What’s a 3FNC? | About this blog | What is high-power rocketry? | A few random things
In rocketry 3FNC stands for “Three fins and a nose cone,” which is more or less the simplest configuration of rocket flown. Much maligned by expert rocketeers, the 3FNC (and 4FNC) is still the most popular design of sport rocket. It just looks too good.
My name’s Brett Keller, and I’ve been flying rockets for about fifteen years now. I started with Estes model rockets when I was in 5th grade and the rockets have just kept getting bigger. In junior high and early in high school I got interested in mid-power and then high-power rocketry, culminating in a trip to Large and Dangerous Rocket Ships (LDRS) in Argonia, Kansas in 1999.
I took a few years mostly off from hobby rocketry, until the end of my college career. At Harding University I did spectroscopy research on hybrid rocket exhaust plumes with Dr. Ed Wilson, and my last two years of college happened to correspond with the first two years of NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative. I led Harding University’s team to not-so-stellar flights for two years, and got my National Association of Rocketry Level 1 and Level 2 certifications along the way. After graduating I moved to Washington, DC, where I now fly regularly with the Maryland Delaware Rocketry Association (MDRA).
I hope this blog is interesting and informative for rocketeers and spectators alike–feel free to drop me a line at keller.brett [at] gmail.com or say hi if you see me at a local launch. I hope to offer relatively regular posts here, but I’m more likely to have material to post on when actually building a rocket or going to launches.
Coming soon.
Here are a few articles about my team for NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative (USLI) by the NASA Education office (“Not According to Plan”), Harding’s student newspaper, The Bison (One, Two) and Arkansas Online (here). For a real blast from the past, check out this op-ed I wrote for Rocketry Online back when I was 15. And here are a couple academic papers on rocket exhaust plume spectroscopy I helped on (both PDFs): OH Emission Spectra of Hybrid Rocket Motors Using PMMA and HTPB and Ultraviolet-Visible Spectrometry Characterization of Combustion in Hybrid Rocket Motors.
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