Well, most of the problems with this project have already been addressed, but I’d like to cover just a few things…
- The nose cone is very annoying. You can buy pre-built, paper nose cones if you’re really desperate. I used hot glue, and it make my rocket very heavy — but the good thing is that a heavy nose cone makes it so you don’t have to worry about center of gravity/center of pressure stuff. Next time, if I want to reduce weight, I might consider hollowing out my nose cone.
- My rocket might be too heavy for just a C engine — but the engine block is only made for a C engine…so we’ll just have to see.
- The paint I used for stripes didn’t work out very well — it was some type of paint meant for outside use. I would recommend that you look into paints that aren’t very heavy.
- I messed up the grain on my fins — I physically couldn’t have the grain in the right direction because of the space limitations of the wood I bought. I don’t really see this as a problem though. I didn’t airfoil my fins, but I doubt I would’ve done it right anyway.
- My engine block isn’t very sturdy — if I had to pick one thing that will probably go wrong it’d be my engine block slipping and not working. My engine hook isn’t doing too hot either, but I don’t really care about that.
- My recovery system is a joke, but I don’t really think I could make a system that worked well enough — I guess it’s mostly that I don’t have confidence in my rocket coming down in one piece anyway.
- My nose cone isn’t centered on the body tube — kind of makes me mad but I don’t want to go through all the steps to fix it.
Well, that’s about it — If you’re doing your own project I hope you learned from my mistakes.
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