Building the Journeyman II
And some history of the "ARO"
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Balsawood block prepared for the nosecone. |
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Spinning the block in an electric drill. |
The drill is clamped to a picnic table. |
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It should only take about ten minutes to make a
nose cone, but the wooden peg came out of the balsa block. I tried
to glue it back in with "hot glue" but that was a waste of time and
it came apart. I then tried 5 minute epoxy but it didn't hold.
Finally I used a 2.5" deck screw, which worked way better than the
wooden peg and seemed a lot stronger.
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It's not an exact duplicate and the shank looks bad. |
Balsa wood Journeyman parts! |
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Putting it all together |
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The paper towel tube, viewed from the bottom. |
Put all the parts together and it looks like a
rocket! |
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The rocket is painted silver. The fins and upper body
tube are masked in preparation
for the green paint. I like the silver and blue but I want to keep
it looking like the original. |
Hung out to dry. |
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Here, I've ruined the finish with my
impatience!! It FELT dry, but as I started removing the
masking tape I put a hand print
on the body tube that wrapped all the way around. Now the
rocket will have to dry for another day or two, the hand
print will have to be sanded out and then it needs to be
repainted. |
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| These fins had a mirror finish till the masking
tape pulled it off. I should have painted it in reverse. In other
words, I should have painted the rocket green, then masked the green
while the silver paint went on. |
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After some touch-up, the Journeyman II lives!
It weighs 8 oz. with engines, half the weight of the original. |
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The String Test
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| Time for "The string test!" The
string test is the poor man's wind tunnel. The object is to get some
air flowing past the fins fast enough to determine if the rocket is
stable. The rocket is balanced to find its center of gravity, then a
string is tied at that point. You then swing the rocket around your
head while letting the string out. If the rocket is stable it will
fly nosecone forward. If it isn't stable it will do everything but.
The fix for that is to add weight to the nosecone. |
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Perhaps the only picture in existence of someone
performing a string test.
Initially the rocket flew sideways. My girlfriend Andrea
found two metal washers to add to the nosecone, then it flew straight. |
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