What to do with B14-0 motors?

[powderburner]

I put one into a Big Bertha.

I don't remember how old I was back then. I never suspected that it wouldn't work. I really thought a B14 would move that BB with style....

The MMT tube ripped right through the cardboard CRs with no apparent difficulty and pushed the wadding, chute, and NC right out the front. As I recall, the rocket never went anywhere. The smoking MMT tumbled to the ground toward one side and the ejection charge popped. End of flight.

Ya know, on second thought, maybe it's just as well that Estes doesn't have these available anymore....(just KIDDING!!)

 

[twentysixtwo]

I have a pile of Centuri B14-7 and B14-0 as well as B8-7's and Centuri C5-0S and C5-3S.

I've flown too many to count (50+) and never had a CATO.

In other news I had two recent Estes A10-3T (with the colored label) CATO back to back a couple of weeks ago. Weird. I've never had mini engines CATO.

I store my engines int he basement in sealed containers with dessicant. The only other CATO's I've expereinces with BP motors were 2 "D" engines flown in sub zero weather.

 

[astronboy]

I have a pile of B14-0s, and will by flying a few this weekend at my local NAR section's Old Motor Launch (part of the NAR old motor program) I built a Gassaway designed Tri-Fo for them as well as some dubious MPC B6-0s and C6-0s. Several other club members will be using them as boosters as well.

Phred

 

[Astrobuf]

I have what may be the world's biggest stash of B14's (mostly 0's, a few 5's and 7's) -- a local toy store was cleaning out some cartons of old rocket stuff a year or so ago, selling them off for a song, and my eyes lit up when I saw the case of B14's. So, I bought up as many of the old sealed Estes "diamond" cartons of them as I could carry -- 40-50 packs of 3 at $1.00 per pack. I've launched maybe a dozen of them, and they've all flown fine.

B14-0s are very good booster motors to get heavy staged birds off the pad and up to a decent airspeed quickly.

B14's were discontinued during my roughly-20-year hiatus from rocketry, so I don't know if there were CATO issues (a-la the D13 and E15) with the motors, or if they just fell out of demand. I don't think I ever remember having a B14 CATO.

It would be cool if Estes, or Quest, would bring them back, and maybe produce a C equivalent -- a C18, maybe??

I havexa bunch of B14-0's and B14-5's s amongst many other engines in my NAR Range box from the early 70's. Back into the hobby now, I'm thinking of flying them on a few disposable Rockets just to show my Scouts how a rocket can really scoot. I do recall the got left behind in my box as the last launch I made got about 10ft above the launch rod and CATO'd Thinking back on it today, that was kinda cool. My destroyed Merc Redstone gone then, not so much!

I think memory of the early 70's B14's was that they were prone to having grain cracks and the core burner structure made them go bang.

Astrobuf

 

[ECayemberg]

I've flown several B14-0's with about a 50% ratio of cato:nominal burn. The great part is that in 2 stage configuration, the sustainer generally ignites whether you get a cato or a nominal burn. Win-Win situation, and always exciting!

 

[MJ D]

As I understand it, the B14 motors went out of production due to the post processing needed to make them. It was not possible to make the motor with the deep core that makes the B14 have the high peak thrust, so after they were pressed the core would have to be drilled out manually.

This was time consuming, expensive and *very* dangerous. All of these lead to the demise of the B14.

fwiw
jim

Yessir that is the reason. Ed Brown said they ued to touch one off occassionally but nothing terrible happended with the setup they had. They are basically just a cored B4.

 

[MJ D]

Estes also made a series of C10, D20 and D44 test engines before I got to Estes, with a deep core. The C10 was a glorified C, with something like 6 n-sec total impulse. It flew neat and sounded great, but was pretty wimpy. If it came to market, it would've likely been labeled a B motor, so people would not expect 10 n-sec of performance.

The test motors worked pretty well, but we couldn't get approval to bring them to market. Our loss!

Matt

I have a few of the CX-s that were the cored C protoypes made around '93. About a C10. The sharp-eyed may notice the ridge on the E's right at the 2.75" mark, which is a clue to its reason for being.

 

[MJ D]

so maybe the B14 was simply a B4 with a hole drilled in it.

But that doesn't make sense either -- the B4's were listed with a total impulse of 5.00-newton-seconds -- the same as the B14's and the B6's. Presumably if you have the same propellant with the same specific impulse, the B4's, with more propellant, should have had slightly more total impulse than the B14's and the B6's. (Although I have also learned that some of the engine specs from the 60s and 70s were not quite as razor-accurate as we were led to believe at the time. :surprised: )

The B14's were 10% more expensive than the other B's, so I suspect as you mention, there was some additional process in their manufacture which did make them more expensive to produce. Still, it would be fun if either Estes or Quest could figure out a way to produce them again.

(1) Yes they were cored B4's. May have been pressed too but EB said they drilled them in production.
(2) LOL since when is the listed total impulse the actual tested and/or certified value?
(3) Cored motors are tough to press in production, if you don't taper the core then pulling the mandrel is a nightmare, and if you do taper it the pressing rams and tooling are a much bigger PITA to make and maintain and the whole process is more hazardous. With regular motors only the end of the first powder charge is formed with the nozzle drift, the rest are not. Maintaining consistent grain density is much easier.
(4) Prevailing theory is that cored BP motors suffer more quickly from attrition due to handling and environment once shipped, this was always a "con" on the list of features and benefits under review.