Destination Moon (XFLR-6 Test Rocket)

Careful cutting, glueing and clamping. 

This will do nicely as part of my teacup collection 

All stacked up... I think it might need some putty. 

Glued together and epoxy putty coating applied. 

Epoxy putty sanded and then grey putty applied. 

Everything sanded smooth. Needs some grey putty touch ups. 

Is it just me... or does that look like a cow rocket? 

Endless white coats later... while I was waiting, I built the launch tower. 

Another coat of white, and I built the comm tower... 

Ok... masking is... in place...ish. 

Well, now it’s red. 

Tadahh! 

5... 4... 3... 

2... 1... Blast off! 

All done. 

Low angle. 

High angle. 

Including a rocket engine! 

Ta-dah! Final. Complete. Finished! 

Wait a minute... wouldn't it be cool if... 

Yeah... this is going to work. Thanks Daiso for some cheap wood trays from Vietnam! 

Drilled some holes, wired up some lights, carved out some space for the electronics. 

Yeah... this IS going to work... I hope. 

Hmmm... time for an engine upgrade. 

Engine test... 

Ok. Let's start wiring... this doesn't look too bad... 

Perhaps I spoke too soon. Somewhere in here a wire isn't connected properly... 

This will be closed up... so who cares, right? 

Yep. It's after midnight. 

Not bad. All the lights work... 

Just a few small adjustments left. 

Okay, let's revisit this project. The D-I-Y clock never really worked properly (always running a bit slow), and with my resin printer, I've got the ability to make a much more accurate rocket. A quick run to Value Village netted me a cheap clock radio to work with. 

Basically this is the guts of the clock radio. A seven-segment display, some buttons and a speaker. Rocket assembled. 

Starting to de construct the base. 

Here's some parts from the spares bin that should come in handy. 

Using the plastic casing from the clock radio for the launchpad, the airplane stand base as the housing for the clock. A very rough layout, but it should all fit. 

Cut some holes, and put things in place. I'm happy with where this is going. 

I needed something to cover up the wires from the clock radio, so why not make a blueprint display? 

Now to add some tricky wiring. I had to reconfigure my arduino board to accommodate the updated features. I lost one of the LEDs (the white spotlight) but gained an SD card. I also wired up a simple 2N222 transistor audio amplifier. 

Trying to wire up the clock radio proved to be a bigger challenge than I thought. I think I ended up frying something, so I decided to switch to just a clock. Luckily the dollar store was able to provide me with all I needed. Only three buttons, but I need to hide the wiring for them. 

Not that pretty, but very carefully laid out. We've got a 3x1.5V battery pack (to run the clock without relying on the thing being plugged in), the clock circuit board, the 4Ohm 3Watt speaker, the SD card reader (with a couple of .wav files loaded on it), the Arduino board to run all the functions, a micro USB power input and an on/off switch to cut the power when not in use. Oh, and a whole mess of wires holding it all together. 

And everything works! (Except the single LED for the clock's alarm... more circuit troubleshooting I guess. The two yellow barrels are the Mode/Select buttons and the small box is the on/off switch. 

Changed the alarm LED to green and we're good to go. Everything wired up now. 

Blueprint and some labels attached. 

 

They look much better with a coat of paint. 

Started painting the rocket... well, the easy part. That checkerboard bit is going to be tougher than it looks. 

Masking it in stages seems to be helping. Other than that, we're all done!