What’s in a name?
Quite a lot if it’s long enough!
I figured there would eventually be a Radio Rocket Version 4, once we we learned something interesting enough, or had an idea for a new design for the electronics or the rocket that warranted building the next version. As it turns out, a number of those things came together at once:
- I stumbled across a product that gave me an idea for a redesign on the main CPU board
- The redesign above would warrant redesign of the various modules
- I wanted to try to design some of my own modules, instead of relying on breakout boards
- The 12 year old had an idea for a new design for the actual rocket
So while we are going to continue doing stuff with version 3 and plan to do more launches to test out more ideas with the current hardware, and will keep version 3 in our flight rotation for the forseeable future, we decided it was time to start planning and building version 4!
but as always, before I get into the details, Let’s get the plugs out of the way!
support some repeaters financially, or with donations of equipment, or by connecting an existing repeater to the Pride Network. Donations of cash, or commitments to connect existing repeaters to the Pride Network have the biggest and fastest impact!
if donations aren’t your bag, Buy some cool stuff to support the projects - the margins are smaller, but walking around town, going to club meetings, or heading out to a hamfest, while wearing the swag helps bring more attention to the effort, so can be very impactful in the long run!
Getting to the Name
Those who have been following along are likely aware, but we have been using Sushi and Fish related terms for the various versions of our rockets, and we’ve been going in alphabetical order, to try and keep it clear which one comes after which. That means that for version 4, we needed a Sushi/Fish related word that starts with a Q.
We struggled for a while coming up with something, until we stumbled across a species of Hagfish called “Quadratus.” I liked the ring of it, and the 12yo pointed out that the “Quad” prefix was also a perfect match for our fourth rocket.
While siting with that idea, we were chatting about rockets in general, and I mentioned that I thought it would be fun to do a rocket that had side pods. Again, the 12 year old was quick to point out that it should probably have 4 pods, in keeping with the “Quad” theme. I was down with that, so we moved on to talking about what the main part of the rocket should be like. Being a fan of the Big Bertha series of rockets, 12 said “Bertha of course!” to which my spouse chuckled and said, “Bertha the Hagfish.” which honestly felt like just as good of a name as Quadratus.
Being fans of unnecessarily long names, we kicked some additional ideas around, the 12 year old drew up a logo, and we landed on a final name for our rocket, so without further ado..
Introducing…
Whats next?
There will be lots of information coming and getting shared as we build version 4. We’re still pretty early in the process, but we already have a pile of rocket parts to start assembling the body, and the first boards for the new electronics package are making their way from the fab house to us, so things should move along very nicely. Redesigning and fabbing the new modules will take some time, but I’m hoping that throughout the rest of the summer we’ll do a couple more launches version 3, and with a bit of luck we may be able to start making launch plans for version 4 sometime this fall or winter.
Till then!