Airstart igniter troubles with PET2...help!

So I've been feverishly and eagerly prepping a modular electronics bay design for my refurbished LOC ultimate and 429-SS models. I'm trying to keep on track for 2–3 cluster/airstart flights at the Freedom launch in Orangeburg, SC. Had a bit of a snag today...

I finished up the electronics bay today and loaded it into the Ultimate and set the timer on pull-pin initiation for a full mock–up bench test. I dipped 5 Magnelite ClusterFire igniters and hooked everything up: (3) on ch. 1 and (2) on ch. 2...exact setup for the flight I have planned...

I powered up the timer, it chirped the correct beeps, I pulled the pull pin and… Nothing. Okay, I thought. Maybe a bad connection? Reset, no joy. Okay, maybe it's the igniters. So, I hooked up single Quest Q2G2's. Reset, initiate and bingo! Both Q2's fired. Okay… My connections are correct...

Maybe my igniters have too high of a current draw for the single 9V battery I am using? From the information I gathered here, these igniters should work with this setup... Well, will a 9V on it's own fire three wired in parallel? I removed the 9V, hooked three directly to the battery and WOOSH, they all fire.... Huh?!?!

Now I'm getting a little confused. So, I wired the timer with two Magnelites wired in parallel Into CH. 1 only. Reset, no joy. Ugh. Well, let's see if each channel will fire a single Magnelite. So, I loaded one into each channel, reset, pulled the pin and...lo and behold each igniter fires on time!! What the heck is going on?

A single battery will fire three Magnelites directly hooked up to it. But when everything is wired into the timer the best I can get is one Magnelite on each channel. Help!

In the end, I just want a an igniter that can be clustered in an airstart situation using a PET2 with a standard 9V. And they must be able to fit into MPR motors.

The Magnelite website gives the specs for the MF Clusterfire as: The no fire (N/F) rating is 0.92 amps and the all fire (A/F) rating is 1.6 amps. These amp ratings are pretty high. Old Daveyfire and Oxral e-matches are somewhere between 370ma and 500ma to fire (BTW, this lower amperage also aligns with homemade e-matches I have assembled from Firefox and others). Given that the MF Clusterfire need such high current and the old PET2 only puts out 1.25A @ 0.5 sec you are never going to fire them. Stated more plainly 1.25A divided by two is 625mA and of course, even worse for three in parallel at 416mA--neither coming close to the 920mA minimum required. If you want to use the PET2, you need to get better, low current e-matches, otherwise move up to a PET2+ that has 5A outputs.

I believe what the problem may be is the Clusterfires are essentially a ground based ignitor, and what you may need is the MF series e-matches, possibly primed with a hotter dip. I have only fired two with the PET timer-YMMV.

That pretty much sums it up. I had a feeling I would be hearing from you! Thanks for the help, I do appreciate your wealth of knowledge in this area! I would certainly like to move up to the PET3, but I have to stick with the 2 for now. I guess my only options are somehow lengthening and augmenting quest igniters or trying the Magnelite ematch kit and then augmenting that with the cluster dip or thermalite.

fyrwrxz said:

I believe what the problem may be is the Clusterfires are essentially a ground based ignitor, and what you may need is the MF series e-matches, possibly primed with a hotter dip. I have only fired two with the PET timer-YMMV.

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We must have responded at the same time… As you see, I had a similar idea! Thank you for the helpful tips. I am going to either augment quest igniters or do the ML Ematch and augment that. My only worry about augmenting an igniter that is already dipped is the acetone from the secondary dip disturbing the original dip. I have seen a head on a Daveyfire match get messed up from the acetone of a pyrogen it was being dipped in before.

marcusSRG said:

We must have responded at the same time… As you see, I had a similar idea! Thank you for the helpful tips. I am going to either augment quest igniters or do the ML Ematch and augment that. My only worry about augmenting an igniter that is already dipped is the acetone from the secondary dip disturbing the original dip. I have seen a head on a Daveyfire match get messed up from the acetone of a pyrogen it was being dipped in before.

Click to expand...

I'll tell you, looking back at the Magnelite site it is confusing. It says the Clusterfire uses the MF series ignitor wires(????)--there is no MF series ignitor on their site, only MF series e-matches. Their ignitor line is designated ML. The spec I gave in my original post was for the MF series e-matches (which I assumed they were referring to when making their Clusterfire ignitors (i.e., a dipped e-match ignitor) so I would be careful using their e-matches because the current draw needed is high.

In either case (with a low current e-match or a Quest ignitor), I have had success augmenting with Quickburst Quickdip for airstarts and staging. I have seen no degradation of the e-match. BTW, I also paint the inside of the top grain with the same for the motors that are being lit.

Make sure the triggering mode selection switches on your PET2 are set to ON/ON or OFF/ON.
The factory setting might be for trigger on G switch activation only. Just a thought. Good Luck!

I know the default Breakwire Input setting on my PET2+ is N/A, Breakwire is not used.

Thank you, guys. Dixon, you are right about the Rocketflite site. That stuff is confusing. Also, thank you for explaining the electrical figures. That's what I was missing (and suspecting).

I'm definitely going with dipped Q2s...I'll order some next week. I think the CF pyrogen I have will work well for dipping. The ones I tested today burned HOT and bright for well over a second. No doubt that stuff will light the motors once it gets going. I will bench test and report back. Meanwhile...time to start painting!

Just wanted to follow up. This past week I did a successful bench test with the PET2 and the igniter setup for the flight I have planned. Everything worked great! All the Q2s fired and the one dipped in a little CF pyrogen worked great as well. Thanks for the great suggestions! Here's a terribly anticlimactic video!

[video=youtube_share;FfkBj4-qzJs]https://youtu.be/FfkBj4-qzJs[/video]