Estes E-12-9 CATO

[rocketman4h]

Saturday morning, a beautiful Michigan morning, a good friend of mine loaded 2 Estes E-12-9 motors in to his rocket, I have witnessed fly several times with great flights. On this instance both engimes lit and at aprox. 1/2 way up the rod, the rocket experienced a rapid disassembly. The bottom (booster section arched up and toward your launcher table in a great fireball! it landed 55 feet away from the launch pad and a few feet behind me. I have see thousands of flights with ESTES engines. I never have seen this happen. This was a complete rapid disassembly! upon exception of the booster, one of the 2 motors was cleaned out. the nozzle and cap were gone!

 

[Williamhimka]

We’ve had bad luck with estes E’s aswell. We’ve destroyed multiple rockets due to motor malfunctions.
All have been caused by no ejection.
Our Big Daddy flew so great until it came in ballistic due to a malfunction. So we repaired her and she flew nice and straight!
Yet came in ballistic once again. Maybe just a bad batch of motors?
But most recently, at a launch, There was a younger rocketeer holding a beautiful Big Daddy ready to get it checked out before flight and what do ya know. His came in ballistic from a bad motor. Guess we aren’t the only ones huh haha.

I wish you the best of luck.

William

 

[lakeroadster]

One of the worst motors in regard to cato's... Don't use E12's or E9's unless you're flying a rocket you don't really care about. If you care about the rocket, anything over a D12, go composite.

 

[neil_w]

We’ve had bad luck with estes E’s aswell. We’ve destroyed multiple rockets due to motor malfunctions.
All have been caused by no ejection.
Our Big Daddy flew so great until it came in ballistic due to a malfunction. So we repaired her and she flew nice and straight!
Yet came in ballistic once again. Maybe just a bad batch of motors?
But most recently, at a launch, There was a younger rocketeer holding a beautiful Big Daddy ready to get it checked out before flight and what do ya know. His came in ballistic from a bad motor. Guess we aren’t the only ones huh haha.

Big Daddy no-ejection events are often *not* caused by motor problems, and lack of ejection charge is not the usual failure mode of the E motors.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/big-daddy-lawn-darts-show-of-hands-please.131851/

 

[crossfire]

E9s and E12s been having disassembling for years.

 

[CalebJ]

Didn't Estes rebuild their manufacturing machine in the last year or so to improve E engine reliability? It would be interesting to know statistics on motors before and after that took place.

 

[rocketman4h]

not sure of the manufacturing date... I may be able to find out

 

[PDawg]

I've used 13 E-12s in the last year and all were perfect.

 

[Hobie1dog]

I'm too gun-shy to try an Estes E motor

 

[TheTank]

Estes E you say…

Grenade city…

 

[kuririn]

I've used 13 E-12s in the last year and all were perfect.

According to the MESS reports, the E12 has the most failure reports of any motor at 214, closely followed by the E9 at 183. So consider yourself lucky.
Any motor can CATO. We have been having a spate of mini motor CATOs recently.
And I recently had an F15 CATO.
Made a good photograph.

 

[CaptHaywire]

I have considered running a small bead of epoxy or super glue along the nozzle edge and forward bulkhead. This could provide just enough renforcement to keep the ends from blowing out. I am going to give this a try on my Estes Patriot.

 

[lakeroadster]

I've used 13 E-12s in the last year and all were perfect.

The "E" in E motor stands for "Evolved". They know which rockets to destroy, and which should fly another day.

 

[Ronz Rocketz]

My BD mostly survived its E12 Cato. I only had to replace the forward CR. It then lawndarted at a night launch and broke the BT. I replaced it with a Semroc tube but was too heavy for the 24mm mount. I repurposed the tubes and NC into a Leviathan.

 

[Woody's Workshop]

Nothing beats the "MIGHTY D" Engine!
you can build small and go very, very high!
Or build heavy, and have a nice slow take off.

 

[Zeta]

I have a pile of E's to burn..... contemplating the best way to do it.
Maybe and applewhite stealth or some other tumble recovery thing that will allow the motor to blow out the top if it cato's .

 

[icyclops]

Oh man….i have many Es but so far been lucky. I wonder if it could be due to temp change of the engines in transit…they say don’t expose them to critical temp changes which can cause cracking.

 

[icyclops]

Saturday morning, a beautiful Michigan morning, a good friend of mine loaded 2 Estes E-12-9 motors in to his rocket, I have witnessed fly several times with great flights. On this instance both engimes lit and at aprox. 1/2 way up the rod, the rocket experienced a rapid disassembly. The bottom (booster section arched up and toward your launcher table in a great fireball! it landed 55 feet away from the launch pad and a few feet behind me. I have see thousands of flights with ESTES engines. I never have seen this happen. This was a complete rapid disassembly! upon exception of the booster, one of the 2 motors was cleaned out. the nozzle and cap were gone!

That’s bad

 

[crossfire]

I don't understand why Estes just dosen't pull them form the market.

 

[Sandy H.]

A friend of mine and I flew a 3 stage cluster of E9's (6,6,3 I think) a bunch of times and when the E12's came out we flew it on those once or twice. True, most of the motors were booster motors, not delay motors, but we never had a motor failure. We did end up losing the second stage and need to rebuild it, as it was a fun rocket to launch. Pretty darn expensive to fly, though. . .

Sandy.

 

[gdjsky01]

I created a rocket from spare parts JUST to launch E9s and E12s. I call it the 'E-liminator'

 

[Nateairman]

I have a pile of E's to burn..... contemplating the best way to do it.
Maybe and applewhite stealth or some other tumble recovery thing that will allow the motor to blow out the top if it cato's .

A cluster E will burn them up quickly even if one catos...

 

[OZRoc]

I created a rocket from spare parts JUST to launch E9s and E12s. I call it the 'E-liminator'

+1 here however I called it E-stroyer.
Cheers

 

[Patternflyer]

Here was my CATO on an E12-6 on my Hi-Flier XL. Skip ahead to 18:40 to see it. It was my first time experiencing that, and it makes me leery to put E’s in my nicer birds! The only “positive” thing was I got some incredible camera angles of it!

 

[lakeroadster]

Here was my CATO on an E12-6 on my Hi-Flier XL. Skip ahead to 18:40 to see it. It was my first time experiencing that, and it makes me leery to put E’s in my nicer birds! The only “positive” thing was I got some incredible camera angles of it!

That's some stellar videography. Bummer about the cato. Thanks for posting.

 

[4regt4]

One of the worst motors in regard to cato's... Don't use E12's or E9's unless you're flying a rocket you don't really care about. If you care about the rocket, anything over a D12, go composite.

Not necessarily....

I'm having a lot of Cato problems with the Qjet E26 motors. I've yet to experience an issue with the Estes E12, but I'm careful to only get date codes after Dec 2021.

Hans.

 

[user 35280]

Don’t forget to file mess reports,
https://www.motorcato.org/

 

[4regt4]

According to the MESS reports, the E12 has the most failure reports of any motor at 214, closely followed by the E9 at 183. So consider yourself lucky.
Any motor can CATO. We have been having a spate of mini motor CATOs recently.
And I recently had an F15 CATO.

MESS reports are a good starting point for data mining. But I think one needs to dig into them a bit....

There has been talk/rumor/conjecture that Estes modified production at some point in mid-2021. So I'm looking at failures after 6/1/21. What I see are:

1. No failures with date codes in 2022, although I suppose many recent motors haven't worked their way through the supply chain yet.
2. With a few exceptions, most failures were motors made in the previous decade (2010-2019)
3. Notable exceptions: 2100621, A210321 (6), C210321, 210321, K200321 (3)

Not sure what the significance is with the letter in the date code. Some sort of batch? Or a particular machine? But 210321 really stands out. I also noticed several recent cato's were from motors made back in 2011.

Conclustion? I'm very comfortable using E12s made in the latter part of 2021 and 2022. And I haven't had one fail. Because of the Hazmat surcharge , I'm only buying them at Hobby Lobby, which gives the definite benefit of being able to verify the date code.

Hans.

Edit: We had a pair of E12 failures at a club event last month. I see that they haven't been reported. Date codes were K 20 06 19 and D 19 06 19. The D 19 06 19 have an amazing 31 failures in the database.

 

[rocketman4h]

The Date code is D 19 05 19

 

[rocketman4h]

I did just report it to MESS