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Before You Start...
• Check the parts against the Packing List in the kit, and let us know right away if anything is
amiss.
• Go to our web site at
• Go to our web site at
• Read them thoroughly before starting... it will save you some grief later, we promise!
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Thanks for buying an Eggtimer Quark. The Quark is named after a tiny elementary atomic
particle, which aptly describes the unit. It is designed to be extremely easy to use, and is also
very small so you can put it in virtually any rocket that you could possibly want. You can fire
the Drogue chute at either nose-over (just past apogee) or you can add 1 second for backup use,
and the Main chute can be fired at 300', 500', 800', or 1000'. It beeps out your apogee after
every flight, and you can easily test the deployment channels. Finally, you can actually stream
live altitude and status data out the serial port for simple telemetry use.
Like other Eggtimer Rocketry products, we sell it as a kit, to keep costs down and provide an
outstanding value. This means that you have to do a little work, of course, but considering that
most hobby rocketeers that would use our products have some degree of electronics expertise,
this should not be much of an impediment. If you do not have any experience soldering kits
such as the Quark, we recommend that you ask around... chances are that somebody in your
rocketry club would be more than happy to assist you for a small bribe (beverages work well!).
About Soldering Your Quark...
Assembling your Quark isn't that hard, but we recommend that you don't choose it as your
first kit project. You must be able to solder small components using fine solder and get nice
shiny solder joints. If you have never soldered before, you need to learn anyway, because if
you are going to do rocketry electronics you're going to be doing some soldering. If you want
to get into advanced projects like telemetry, you're probably going to be doing a lot of
soldering. We recommend that you get a few small kits from Ramsey or SparkFun, put them
together, and hone your skills on them first. There's a lot of fun stuff out there, so go for it!
The Quark uses mostly Surface Mount Technology (SMT) parts, they are large by SMT
standards, and are within the realm of being hand-solderable. In order to help make your
assembly successful, we have included about 12" of very fine (.020"), very low temperature
(about 180°C), no-residue solder. This is not the stuff that you get at Radio Shack... it's
designed for soldering small temperature-sensitive parts without transferring much heat to the
part itself.
Important note about using extra flux with this board: The solder that comes with the kit is
Kester 245, it uses a water-based "no-clean" flux. If you wish to use extra flux with the board,
www.Eggtimerrocketry.com
www.EggtimerRocketry.com
and download the latest Release Notes.
and download the latest Users Guide..
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