One of the great things about the Internet is the wide diversity of information that is available.  Even within the borders of a small niche community such as hobby rocketry, there is a wealth of information to be had.  Finding it?  Well that's another story.

The goal of presenting regular website reviews is to help introduce you, the reader, to the wealth of information that is available to you and to help uncover the specific information that you find enjoyable, beneficial and a valuable addition to your participation in the hobby.

One of the subjects that seems to intrigue many modelers is the construction of composite components. 

The CompositeRocket Yahoo! Group can teach you the secrets of composite rocket construction.

Airframes, nose cones, fin canisters, they all make up a list of visible consumables that can make or break the repetitive return to flight of your rockets.  Composites add structural integrity to your rockets that allow them to withstand abuse time after time and return to fly again.

Composite construction also caught the eye of Mick Kelly, a 50 year old Senior Engineering Technologist at the Fike Corporation.  A company that deals with industrial safety, they provide pressure relief devices to provide active explosion protection, effectively stopping explosions from taking place inside industrial containers.

Mick's love affair of rocketry has to be a spin-off of his job.  He says he puts in ten hour days, and if he could get away with it, he "would never leave. I can't wait to get to work and I hate it when it's time to go home."  Not many people can say that.  What is it that makes it so special?

Kelly's job consists of designing scale mock-ups of his customer's site in an abandoned rock quarry, then introducing a carefully mixed combination of dry or gaseous hazardous materials, of which he tries to invoke an explosion inside the scale containment vessel.  Profiling the resultant explosion on various data acquisition equipment, Mick can then design an explosion protection system to avoid hazards detected in the current design.

Want to learn how to make this nose cone mold? The CompositeRocket Yahoo! Group can help.

Mick's introduction to rocketry started about 12 or 13 years ago when he went into a hobby store looking for something to buy his son for Christmas.  There, for the first time, he saw an Estes rocket.  Thinking that it looked cool, he bought his son the kit, and together they assembled it. 

When he and his son launched that very first rocket, Mick knew he was hooked the minute it left the ground. Kelly joined the Tripoli Rocketry Association and has been building and flying rockets ever since.  Most of his time has been spent flying high power rockets, and recently Mick has been working on an all-composite scratch-built Level 3 rocket. 

Mick's affinity for high power began after building a LOC/Precision Graduator.  Named as his favorite kit, Kelly said it was because "that was my first non-Estes kit."  Kelly added, "The Graduator was the turning point of rocketry for me."  I guess you could say he "graduated" to high power.

Today, Mick prefers to scratch-build, even feeling a little guilty about it.  "For the last 10 years or so I have been scratch building only," Kelly said.  "I feel bad that I haven't bought a kit from our vendors, but as you can tell from my job I like designing things."

Innovations abound in the CompositeRocket Yahoo! Group, like this excellently made fin jig.

Therein lays the fun part of the hobby: designing, thinking, building, overcoming challenges.  If Mick had to pass along one valuable tip to today's hobbyist, he would encourage others to "explore, take calculated chances, and don't be afraid to work outside your comfort zone. Continue to push rocket technology forward. Be a contributor not a follower."

As we reminisced about the past, I asked Kelly about his most memorable flight.  "With out a doubt it was the way my friend and I certified level 1," Kelly replied.  "We decided to do a level 1 drag race on H220 Silver Streaks."  Mind you, this was before rocket drag racing was popular, or even well known about.  This prompted an RSO/LCO conference to decide whether this controversial event could take place.

"They said that had never been done before and they debated if they would let us do it," Mick said.  "Well, they agreed to let us do it and both rockets left the rods at the same time as if held together with string. They both went up straight as an arrow never moving any distance away from each other all the way up and down." 

Kelly finished the story, stating, "As we were high-fiving, running to get our rockets, a guy stopped us and ask who won. I cried out 'I did, I did!' He said 'Congratulations,' reached in his pocket and gave me a coupon for $25 off a LOC/Precision kit. Little did I know at the time it was actually the owner (at the time, and founder) of LOC, Ron Schultz."  What great memories!

Speaking of innovations, how about this fin beveling jig? This kind of stuff is invaluable.

All of these experiences led Kelly to build larger and stronger rockets.  Eventually, the journey led Mick to consider the use of composite construction materials in order to strengthen his projects.  His most memorable project was his first attempt at building a composite rocket.  "I did almost everything wrong," Kelly said. "But that was okay, I was learning a new technology."

Persistence paid off, and Kelly turned failures into successes.  Those successes led to the creation of "CompositeRockets," the Yahoo! Groups website devoted to hobby rocketry composite construction techniques.  "When I made the move to composites, I was doing everything wrong, a lot of trial and error," Mick said.  "Five or six years ago there just wasn't any info on using composites for rockets."

"But as the years moved on my techniques and understanding of composites grew to the point where I was producing top notch composite components," Kelly added.  "When I started to bring composite rockets to club launches, all took notice and wanted to start using composites in their rockets."

"As time went on, I was getting the same questions I had from the guys in my club," Mick said.  "They were running into the same problems I was having."  Kelly turned composites mentor, teaching club members how to successfully create the composite goodies.  "So I started to share what I knew with them so they would not make the same mistakes that I made," Mick added.  "I would speed up the learning curve for them."

The CompositeRocket Yahoo! Group will help you learn the techniques of composite construction.

Speeding up the learning curve also called for leveraging some new technology in his favor.  "That's when I got the idea to start my own composites for rocketry website," Mick stated.  "I thought that if the guys in my club were having the same problems I had early on, then most other rocketeers are probably having that same learning curve struggle."

The purpose of starting the Yahoo! group was to help others and exchange composite ideas, to help push forward the overall technical side of building rockets.  "Today's average thrust per flight has gone way up," said Kelly. "So to help deal with the ever increasing thrust problems, we need to address the strength and weight of our project's materials to ensure a safer, more reliable rocket."

The result has been very successful and the cumulative information gathered together on the site an informative find for anyone interested in composite materials.  Kelly's message?  "Share what you know about composites with others and let's push rocketry forward with new composite materials and techniques."

I know some of this stuff just has to have your mouth watering. This work is just awesome.

No matter what you expertise level with regard to composites, you'll find the website informative and useful.  Ongoing message exchanges between participants allow you to inquire of the more experienced contributors and get back useful information before trying your next experiment.  Using either an email format or a web-based format, you can get responses in real-time or browse responses at your leisure.

Separate areas provide a wealth of data in the form of photo galleries, a document library containing how-to's, resource lists, and critical spreadsheets, as well as other useful tid-bits to help you learn to use composites in a manner beneficial to your projects.  Mick has recently started a "Tip of the Week" series to encourage technique sharing as well.

Mick's recommendation?  "Being a technical site I think the best part of the site is our photos section," he said.  "Many have contributed pictorial how-to's. Composites are hard to explain sometimes, but if you see a pictorial on how it's done then things become more clear."

The success of the group is anchored in the exchange.  If you have an interest in fiberglass, carbon fiber and the like, check out the CompositeRockets Yahoo! Group.  Although registration is required, the end result will be worth the effort.  Just like composites!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CompositeRockets/

12-18-2006 12:31 AM  #1
crontab Certified Level Three   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 204	If nothing else, that fin beveling jig was worth the whole article. I am constantly amazed at the innovations rocketeers come up with. And all this time, I have been struggling with a belt sander, all I had to do was use my drill press. Who'da thunk it?

12-18-2006 08:38 AM  #2
Mick Kelly Certified Level One   Joined: Oct 2006 Posts: 26	Darrell thanks for taking the time to review the CompositesRockets Yahoo groups site. I would like to invite all that are interested in composite construction to please join our group. You will find a wealth of information on composites and there uses along with photo documentation of composite construction techniques. This group caters to those just getting started with composites as well as the skilled craftsperson with years of experience. Mick Kelly (owner/moderator of Composite Rockets)

12-18-2006 08:41 AM  #3
roadkill Definitely Certifiable...   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 23	Thanks DD, This looks like a real goldmine of how-to information. Super find !! And thanks for the invite Mick, I hopped on the bandwagon right away...

12-18-2006 08:57 PM  #4
brianc Rivet Counter   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 29	Quote: If nothing else, that fin beveling jig was worth the whole article. AGREED! I will be trying that in the next week or so on my 4" THOR.