The Thrifty Rocketeer

 The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues... Now, it seems that a tempest in a teapot has erupted recently over the topic of spill holes in parachutes. Frankly, I'm not all that conversant with the topic, so I've been following the discussion casually, but a couple of the more recent bends in the more heated discussion have caught my attention. Now, it's my understanding that parachutes operate by catching the air and inflating, resisting the spill of air over the edges, to slow the descent of the payload....whether that's a man, an elephant, a package, or a model rocket. And if you want to accelerate the downward rate, a hole can be opened in the chute to increase the rate of air being spilled out of the canopy.  Usually, this is at a controlled rate, when this is a paratrooper or skilled parachutist coming down. But I understand that model rocketeers may set the rate (or approximate it) to avoid chutes being caught in an updraft thermal, or prevent extreme drifting due to...

 The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues... Well, it's finally happened. Several years ago, while doing internet searches for model rockets, I stumbled upon an entire channel of Random home brew projects, including a Model Rocket built from scratch.  The channel is/was called The King of Random (or TKOR for short). This young man had assembled everything from garbage bags chutes to an empty pill bottle or Champaign glass for nosecone, corrugated cardboard for fins, etc.  And it worked. At least, his assemblage of items all came together and in his videos, it all worked.   I wasn't quite as lucky, as there are variations between Champaign glasses, pill jars, etc.  I had too many gaps, and didn't need to make my own propellant.  I had Estes motors available to me.  Now, just recently, a Mother joined a FB page and asked for advice. Her 12 year old son had assembled all the elements to build this rocket during the five days she was absen...

 The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues... Recently, I discovered a "back road" route to get to our club launch field that is a bit shorter than the main highway, but takes just about as long, since the road twists and winds. Most of Ohio is flat as a board, with a gridwork pattern of roadways between the farms and fields, except for our side of the state, which never saw a glacier pass over to flatten the hills or compress the land. As a result, if you stray off the major highways, your roads become two-lane twisty-turny local highways that follow creek beds, rivers and natural land forms.  This can be annoying, and my wife refuses to ride along on those roads.  She says it feels like she's on an amusement park ride getting thrown around.  But it can be enjoyable in a small car or a motorcycle during certain times of the year. So it was that I turned off from the middle level two lane highway to cross about a 6 mile diagonal connector that followed a major creek and a...