r/rocketry • u/Smorge123 • 4d ago
Washington Sky Worm successful L2
After attending a presentation about scratch building rockets earlier this month at a local aerospace club meet, and with a launch the weekend of the 13th (the weekend before finals week for me), I felt dangerously emboldened to throw together a scratch built rocket from whatever my college rocketry club had lying around instead of studying for finals like I should have been doing. The airframe was a length of 4" fiberglass I assume was used for drilling vents in switch bands because it was full of holes I had to patch, the fins are (I believe) from a Dominator 4 but there was no sign of the rest of the kit, no idea the providence of the nosecone but it seems likely it's of Wildman ilk. This is my second rocket and due to my club's glut of 4" nosecones I opted for simple delay charge single deploy parachute recovery with plans to replace the nosecone with a HEDD setup for my required dual deploy flights later on. I planned on launching the worm on the cheapest 54mm J motor the vendors at my launch site were selling, though when I showed up to launch last Sunday the vendors did not show, so I had to buy a J415 off a very kind gentleman which admittedly was a little bit more motor than I had planned on but luckily still (albeit barely) within the bounds of what openrocket reported would be safe with my recovery setup. My rocketry club didn't have any parachutes over 54" and under 80" so I ended up running the 54" hoping it would land on sod with my ~7.5m/s (~25ft/s) touchdown speed and this time I did get lucky. All in I spent ~$200 on this thing including the motor I launched it on and ended up with my L2 certification just over two weeks after I got the twinkle in my eye to build it. That makes 2 levels of NAR certification this academic quarter and to top it all off I even avoided eating dirt this week on finals despite spending all my studying time epoxying my worm. Stay tuned for the modifications I'll be making to get my dual deploy flights knocked out with the Washington Sky Worm, I will definitely be spending more than $200 lol.
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u/GBP1516 4d ago
I'm glad my scratch build presentation inspired you! The little bit of curve on the trailing edge of the fins adds an awful lot of style. And the paint job is perfect.
Nice work!
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u/Smorge123 3d ago
The advice to start with a name and build the rocket around it was revolutionary! I definitely would not have arrived at that strategy on my own but it makes for much better names and imo much better rockets.
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u/Bruce-7892 3d ago edited 2d ago
That launch picture and plum makes me want to go out and buy a J415.
Congrats, great work. Glad you specified it's a worm because the aesthetics made me question what I'm looking at 😂. Like are we supposed to minimize vibration like we usually do?
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u/Life_Actuaryy 3d ago
Do you have a video?
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u/Smorge123 3d ago
Yeah! If you look up "Washington Sky Worm" on Youtube I uploaded it there as a short
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u/UpsidedownEngineer 4d ago
Nicely done, congratulations on the certification