# AMRAAM ## Motivation A couple of years ago, [Rocketry Warehouse](http://rocketrywarehouse.com/) had an introductory offer for the Performance 3.5 inch 1/2 scale AMRAAM kit as part of their Black Friday sale. I couldn't resist. I generally prefer to design and build my own airframes, but my son was working on a custom build of a [1/3-scale Maverick](../Maverick) missile, and I thought it would be fun to embark on a scale missile project in parallel. A neat feature of this kit design is that the strake fins are mounted through the wall of both a piece of airframe tubing and a longer piece of coupler tubing to a 54mm inner tube. This makes for a very stout airframe (often a problem with AMRAAM builds), and provides a mid-airframe electronics bay that's 54mm diameter and 15 inches long! Just perfect for our [Altus Metrum](http://altusmetrum.org) flight computers with radio downlink antennas. ## Design Details * [Performance Rocketry](http://performancerocketry.com) kit in 3.5 inch G-12 * [Aero Pack 54mm flanged retainer](https://aeropack.net/webstore/product.asp?productid=332369740757234) * Altus Metrum [MegaMetrum](http://altusmetrum.org/MegaMetrum) flight computer ### Electronics ### I chose the MegaMetrum for this design, even though it's overkill in many ways, both because I needed more test flights on MegaMetrum prototypes, and because I'm really curious to see if we can measure spin rate on this crazy 8-finned airframe using the gyros... ## Build Built starting in mid-March of 2013. ## Photos I've put all the [build photos](http://gallery.gag.com/rockets/AMRAAM/Build/) together in one place. ## Flights The intended first flight of YikStik3 will be at the [NAR](http://nar.org) [National Sport Launch](http://nsl2013.org).