THREE AND A HALF FOOT DEVIL

      



     So I have embarked on a most ambitious project that I have dubbed Pequeño Diablo due to my planned red and black color scheme and the fact that when complete, the rocket will stand about 42" tall.  This is shorter than any devil that I have encountered, hence the "Pequeño" part.  The body tube was used to ship a poster and is 3 inches in diameter.

 I had some leftover Lexan from a car window replacement project (long story), and decided that it might make some nice fins.  Unfortunately these will not be remaining clear for this project, but I still have some more to use in the future where it may retain its crystal clear splendor. 

This rocket will sport a clustered engine design, able to accept 3 standard "C" engines surrounding a fat "C", standard "D" or "E" engine that will ignite simultaneously.

 The three outer engines are all angled toward a point roughly midway between the center of gravity (CG) and center of pressure (CP) as determined by plugging this rocket's information into a program called OpenRocket (like RocketSim).  This should prevent the rocket from running out of control if one or more engines fail to ignite.  

Since I believe in building rockets completely from scratch and almost exclusively with recycled materials, my nosecones are no exception.  I have developed a method that has proven successful over a dozen times now.  I carve the shape of the cone out of styrofoam (in this case two pieces had to be glued together to achieve the proper thickness), fill in any gaps with spackle, and then dip the whole thing in latex paint.  I let it dry, sand it a bit, and then dip it again.  After the desired smoothness is achieved, I then spray paint it with two coats of the final color.  The photo to the left is the nosecone after the 1st dip into paint.

More to come...