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Highlights of recent developments on the MiniSShot Project
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- Hans has made good progress on the chute controllers., including
incorporation of altitude logging, and has started work on a user manual
for the unit. Here is a video clip of the unit being tested with 4
igniter charges:
http://sugarshot.org/downloads/chutecontrollerfun.avi
(2.5 meg)
- Rick Maschek is looking into extending his launch tower (currently 8
ft long; we need about 15 ft), in case we are not able to use an
existing one at the TBD launch facility.
- Jimmy Yawn has generously committed to supplying an Aiptek
mini-digital camcorder for our flight.
- Matt has picked up a couple of "dual-drum rock tumblers" for
propellant pre-mixing:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Category.taf?CategoryID=105&pricetype
-Mark LaBarre has made good progress on investigating the problem of how
long to pre-mix propellant in order to get a sufficiently well-blended
product. He has so far discovered that sucrose fluoresces bright
white under shortwave UV, while KN fluoresces a dark crimson. This
approach allows for examination of the product under microscope to
"count" samples of particles and thereby determine the relationship
between pre-mixing time and "uniform dispersion" of the product (I was
tempted to use the word "entropy" )
- Amateur Icelandic Rocketry ( http://www.eldflaug.com/ ) has generously
pledged a sizeable donation to SStS in return for machining services
recently provided to them.
What we are(still) in immediate need of:
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1. We're in need of someone with CNC milling capability (or a 3-D
printer) to produce a positive mould for our fin design.
Two leads that came out of last week's report have not yet been fruitful...
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