A New Toy For The Shop

A package from Amazon arrived at my doorstep today containing my latest shop tool - an airbrush:

With the Artemis plastic conversion project getting nearer to the painting stage, this should be perfect for rendering the complicated surface patterns on the SLS core.

The best part of having the airbrush is that I can use the non-stinky acrylics to my heart's content - indoors!

Gone will be the days of having paint-ready models sitting around in the shop waiting for a warm, windless day to take them outside for spraying. Sometimes the wait can last for weeks on end.

No more bugs landing in the fresh paint,  either!

Let the fun begin....

A Mystery Solved

 Back in 2021, I posted a report here on the blog for a launch outing on May 13th.

One of my models launched was the maiden flight of an Estes Super Shot.

After I pulled a still frame from the flight video of the liftoff, I made note of a mysterious object appearing in the sky just to the left of the smoke plume.

At the time I shrugged it off as an anomaly in the digitally produced image and didn't bother to investigate further.

Last night, I revisited the flight video, focusing on the liftoff portion starting at the moment of ignition.

What I found was not an image glitch, a UFO, or anything else,  but the motor igniter plug striking the launcher and bouncing into the air.

The reason it looked so large and prominent is that it bounced in my direction while staying in the series of video frames.

Here are more pics from the video sequence:

Cheers!