I went "old school" and placed the lugs by sighting down the tube.
The glider requires a balsa standoff to hook onto the booster.
Cut the balsa standoff a hair long. Center and glue it on the lug. Sand the overhanging balsa to the length of the lug.
Here's the lug and standoff after CWF and filler/primer.
It's glued on the top side of the tube 4 3/4" from the rear.
To align launch lugs that are divided as fore and aft section, I use a section of launch rod, an appropriate size dowel or a piece of metal tubing (with a bit of a tape wrap at the lug positions for a closer fit). If I remember correctly this was suggested on the instructions for the Astron Sprint. This worked especially well when you have a split lug on standoffs (such as on the Orbital Transport). Have also used a rod to align the launch lugs on the Mars Snooper II (which had external launch lug affixed to the fins rather than having an internal one as used in the Mars Snooper) and the Andromeda - even though there was a template provided.
ReplyDeleteHi Naoto,
DeleteThe separate lugs were pretty close together so I could align them by eye. If they were farther apart, I might tape a rod or straight dowel to the tube and glue the lugs using the dowel as a guide. Launch rods can sometimes be too heavy.
Indeed, a launch rod could be a bit too heavy to be used as an assembly guide -- which is why I lean more toward using dowel, or metal tubing. Metal tubing would be much lighter than a launch rod, but heavier than dowel -- though being less apt to be bowed than a long piece of dowel.
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