April Meeting Minutes (4/23/2009)
The April 2009 MASA meeting was held on the 20th at
Aero Systems Engineering in Plymouth.
A total of 9 people attended the meeting.
Next Launch: The next regular launch will be
on Saturday, April 25. [Late breaking
announcement, the April launch will be postponed one week due to
poor weather. The April launch will now be held on Saturday,
May 2.]
Next Meeting: The date and location of
the May meeting will be announced soon. The topic will be
contest rockets and how to prepare for June's big contest meet.
TARC: Some of the recent TARC
activities and qualification flight attempts were discussed.
Outreach Season: The busy time of year
for school and group rocket outreach activities is upon us.
Watch the mailing list for announcements and opportunities to Pay
Forward!
Planet: Jeff is looking for submissions
for the MASA Planet newsletter. Please send him those
articles, photos, kit reviews, etc...
Regional Contest: MASA will be holding its
first ever official NAR regional contest on June 27 & 28.
Details are available on the web site.
NARAM Fly-It / Take-It: Remember to
work on those rockets to donate for kids to fly and
take home with them at NARAM 51. All donations must be turned
in to Carol by no later than the June launch.
NSL: Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin
- roughly a 6 hour drive from the Cities. At least some MASA
members are planning to be there.
2009 Badges: Rick is starting to mail
out the 2009 MASA name badges to those people who have paid their
2009 dues.
Show & Tell
-
Lyle Merdan brought his custom fin jig -
"standard rocket assembly tool version 1". He talked about
his sales at NARCON and plans for the product.
-
Jason Colt brought along a heavily modified
Stormcaster. It's intended to release trails of tracking
powder throughout the entire boost phase of the flight.
-
Ted Cochran brought along a newly-built Semroc
Hawk boost glider and Semroc Drifter
Meeting Topic - Making Your Own Decals
A discussion was held about techniques, materials and methods for
making your own waterslide decals.
Alan Estenson talked about printing decals on laser printers
and/or copy machines. Every machine can be somewhat different.
You typically need to experiment (and waste a few sheets of decal
paper) to find the right printer settings. Paper is available
from many different sources. Alan showed some decals that he
had created and various rockets with homemade decals. He also
talked a little about redrawing decal scans from old kits using a
vector graphics program to clean up and improve the artwork.
Alan uses Xara Xtreme for that purpose.
Alan also shows what happens when you put colored homemade decals
on top of colored paint. The decals aren't opaque, so the
paint shows through them and makes the colors look different.
Dwayne Shmel talked about his use of the Alps printers to create
custom decals. He brought along a bunch of examples, and his
upscale 2.6" Der Red Max with homemade decals. The Alps
printers aren't sold new in the U.S. anymore, but you can still find
used ones on Ebay. The custom color ribbon tapes for them can
still be found, but can be expensive. The Alps is the only
practical method for making your own decals that have white areas.
Getting the best results from the Alps is both art & science, but
there are several great resources on the Internet where you can find
information.
Dwayne recommended
http://www.labelsbythesheet.com/ as a source for some neat label
and decal stock.
Jeff Taylor talked about using Adobe Illustrator to create
artwork. Jeff makes waterslide decals using laser printers and
copiers. He brought along four rockets for which he had
created very cool custom decals - his "Mars Lander styled"
Outlander, NARCON 2007 Deuces Wild, NARCON 2008 Space Shuttle, and
October Sky Festival VF-261. He also said that it may require
experimentation to get the best results in a particular printer, and
you may need different settings for clear paper versus white paper.
[Here are links to some useful resources.]
Two types of blank paper stock for waterslide decals: laser (can be
used in laser printers, copiers, and Alps printers), and inkjet.
Paper can be purchased either clear or white. Inkjet decals require
a spray fixative to seal the ink.
Sources for decal paper:
Tips on making and applying decals:
Programs for creating your own decals: Adobe Illustrator,
CorelDraw, Xara Xtreme, Inkscape, Word, Powerpoint, many more.
Font resources:
http://www.dafont.com/,
http://www.webpagepublicity.com/free-fonts.html,
http://www.fontfreak.com/main.htm,
http://www.pcfonts.com,
http://www.themeworld.com/,
http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/,
http://www.identifont.com/,
http://ufonts.com/,
http://famousfonts.smackbomb.com/
Resources for rocket decal scans and
decal files:
Sources for purchasing pre-printed or
custom decals:
(Alan Estenson)
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