- Joined
- Jan 27, 2009
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Yesterday I was doing some flights at a new club, flew my large X-15, ALCM, Interceptor and a new Bomarc.
I had a G-40 single use blow the aft end off on ignition using a copperhead in my X-15, split the case it was stuck into the motor mount tube really tightly. I've had this happen a couple of months ago on two G-38's but the first time on a G-40, failure mechanism looked identical in all three of them. I'm really bummed, don't know if I will trust any of the single use motors any more.....These had the ejection charge removed but nothing else altered, were bought new and not abused.....case looked intact when I loaded it. Nozzle was not plugged on retreival. Fortunately it extinguished itself when it spit the nozzle/propellent out the back.
Then I had a great flight on my Interceptor on a G-12. Reloaded the casing and flew my new bomarc that weighs the same. That was a maiden, the liftoff started the same and then seemed to have about 3x the accelleration, the bomarc shredded and the casing flew out and went missing in the adjacent freshly plowed field. I wasn't able to recover it and in the video was hard to tell because the accelleration caused it to go out of frame. I can only assume that there was a void in the propellent and I got a sudden increase in burn area....I guess I'll have to weigh my grains before loading from now on. I recovered the rear end and motor tube was intact so it didn't burn out the front end or cato, just didn't behave like an endburner, and it was only slotted on the end when I loaded it....The video sound seemed to indicate about a 3 second burn instead of 8.
wierd...
anyway, here are the videos of the flights that worked.....sigh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0MZky_iMnc
I had a G-40 single use blow the aft end off on ignition using a copperhead in my X-15, split the case it was stuck into the motor mount tube really tightly. I've had this happen a couple of months ago on two G-38's but the first time on a G-40, failure mechanism looked identical in all three of them. I'm really bummed, don't know if I will trust any of the single use motors any more.....These had the ejection charge removed but nothing else altered, were bought new and not abused.....case looked intact when I loaded it. Nozzle was not plugged on retreival. Fortunately it extinguished itself when it spit the nozzle/propellent out the back.
Then I had a great flight on my Interceptor on a G-12. Reloaded the casing and flew my new bomarc that weighs the same. That was a maiden, the liftoff started the same and then seemed to have about 3x the accelleration, the bomarc shredded and the casing flew out and went missing in the adjacent freshly plowed field. I wasn't able to recover it and in the video was hard to tell because the accelleration caused it to go out of frame. I can only assume that there was a void in the propellent and I got a sudden increase in burn area....I guess I'll have to weigh my grains before loading from now on. I recovered the rear end and motor tube was intact so it didn't burn out the front end or cato, just didn't behave like an endburner, and it was only slotted on the end when I loaded it....The video sound seemed to indicate about a 3 second burn instead of 8.
wierd...
anyway, here are the videos of the flights that worked.....sigh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0MZky_iMnc
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