After taking a few months off from rocketry due to lack of inspiration and risk of burnout, I returned and have done quite a few things
The main 3 are the Rebuilt ICBM-M system, the first test of the PEST assembly, and a non breadboard RFC
There are however a few small acquisitions and projects not worthy of their own separate articles, so they will be put here, much like the January 2021 Report
I will start of with a large improvement that I made to the STTS with the help of a friend of mine
For a while now, I wanted to put a metal plate on the top of the STTS to protect the wood, since every test the igniter or stray fuel would char parts of it
After gathering the required tools and materials it has now been upgraded with a metal plate!
The metal plate was cut out of scrap metal plating salvaged from a broken fridge
The special screws and metal drill bits were generously provided by my lovely grandpa, who also provided invaluable help and advice on how to work with metal
And Friend of mine helped with the assembly
Sidenote, I am also working on a program to calculate impulse from raw STTS data, most of it works, but the impulse calculations I’m trying to calculate I don’t yet fully understand, which is complicating development
I will release it on Github once its finished, and post a link here
It was also my birthday this month (March 16th), and I got some awesome presents!
First off, a Leatherman Wave + with accessories!
Its got it all, and is the best tool in my possession
It has a permanent place on the right of my belt, and has done nothing but come in useful since I got it
I also have the 2 part bitset and bit extender, replacing every other screwdriver I own
I also got a electric drill from a friend who didn’t use it much
It has some swanky features such as drilling power limiting and display, and it works wonders
very thankful for both presents
I also have a friend who is a Radio Amateur, and I made some projects with him over the past year
The most recent is a HF Upconverter to receive shortwave over an SDR
Now, don’t worry if you don’t understand what I am talking about, the truth is I don’t quite understand half of it, but I will tell what I know
The idea behind it is that say I want to receive a signal that is 1Mhz, while my SDR (Software Defined Radio) only begins receiving at 20Mhz
The easiest way to do this is to just add 40 something Mhz to the signal and compensate in software, which is exactly what this does
It takes whatever signal comes in, and adds 48Mhz onto it
The SDR program then compensates for this and now I can receive the entirety of Europe using 10 meters of wire in my garden
The device works as follows
On the left there is a Cristal at I think 100Mhz or something around there, it is powered from the 3 AA’s mounted on top
Due to the Cristal not being literally perfect, harmonic resonance is created which is captured with the red wire coils in the center, this allows a 48Mhz signal to be generated with the wrong oscillator
This then goes to a mixer (IC on the right) which adds it to whatever is inputted on the left, after which it goes trough a series of filters (the yellow coils on the right) to get rid of FM stations and other interference
It works very well, so far Ive received amateur stations in Lithuania, AM radio from America, The voice of turkey and UVB-76, better known as the buzzer
I would like to thank my friend for doing most of the work, knowing what that work entails, providing basically all the components and getting me exited for the hobby
This is all not strictly related to rocketry but its my site and I can do with it as I please
Stay Tuned for more