Rocketry Planet

Go to a hydroponics supply site and buy a roll of aluminized mylar. Get the thicker kind. Here is one source:
http://www.mylarstoreonlin...lBlack-OutMylar25ft.html

A search should yield other sources. I have some silver stuff but I will admit it is not that resilent. I apply
clear tape at the edges to keep from splitting. One can also fanfold the thing and it will rattle on the way down
and allow one's ears to direct their eyes where to look and catch the flash. The 2mil stuff is serviceable with taped edges
plus you can replace it when if it gets too ratty.

Look, Dave does great work, and his products are nothing but first rate. He does not work cheap. His products are not cheap. You get what you pay for. Simple as that.

Why would Top Flight undercut their customer? I would hope that they would say no. On the other hand if you asked nicely they might point you to their source for the material - which may have a large minimum order.

I'm not slamming anyone's work. The streamer looks first rate with the sewn edges. With the straight
mylar, I've had it rip in two from a nick on the edge. The edge sewing will help prevent that.
One can achieve a similar effect by running a strip of clear packing tape along the edge of a piece of mylar
streamer material

If I toast one of my streamers I just make another one. If I were to toast one of SA's due to insufficient dog barfing, I'd cry.


I think the SA's big streamer would look good on a larger high powered project at apogee deployment.
I don't know if it will "rattle" on the way down like a standard mylar streamer but I find that noise allows
one's ears to direct their eyes to where the rocket is. The flash of the mylar can allow one to see the
rocket sooner at altitude. No doubt about it. I've witnessed that myself where the only thing one can see is the flashing mylar and the rocket is too far up there to be able to see the components yet.

Another example I scraped the plug out of an E9-P to make it an E9-0. Went to my private site by
myself and launched it in a Zenith II with a C6-7 in the upper stage. There was a wind from the south.
I found myself scanning too far to the south and saw nothing. When my ears picked up the rattle, I was
able to turn my head to the north and my eyes found the rocket coming in. Landed in high corn but I was
able to visually get into the vicinity as I had a loud home made beeper on it to home in on it for recovery.
I now have a GPS with a sight and go feature and this also helps with sighting rockets.


Kurt

Some people are too cheap for their own good.....

That said, the beauty of this streamer is the black backside - it will "flash" as it spins - which will make it easier to see.

And some people cant afford $500 rockets, so they stick to toys and web pages that they can read!

This looks great, and just this morning I found some great heavy duty mylar in the trash. I have been using a 2 inch wide fiber reinforced caution tape (the really beefy stuff). Maybe I should try to stitch the mylar onto it. How about adding it in blocks rather than one strip? That would help folding later?

I got to see one of these at our launch yesterday. The quality is very nice. This isn't some space blanket sewn to one side of a streamer. It is nylon with some metallic like coating on one side.

Pretty good looking streamer. It didn't fly, but it did make quite a bit of noise in the breeze on the ground!

My 2 cents.

dang it Carey--- I wish you had told me that one of them was at the field. I want to see one. I think that it would be a good thing on the little dogs. I guess if I would stop shooting and recovering I would have time to look around -RIGHT?

Oh, that was last month when you guys weren't there. I was at Manchester on Saturday and PMW sunday. The crew from UAH had it.

If you want to make your own high-visibility streamer, you can buy bright gold cloth here @ 9.50/yd (51" wide) at Hang-em-High fabrics: look for Shiny Gold Norlon 1.7

You can buy silver rip-stop at ParaGear: look up item XW9110SL