AKBiocca Engineering

The first launcher sporting the new SDR21 Barrel Material. This one is headed for Sweden! 

– Alan, WB6ZQZ

Eric, WD6CMU has been doing a nice job making the Zip Reels. Here is a recent picture of the reel as we ship them. It is mounted on a barrel adapter so it friction fits on the end of the barrel (either SDR21 or Schedule 40), and pre-loaded with 150 yards of Spectra line. Ready to Launch. Available on the Parts and Accessories page (link in the righthand column)

The Blue Fusion paint on the barrels is working out well, and it does not interact with the packing materials. This weekend we’re going to make up a batch of kits and get orders rolling again.

We’ve also updated the website software, which caused a few problems with the accessories order page. This has been resolved for now (had to resort to raw SQL to upload the corrected page). And we still have tax work to do.. But that can wait a few days.

Thanks for your patience,

We are presently testing the new barrel material. It looks good with a coat of Safety Blue Krylon Fusion on it (in fact it looks similar to the blue box at the top of this web page, or a blue tarp, or the photo above). We are now testing to see if this paint interacts with the packing materials. We would not want any surprises there…

We have been working on parts suppliers and Taxes. We have a new batch of SDR21 (PVC barrel tubes) in a pretty sky blue color, but they need some work to clean up as the distributors store the material outdoors. We will try painting it with Krylon Fusion and see how that comes out, it should be nice! We are about to receive an order of PVC parts from a new supplier, if that works out it should reduce some of the parts delays. The local hardware stores just don’t carry enough inventory depth and restock too slowly…

We have also been working on changing the bookkeeping system from Excel to something better, and that is soaking up quite a bit of time right now. We tried Quickbooks but that didn’t work out well, so now we’re writing our own software in Python. It is pretty slick but takes some time to get set up.

I am going to take a few hours off and go to Amtech day this coming Saturday March the 17th. If you have any questions look for me. I’ll have a CSV17 PADS along for show.

Link to Amtech Day website

- Alan, WB6ZQZ