View Single Post
  #84  
Old 05-22-2018, 08:57 PM
neil_w's Avatar
neil_w neil_w is offline
Mr. Cut-by-hand
 
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: Northern New Jersey
Posts: 439
Default

After a four month epic search of every dollar store, supermarket, Michaels, Target, Staples, Amazon, you name it - I finally scored at a dollar store and found a good item from which to fashion the IR dome. See picture 1. And I get ten of them to play with for a buck. Picture 2 shows what one of them looks like.

They're ever so slightly larger than I wanted (1 1/8" vs. 1") but they'll do. After cutting the dome off just above the green with an Atlas hobby saw, I sanded the heck out of the thing until it was almost exactly 1" in diameter. Then 2 coats of Future were applied inside and out, to protect it from handling. See pictures 3 and 4.

Due to starting off a bit oversized, the curvature is not *exactly* what I wanted, but it's close enough and should look good, at least until the first flight when it'll probably get scratched all to heck. Oh well!

The rest of the nose still needs to be fabricated. Soon.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:  dome1.jpg
Views: 21
Size:  124.9 KB  Click image for larger version

Name:  dome2.jpg
Views: 9
Size:  78.4 KB  Click image for larger version

Name:  dome3.jpg
Views: 10
Size:  366.9 KB  Click image for larger version

Name:  dome4.jpg
Views: 10
Size:  177.8 KB  
Reply With Quote