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LOC IV
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I built my first LOC IV in
a Las Vegas hotel room. After 2 flights, it was stolen at LDRS XX
when someone broke into our car. However, I bought another one and
proceeded to make it even better than the first. I also made a short
payload section for it, and plan to fly it on hybrid motors. Click
through to see what else I did to make this a great flier. |
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| Flight
Log |
Flight
Details |
Construction
and Modifications |
RockSim
File |
Flight Log
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Flight #
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Motor
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Electronics
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Performance
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Comments
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1
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H210R
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RRC2, Tether,
Rubber Chicken
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1927 feet
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Fast boost- straight. Apogee deployment on time,
Fred the Rubber Chicken got tangled and didn't release at 300 feet.
No damage.
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2
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H180W
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None
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N/A
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Good flight. No damage.
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3
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H165R
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None
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N/A
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Perfectly straight flight. No damage.
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Flight #1, H210R with Fred the Rubber Chicken
| I had promised my English teacher that I would fly his rubber chicken
in a rocket over the weekend. I selected the inaugural flight of
my LOC IV to put Fred into the air. Of course, me being me, I
couldn't just let him come out at apogee with all the rest of the
laundry- he had to come out at 300 feet, released by Tether. That
meant a flight with an RRC in the payload too. This was gonna be a
full up test flight. I picked an H210R to get the whole package
moving, rather than the H180 I first planned, because I wanted to get it
in the air fast. The boost was fast and straight in a slight
breeze. At apogee, the laundry came out, and Fred's chute stayed
put in the deployment bag, as designed. As the rocket was
descending, Fred could clearly be seen swinging around the outside of
the rocket. At 300 feet, we saw Tether go bang, but Fred didn't
come off. Oh well, no big loss. When I recovered the rocket,
Fred's chute was severely tangled in the shroud lines. I guess
I'll store those in the D-bag too next time. |
The LOC IV lifts off with Fred.
Fred recovers with the LOC IV. He can clearly be seen
to the left of the rocket.
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Flight #2| This
second flight of the LOC IV was just for fun. No rubber chickens,
no electronics, no payload sections, nothing complicated. Just a
3FNC rocket. I put in the H180 I had first planned to fly in
it. As expected, it tore off the pad making a lot of noise, and
recovered successfully. Another great flight. |
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Flight #3, 12/13/03
I flew this flight because I wanted to put something up that
would go nice and low due to the high cloud cover at the launch site. An
H165R seemed like the perfect choice, and it turned out to be. The rocket
was propelled straight up and fast off the rail with a beautiful red flame, and
the chute ejected right at apogee after a long coast. Yet another perfect
flight. That's what I built this rocket for!
Design and Construction
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Construction
The original LOC IV was
built in a room of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. It was quite a
challenge, since I had no tools. It flew great though, until it was
stolen at LDRS XX in the hotel room parking lot (along with some other
stuff). So I decided to get a new one. For this incarnation, I
was determined to fix a problem that I'd been having: because the fin tabs
only go through the body tube and not to the motor mount, a fin would
break on every landing. No big deal, but a pain in the neck
anyways. I pondered for days on how to remedy this problem, and came
up with many solutions. Put a bigger motor mount in and extend the
fins all the way to the tube, extend the fins all the way anyways, glass
the fin can, put fiberglass on the inside, the possibilities seemed
endless. Finally, though, I realized that I just wanted to build
this kit to fly for fun like the old one had been designed. So I
took 1/16" dowels and epoxied them along the inside of the body tube
next to the fin root. I then covered the entire thing in more West
System epoxy and left it to set. I also did the fin fillets with
West System and 406 filler. They seem to be in pretty sturdy.
Another design hurdle that
I had to overcome was the fact that I wanted to fly RATT Works motors in
this rocket, but there was no place to put an altimeter for
deployment. My solution was to add a short (7" long) payload
section to the rocket. I had couplers left over from my Arcas
project, but no tubing. Then it hit me: we had all been given a
20" long piece of ACE tubing at the January ROC Launch. What
better use for it? But it was way too thin- barely 1/2 the wall
thickness of the LOC tubing in the rest of the rocket. My solution
was to cut another piece of tubing, slit it down the side, and then epoxy
it over the first piece to make it stronger. This worked well.
I then filled the gap left behind with SuperFil (great stuff- Bondo for
aircraft), and sanded. It came out great, and I had a payload
section. I cut a bulkhead with the fly cutter, and found an old eye
bolt from an abandoned project, and I didn't even have to go to the store
again. What a deal.
Conclusion
Another fun rocket by
LOC. My only complaints about it have been answered by Barry Lynch
in the form of another LOC IV with a 38mm motor mount and fin tabs that go
to the motor mount. I like his thinking!
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Aft view showing internal dowels
Fin fillets done with
West System and 406 filler
Payload section with filler applied
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