Bob Space

[TRANSFERRED FROM LJ]

For Christmas week, I rented a dumpster and we’re giving ourselves the present of extra space, tossing out much broken furniture and other debris. Among the debris was a Fisher Price “Barbie” Power Wheels jeep. These things run on small rechargeable lead-acid batteries — this one has two, each rated for 6 volts and 9.5 ampere-hours. And as I removed them from the jeep (’cause batteries have to be disposed of separately), I thought “Well these will be a pain to sort out. Unless … I use them to launch rockets.” So today’s project has been figuring out how to convert these into a flexible mobile power supply.

Given the dimensions of the batteries, the simplest container will be a standard lunch box. The batteries can stand side-by-side, with room to spare. I can drill holes in the top at either side of the handle to mount the terminals, and probably glue in a few strips of material to hold the batteries stable.

From there, I have to get the battery connector out of the vehicle. I can hook that up to the terminals (hoping I’ve got the polarity right), and voila! the power pack, she is done.

I do have a minor concern. These batteries are pre-1998, and the vehicle’s connector was not robust. These systems were recalled because the vehicle’s connector could short, causing the batteries to dump charge, overheat, and possibly ignite the vehicle. I’m not really worried about this, since the connector is no longer in a jostly bumpy vehicle. But plan B would involve replacing all the Fisher Price custom connectors with more standard fittings.

At this point, I’m fending off the logical next impulse: Plenty of room in that lunchbox. Put a safety key, firing switch, and launch leads out of it and make it a self-contained controller. Eek.

[TRANSFERRED FROM LJ]

I have spent a ridiculous amount of energy this week on planning for a club: laying out a launch site plan for the middle school site, sketching designs for membership cards, flight cards, site day passes for non-members, researching what other NAR sections charge for dues, researching what sorts of expenses those dues have to cover…

… of course, to have a club I have to have members, and to have members it looks like I’ll have to train them. So I wrote up three different lesson plans for weekend rocketry classes to be foisted on little-suspecting youth via the school district community education office …

… and at this point, I’m wondering “when do I fly rockets?” I left room in the lesson plans for a demonstration flight with me showing off something not-basic, like staging or gliders. But that’s about all.

All of that planning and teaching … well, it’s stuff I’m good at, but it’s not why I wanted to throw myself back into the hobby. I want to build rockets and fly them and get them back and fly them again. (As recounted here previously, I’ve never recovered a rocket.)

So what I need is me, my daughter, and another helper or two. I don’t need a club, or a class. Even though I’m now well-prepared for either. Yet again I have to rein myself in and focus on the pavement in front of me rather than the far horizon. Maybe it’s a good thing that there is no existing club here. Maybe there isn’t supposed to be one. Forget it about and go fly.

[TRANSFERRED FROM LJ]

My logo for the Western Nevada Rocketry Society:

There’s just enough room at the bottom to drop the stylized rocket from the NAR logo and an official NAR section number, should that come to pass. I’m putting some pressure on some old friends to join up.

And the dimensions are such that it sits nicely against the bottom of the NAR logo, too, to give a really integrated feel. Also, that stylized Nevada is correctly proportioned.

I’m kinda proud of it. And since I’m the only member, I get to say what’s what. For now.

[TRANSFERRED FROM LJ]

It’s very refreshing to me to have trimmed back my surplus hobbies and interests to focus on model rocketry. And it’s cool that I can link my other pastimes, like home video, photography, writing, or computing, to rocketry. I feel very good about it.

But at the moment I wish I lived someplace with more temperate and less fickle weather so scheduling flying times wouldn’t be so challenging. This past weekend had scattered clouds (fine), a high of 40 (tolerable), and winds around 15 mph gusting up towards 30 mph (very, very bad for model rockets).

In other news, my old school chum Darrell, who built our electronic launcher, has also been revisiting the rockets, and he’s been having fun with Quest’s MicroMAXX ready-to-fly mini-rockets … a bunch of which Santa and I are giving to Casey for Christmas. (Don’t tell her!)

I’d throw myself into a “building season,” but with the birthdays and holidays swooping and crashing around me, there’s just no way I can concentrate on it the way I want to. But that will probably lift in February. Here’s hoping!