Luckily, my kids weren’t around to see the utter failure of math and science’s ability to predict an outcome. II now had no idea how much volume was left in the sustainer, so I had to do the one thing I hate to do…. guess. As you can imagine, I didn’t guess right, and you can see the results on the right – an oozing mess out of the top of the second pour
hole. Luckily, this is not as bad as it looks, and I have a fair amount of experience digging foam out of tight spots thanks to a lot of lawn darts during my magnetic ejection trials. five minutes with my trusty foam extractor (a special grapefruit knife), and a little sanding, and it almost looks like I got it right the first time. I’m now going to move everything out of my office and into my garage in preparation for the massive amount of sanding I’m going to need to do. I would like to thank an anonymous reader for the tip on where to find sanding discs for my 3d sander. A kit of 100 can be had at a retailer named Micro-Mark 
Spent much of the day cleaning up from the snowstorm. My four kids were school free yesterday, so I spent the day shoveling, and playing in the snow with them. I did find a little time for the rocket. The picture on the left is the original plastic nosecone. The one on the right is it’s 
this in my office. You would be surprised at the amount of fiberglass dust even a small sanding can create. For sanding curved surfaces, I use a Crasftman 3D sander. The sander has three floating heads each with their own circular sanding pad. This lets the sander conform to most curved surfaces, reducing the possibility of creating a slat spot using a traditional sander. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to make these anymore, so the pads are becoming a little hard to find. This is an indispensable tool for me, so if someone knows of a reasonable alternative, let me know!
ile I didn’t show the original fiberglassing of the magnaframe airframe, there wasn’t a lot of complexity involved. Just as I was leaving HPR rocketry the first time (thanks to the BATF), I had found a company called Fibersock that sold a knitted fiberglass “sock” that let you fiberglass a tube without any seams or complexity. Upon my return to HPR (thanks to Tripoli & NAR beating the ATF in court), Fibersock is gone, but the product is still around. Giant Leap sells a version they call “easyglas” which is exactly the same thing. Basically you pull the sock over the airframe, tie it up on either side, and slather on epoxy laminate. The only modification I’ve made to this process is to use a Teflon coated release film to ensure a very smooth surface, and no air bubbles. This is unlike any peel-ply, or release film I’ve ever used. Very easy to remove, very smooth, super easy to cut and position. Frankly, it’s so well made, when doing tip-to-tip lamination on a small rocket, I’ll often use the same piece of cut release film over and over. Only place I’ve found it i s 
fiberglass for finishing. I’ve found Kevlar almost impossible to sand to a smooth finish once it is cured. a thin layer of fiberglass over the top of the Kevlar provides a great base to sand and smooth. I first laid some scrap newspaper over the fins to create the base outline of the fin area. I then cut out the newspaper, and used it as a base to build a cutting template out of foam board. The newspaper gave me the base dimensions, but I needed to add about 2 inches of cloth in each direction to ensure complete coverage, and allow for the Kevlar and fiberglass to wrap around the thick fin edge.
A typical rocket fin made out of g10 fiberglass would be about .093, to .125 inches thick. My fins and wings were about five times thicker, requiring some creative solutions down the road. My main goal in creating the laminating fin can is to ensure the fin’s don’t rip off during flight, and increase their strength in case the rocket lands funny. I plan on putting a LOT of time into the finish (I have an airbrush, and like to play….), and would be crushed if a great flight ended with a broken fin.
elease film (reducing weight), and creating a good mechanical connection between the epoxy, fabric, and fins. In my case, I was less concerned about weight, but wanted to make sure I would have a good mechanical bond, including the thick edge of the fins. There are lots of great tutorials on the web on how to do tip-to-tip lamination without vacuum sealing, but all of the ones I have seen assume you have a fairly thin fin. The best I’ve seen is 
I only had two issues with the process, neither was too critical. First, on the edges of each Fin, I had doubled the lamination. The second layer of lamination didn’t have the pressure of the first, which you can see looks like an air bubble along the leading edge of the fin. This isn’t a big deal, As I will be sanding down the second layer, which is mostly fiberglass. The second issue you can also see in the picture on the left is a few epoxy runs. This is a run of epoxy over a side of lamination that has already dried. Again, not too big of a deal, just requires sanding. As you can see from the picture above, I had to laminate over the pre-cut slots for the wings to get a true tip-to-tip fin can. The pre-cuts were already too small, so the next phase will be to sand the fin can, re-cut the wing slots, and install the wings. Should start to look like a real rocket soon.
Three 2.5” x 8 phenolic tubes
othing is ever as it seems 
Step one was to install the ubolts on each ring, then glue in place the three phenolic tubes into the top, or bottom ring. I opted to use the Hysol glue, although I knew it would be overkill for the bay. I just wanted the two hour pot time. Getting all three tubes perfectly parallel turned out to be more difficult than I expected. After a lot of trial and error, I opted to build a small jig that would keep both rings in place, while one ring dried, laying flat on a piece of teflon coated release film which I normally use for fiberglass / carbon fiber lamination. I just inverted the tubes to glue in place the second ring, ensuring the markings on the side of the rings lined up for installation of the hardware later. This could have 
ade sure they were true, and moved to putting together the top of each pod. Oops! when putting the eyebolt through the cover, and top bulkhead with the dado slot, it became obvious the eyebolts were too small. Before going out and buying new ones, I measured EVERYTHING to ensure the bulkheads or cover’s were not cut wrong. I also email Giant Leap just to be sure. A quick stop at home depot, and I was back in business. I then threaded the eyebolts, glued t
he bulkheads to the cover, and bolted them together. Once cured, I dry-fit the 3 G10 2.5” x 7” sleds into the dado slots of the bulkheads making sure there was no overhang. I then glued everything up, and left it overnight. While the glue was drying, I installe
d the three all-thread rods through the two centering rings. This was actually a critical component, as the all thread would be secured through the center rings I had previously installed in the upper airframe. The main parachute kevlar shock cord would be connected to the U-bolt on the top of the av-bay, so the all thread, and center rings would be the only things connecting the main parachute to the rocket. Another great part of this hobby are the ‘cool’ tools you can buy, which could never normally be justified. In this case, my cool tool of choice was a digital toque wrench which enabled me to apply exactly the same amount of force on every bolt secured to the all-thread. In turn, th
e extreme recovery forces should be evenly distributed through the rods. At least, this is what I told my wife when she saw the bill for the tools….
