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Armadillo Aerospace News: Ready to fly
As far as we know, everything is completely ready for flight testing on the big vehicle, but we weren’t able to get our usual lift truck for testing on Saturday. We did a lot of other miscellaneous stuff, but we are definitely looking forward to our tests on Tuesday.
The shock absorbers for the big vehicle are in ( mc64100-1 from http://www.parker.com/cylinder/cat/english/102202.pdf ). I need to buy a 2mm thread mill so I can cut nice thick mounting blocks for these in the future, but for this vehicle I made some plates that capture the jam nut and let us screw the shocks through a form fitting tube and hard up against the base mount. We need to land pretty straight with these, but they are only a third the weight of the big wire rope isolators, and they don’t have any spring back on landing.

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2004_07_04/shocksBefore.jpg
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2004_07_04/shocksAfter.jpg

We anchored a piece of road plate on the concrete so we won’t chew it up any more during hover tests.

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2004_07_04/roadPlate.jpg

We have modified the metal vehicle stands with some side legs, which we plan on using instead of the messy foam blocks for the first elevated hanging test, but after that proves out, we will do a ground liftoff while tethered under the crane. After that, we will head to the 100 acres for a boosted hop. Read More

posted by Sigurd @ 7/05/2004 08:42:00 PM