Techniques / scale for weighing rockets

$12 digital kitchen scale from Target. Had it 7 years and it's still going strong. Even fits in my range box.

Ted Novak TRA#5512 IEAS#75

Before the world got weird, I used to just take my stuff to the post office and use their scale. Folks would look and laugh.

Can you imagine what would happen today if you walked into a federal facility with a rocket?

For stuff of that size, I use a baby scale. Picked mine up on the side of the road on trash day.

Dave

Look in giant stationery stores for scales. They aren't exactly inexpensive, but they are less expensive than I personally had thought. (For what that's worth :-)

Remark: It's good that you are worried about this sort of thing. There is a tendency to load a rocket with technology and never take an accurate weight. CAD programs are nice for planning, but I wouldn't rely on them to give an accurate launch weight. Weights printed on kit packages are typically wrong too. All of that is particularly true for painted rockets..

While you're at it, you might buy a thermometer. Launch site temperature affects altimeter readings. From the data I see, inertial altitude and barometric altitude curves come a lot closer together when the barometric data are corrected.

Regards,

-Larry CO.

I use a fish scale that's good to fifty pounds and costs about $20 at Wal-Mart.

Andrew

I was looking at those fish scales. I wasn't sure about the accuracy. Just curious, have you ever tested the accuracy to see if it's within a few grams or an ounce per 5 pounds. The fish scales that I saw online did not say anything about accuracy.

I bought a Sunbeam digital postal scale for around $29 bucks at Office Depot. I think they sell the same scale under a couple of different name brands, it's dark gray and mostly round with a square projection off the front for the keypad.

We use it for the Pinewood Derby workshops we host and the other benefit is having it around for actual shipping use :-)

Mike Doyle

lizardqueen wrote:

All I ever accomplished with fish scales was to get them all over me and smell like the high heaven.

I doubt they're accurate to the gram but I did notice I got about the same weight when I weighed my rockets on the scale located at the RSO table during LDRS.

NIST is the standard used to calibrate scales. If you really want to know if your scale is any good then send it to a testing lab and let them check it. If you don't have calibration papers then you really don't know if it's accurate at any time regardless of where you get it from or how much you paid.

Andrew

But the cats like You.

Back to the cats again, eh?

Good one. ;-)